| IHRSA Report | First Set ®
The International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association is a not-for-profit trade association open to investor-owned and member-owned fitness, racquet, and athletic facilities. Associate memberships are available to manufacturers or suppliers of products and services of use to IHRSA members.
800-228-4772 USA & Canada 617-951-0055 International 617-951-0056 FAX
ihrsa.org
healthclubs.com E-mail:
info@ihrsa.org
IHRSA Board of Directors
Art Curtis: Chairperson 617-476-8910
David Hardy: Franvest Capital Partners 780-953-4273
Kilian Fisher: Greinwalder Marketing Services International +353-89-4322125
Chuck Runyon: Anytime Fitness 651-438-5000
Kay Yuspeh: Elite Sports Clubs 262-786-0880
Bill McBride: Club One 415-477-3000
Richard Bilton: Companhia Athletica +55 11-5188-2000
Carol Nalevanko: DMB Sports Clubs 480-609-6979
Brent Darden: TELOS Fitness Center 972-458-2582
Scott Gillespie: Saco Sport & Fitness 207-284-5953
Christian Pierar: De Fitness Organisatie +32 9-232-5036
Jasmin Kirstein: My Sportlady Fitness +49 89-201-4248
Robert Brewster: The Alaska Clubs 907-337-9550
David Patchell-Evans: Ex-officio GoodLife Fitness Clubs 519-661-0190 ext. 238
Art Curtis IHRSA Chairperson
Logic vs. Emotion
A letter to the editor in the December issue of CBI caught my eye. The writer, Michelle Segar, suggested that our industry has a branding problem. Rather than positioning exercise as medicine, she said, we should rebrand it as something that “enhances the most compelling aspects of daily living.”
Segar, who holds both a Ph.D. and a master’s of public health (MPH), is a researcher at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Piqued by her observations, I wanted to know more. I Googled her name and found her study, “Rebranding Exercise: Closing the Gap Between Values and Exercise,” which was published last year in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.
It was enlightening, to say the least, and made me realize that we have much to learn from behavioral scientists. Segar and her associates compared the participation rates of two groups of women, ages 40–60. One group’s goals were based on the health, weight/appearance, and healthy aging- related benefits of exercise. The other group focused more on improving the quality of their daily lives—e.g., more energy, better sleep, reduced stress, etc.
Segar and her colleagues found that exercise participation was substantially greater for the quality-of-daily-life group than it was for the health, weight/appearance, and healthy-aging group. While it’s important not to draw overreaching conclusions from one study
based on a specific population, those results motivated me to revisit the issue of retention from a different perspective … and led me to revise some of my thinking on the subject.
In general, up until now, exercise has been promoted largely on a logical basis. It’s important in terms of getting fit, controlling weight, pursuing a healthy lifestyle, and preventing a wide range of chronic diseases. It’s also a great way to increase strength, speed, power, and endurance, and to improve balance and flexibility. It’s true that such goals are highly valued by health practitioners and public health policy shapers, and, in fact, are the main reason that many members join clubs. However, they don’t seem to produce the level of motivation that’s required for individuals to implement the behavioral changes required to adhere to a regular exercise routine for life. Perhaps a better approach, as recommended by Segar, would be a more emotional one—one explaining how exercise can make daily life better. —|
– Art Curtis,
artcurtis31@gmail.com ihrsa.org | APRIL 2012 | Club Business Internat ional 107
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