Learning to Breathe Fire by J.C. Herz

Author:J.C. Herz [Herz, J.C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-385-34888-1
Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2014-06-02T16:00:00+00:00

GLOBO-GYM

The Spandex Juice-Bar Business Model

THE GRANDDADDY OF THE MODERN GLOBO-GYM WAS A CLUB called Vic Tanny’s, which opened in Los Angeles in 1947, just as California became a spawning ground for cultural trends. Before World War II, there had been three types of gyms:1 There were private member-only clubs like the New York Athletic Association and the Olympic Club of San Francisco, where business executives went to swim and play squash. There were YMCAs, which offered a full array of gymnastic equipment, dumbbells, pools, and sports courts to middle- and working-class youngsters in the spirit of health and wholesomeness.

Lastly, there were bodybuilding gyms owned by strongmen. Sig Klein’s Studio of Physical Culture, in midtown Manhattan, was a shrine of strength training that nursed the bodybuilding movement in its infancy. Sig himself was known to press 299 pounds overhead with one arm. In Philadelphia, Hermann’s Gym and John Fritshe’s Gym became clanking capitols of hard-core weightlifting. Across the Susquehanna River in York, Pennsylvania, Bob Hoffman’s York Barbell Club was home to some of the greatest bodybuilders and weightlifters of the era, and Hoffman’s York Barbell Company was synonymous with the grimace and grunt of serious muscle men. Muscle gyms were vulcan armories of steel and iron. They were suffused with sweat and testosterone and filled with working-class guys who looked like comic book characters. Although warm hearts beat in the barrel chests of the proprietors, these dungeons of strength training seemed forbidding to men with unimpressive biceps, or to women of any sort.

Vic Tanny’s was different. It was geared for middle-class consumers in the postwar suburbs. The facilities were brightly lit and tricked out in carpet and chrome. In addition to gym equipment favored by men, there were pools and saunas to attract women looking for spa amenities. And mirrors. Lots of mirrors. You could look in almost any direction at Vic Tanny’s and see your own reflection in a wall of mirror. Tanny’s pioneered the modern health club’s architectural impetus to stare at yourself in the mirror during exercise. Curl the bicep. Look at the bicep in the mirror straight ahead. Put down the dumbbell and notice how the bicep looks larger than it did in its pre-curl state. Scrutinize the whole shoulder/chest/ab situation and move to the next mirror-facing workout station. This was one of Vic Tanny’s major innovations.

The other major Tanny’s innovation was the hard sell and contractual lock-in that’s become a ubiquitous feature of major gym chains. Salesmen had daily membership quotas to hook new prospects into contracts ranging from six months to “permanent” seven-year contracts. Many of these salesmen worked strictly on commission and were aware that if they outsold their manager, the next day they’d be the new manager. If their ex-boss outsold them the day after that, they’d be back in the sales pool. Vic Tanny himself sent out a mimeographed set of instructions for calling prospects on the phone. “If you fail to get an appointment,” he concluded, “take a gun out of the desk and shoot yourself.

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