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Background

In a health club, also called fitness studio or exercise center, one finds various equipment for the purpose of physical exercise. Often there are also courses for aerobics or the like offered. It is not unusual that a sauna or wellness areas are present. For a fee the visitor can use the equipment, the service and courses of the health club. Health clubs offer a collective and often entertaining and informal form of working out and/or bodybuilding beyond the structure of the classic gym. Gym, a shortened form of gymnasium, refers to facilities intended for indoor sports or exercise. Gyms are sometimes referred to as health clubs.

Today the term gymnasium (plural: gymnasiums or gymnasia) is used in the sense of a sports facility. Gyms today are multi-use facilities, offering a range of sporting and physical activities, alongside such things as massages, and other things usually attributed to a health spa.

Etymology

The word is derived from the Greek word gymnos which means naked. The Greek word gymnasium means "place to be naked" and was used in ancient Greece to designate a locality for the education of young men, including physical education (gymnastics, i.e. exercise) which was customarily performed naked, as well as bathing, and studies. For the Greeks, physical education was considered as important as cognitive learning. Most Greek gymnasia had libraries that could be utilized after relaxing in the baths.