ABSTRACT
The contemporary world of gyms is an extremely complex and varied reality that is attracting increasing critical interest from many quarters as it is linked with consumer capitalism and how neo-liberal logic puts bodies at work in urban spaces. Fitness gyms are supposedly non-competitive environments aimed at providing recreational exercise to boost physical form and well-being. The commercialization of keep-fit activities essentially responds to its cultural configuration: it reflects the official objective of fitness training, namely the maintenance or improvement of individual well-being and body qualities. From a broad cultural perspective, much of the generated difference in fitness culture happens through the ever-shifting hybridization and reshuffling of precepts and precincts which once appeared as irreconcilable and distant, thus for example renegotiating the boundary of sport and gymnastics. Time spent in the gym is typically coded as 'leisure' by both expert discourse and actual participants. Fitness gyms are as much opposed to, as they are symbiotic with, hectic urban living.
