Media

The Swiss Health Club Secret

Club Business Journal
by Catherine Larner - CBI's European correspondent

Werner Kieser has created a successful 118-club company by focusing, exclusively, on strength training

Werner Kieser makes no apologies for the fact that his training facilities offer no saunas, or steam rooms, or swimming pools, or aerobic studios, or yoga classes... or even bikes, treadmills, steppers, or elliptical trainers. And why should he? His clubs, by design, focus exclusively on one thing-strength training-and the concept has proven remarkably successful both for his company, Kieser Training AG, headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, the 190,000-plus members it has throughout Europe.

«Cardiovascular equipment ...

The slow burn

The Independent Magazine
by Kate Worsley

Kieser Training sounds too good to be true: a toned body with no warm-ups, no sweat and only three half-hour sessions a week. But have you seen the things they strap you into?

When I ripped a lumbar disc four years ago my osteopath told me that even childbirth wouldn't hurt as much. He turned out to be right. And so I've spent a lot of money since then in a prophylactic effort to make sure I never, ever end up in that sort of pain again.

Gym, yoga, pilates, special back ...

'We produce lean body mass. That's our product' - Weight for it: Kieser's top tips

The Guardian

You won't find Lycra lovelies in Werner Kieser's gym. Laura Barton hears why

Sturdy, brown and bristly, like a well-groomed bear in spectacles, Werner Kieser is describing the merits of a "pert ass". His English flounders, and his hands cup the air, as if squeezing invisible melons.

Kieser is the founder of Kieser Training, the international chain of "strength-training" centres, and the author of Full Strength, a training handbook. Today, he is in the London Kieser centre in north London, drinking Perrier, and extolling the virtues of strength training in a mixture of English and German ...

David Fritz

Health Club Management
by Julie Cramer

It's an antithesis to the plush and upbeat health club, but the Kieser Training facility in north London is looking to target a more mature clientele with its medical strength training system. Julie Cramer talks to the managing director charged with the company's global expansion.

As a man who suffered from excruciatiing back pain for more than 15 years, David Fritz seems aptly qualified to be leading the global expansion of an exercise system which left him completely cured of his aches and pains.

Fritz's fortuitous meeting with ex-bodybuilder Werner Kieser ...

Less stress

Business Life
by Alison Culliford

«A strong back knows no pain,» said the flyer. Alison Culliford had to know more, so she enrolled on a course of Kieser Training, a radical new approach to back problems from Switzerland.

In the UK alone, backache send three million people a year to their doctors, costs the NHS £481m and accounts for £2,000m of lost output to businesses. Still, most of us treat it with a fatalistic approach, seeing it as the inevitable result of our sedentary, pressurised lifestyles. Depending on what kind of person you are, you'll probably either follow ...