Current Situation of Fitness Sport in Switzerland

Private fitness companies have become relevant players in the sports market alongside traditional sports clubs in Switzerland. This chapter gives an overview on the current situation of the fitness sector and its development during the past years. There are about 1,000 fitness facilities in Switzerland, which are mainly owned by market actors but also by sports clubs. On the individual level, the data shows that being fit is an important motive for regular sport activities and about 20 percent of the population explicitly practise so called fitness activities or training. This figure has considerably grown since 2008 and the clear majority of fitness participants use private fitness and sports centres. Furthermore, fitness training is more popular in younger age groups

‘You can all succeed!’: the reconciliatory logic of therapeutic active leisure *

Broad cultural trends such as spectacularization and individualization as induced by consumer culture are transforming the global scene of sport practice with effects that may appear as socially reconciliatory. Commercialization has worked in two directions: while competitive, professional sport is becoming a global media phenomenon, with increasingly global and yet fragmented audiences, ordinary sport practice is being individualized in the Global North and shaped by the individualizing and totalizing logic of therapeutic active leisure. In this paper the notion of therapeutic active leisure is proposed and explored with particular reference to the development of the fitness field. As I shall show it sits between sport and gymnastics and expresses the socio-economic need to control the health of the population through individualized commercialized formations, by working through consumers’ pleasures rather than citizens’ duties