Working Out in a Personal Gym

By Anastasia Toufexis.

Mark Sweeney dropped out of the health-club scene three years ago when he decided that most members spent more time socializing than sweating. "The joke was that at the club you never knew when somebody would tap you on the shoulder and ask you to dance," recalls Sweeney, 32. Rather than stop exercising, he sank $40,000 into the unfinished basement of his Rockville, Md., home. Dubbed Sweeney's Cave, it is now paneled in pale birch, carpeted in light blue and crammed with gym equipment. Among its features: a bench press, an arm-curling machine, lower-back- and leg-strengthening devices and a chest builder. Sweeney, who is the owner of an auto-painting and body shop, boasts, "Nobody has a gym like mine."

Not so, Sweeney. In Hinsdale, Ill., for example, Fran Gaik shows off her new exercise center with all the enthusiasm householders once displayed for renovated living rooms and master bedrooms. The contemporary black-and-gray room with padded wallpaper and a mirrored wall contains a built-in sound sys- tem, a luxurious whirlpool-sauna and tanning bed, and about $4,400 worth of exercise apparatus. "It's very sensuous," says Gaik, 35, who with her husband owns a company that sells health insurance. "My friends almost look at it as an orgy room."

In California, J-Paul Dumont knocked down the walls between his grown children's bedrooms in his Palo Alto home to set up a deluxe sweatshop complete with mirrored walls, sophisticated weight-lifting devices and a chrome rack that contains rows of dumb-bells. A whirlpool tub is in the bath next door. The $100,000 price tag also bought style: the entire suite is done in art deco. Working out, says Dumont, 55, an investment banker, "is a lot better at home."

That sentiment is echoed by an increasing number of exercise-minded Americans. "Twelve years ago, we didn't even have a consumer market," says Ronald Labrum, president of Centurion Sales Co. in Mountain View, Calif., which then concentrated on supplying gym equipment to institutions and apartment buildings. Now 25% of the company's customers buy for their homes. Declares Labrum: "It's probably the fastest-growing market segment we have."

Many dealers across the country agree, noting that since 1980 their sales of home equipment have been rising about 30% to 65% a year. Sears, Roebuck, which advertised a primitive rowing machine in its 1920s mail-order catalogs, has devoted 31 pages of its fall-winter catalog to home-fitness devices. Says Richard Williford, a Sears spokesman: "This has been the strongest-selling merchandise in our sporting-goods department this year." Among the favored items, say equipment dealers: rowing machines ($75 to $3,000 for the computerized, gadget-laden models), stationary bicycles ($75 to $3,000), treadmills ($850 to $5,800) and all-in-one contraptions, like Soloflex or Universal's Power-Pak, that act on the entire body ($459 to $4,000). The typical outlay for a complete gym: $2,000 to $3,000.

For a few, home gyms may be just the latest status symbol--"as swimming pools used to be," says Labrum--but most buyers are committed fitness buffs. Allan Sutton, 52, an investment adviser in New York City, dropped out of his health club about a year ago. "I find you give yourself a million different excuses not to go work out," he says. He spent about $1,500 converting the downstairs family room of his suburban Larchmont, N.Y., home into an exercise room, installing two stationary bikes, a rowing machine, a cross-country skiing machine, a Nautilus for the Home abdominal builder and a practice putting green. Jim Kramer, 25, a Miami accountant, for $1,500 purchased several machines, which he placed on his screened-in porch. "If I want to work out at 3 in the afternoon or 3 in the morning, I can do it," he says. "And I don't have to wait for a machine. And I don't have to lie down in somebody else's sweat." Even health-club dropouts without a great deal of space manage to find ways to work out at home. Architect David Rockwell, who lives in a Manhattan studio, keeps a fold-up mini-trampoline in the closet and an exercise bicycle in the entryway. Says he: "It looks very ceremonial."

Unfortunately, many people buy equipment without defining their goals or learning how to use the apparatus properly. According to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, hospital emergency rooms in 1984 treated people for 18,000 injuries related to exercise equipment. Almost half the mishaps occurred at home. In addition to the danger of injury, there is the risk of wasting money on unneeded glitz or extras. Women, in particular, tend to be unfamiliar with exercise devices. "If I say dipping station to women, they haven't a clue as to what that is," says Marilyn Mitchell, a fitness specialist in the Washington area. (It is a set of parallel bars used to build upper-body strength.) Sometimes their decisions seem dictated more by decor than duty. "Women want to know how many colors the machines come in," notes Mitchell. "Men don't care."

Of course, men also make mistakes. Tax Lawyer Chuck Levy, 47, 2 1/2 years ago spent $275 for a rowing machine. An avid runner, he thought it would help keep him in shape. It also recalled his glory days as a member of a college crew. He soon discovered that the workouts were not as efficient as running. The machine is now collecting dust in the study of his Chevy Chase, Md., home.

Some home-gym owners hire consultants, at $20 an hour and up, to coach them on new equipment, devise an exercise regimen or provide encouragement. No one knows how many of those who are initially eager eventually throw in the towel. According to one survey this year, only 20% of buyers of home devices remain steady users. "The biggest problem with doing this stuff is boredom," says Attorney Robert Gelfman, 54, who pedals a bike in his Scarsdale, N.Y., home three or four times a week. His solution: placing a book on an adjacent music stand. Says Gelfman: "I've gotten through all the Winston Churchill volumes on the Second World War, and I just finished the Jane Austen novels."

The ideal may be to work out with a few friends, as Jay Marks does. Indeed, friends helped the 25-year-old vice president of a family-owned drapery company build the $4,000 gym in the basement of his Beltsville, Md., home. One put up the walls, another supplied the mirrors, still others contributed equipment. Marks' gym has now become a sort of mini-health club. Instead of paying membership dues, intimates spring for drinks or dinners. Says Marks: "It's great. Your friends always owe you favors."

With reporting by Barbara Cornell/Washington and Barry Kalb/New York