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What started out in the Bay Area as a single gym in San Leandro 29 years ago and grew to be one of the world's biggest fitness chains is up for sale.

24 Hour Fitness, headquartered in San Ramon, is being put on the auction block by its owner, New York private equity firm Forstmann Little, with a price tag reportedly in the $2 billion range.

"We are working with our board of directors and Forstmann Little to pursue strategic alternatives for the company. Goldman Sachs has been engaged to provide strategic counsel as we start this process," the company said Wednesday.

It would not disclose numbers, but the $2 billion shouldn't be too hard to attain, given that the company has more than 419 outlets in the United States and Asia, including 60 in the Bay Area and Northern California, and is a veritable cash machine.

Founded by Mark Mastrov, a Castro Valley native, 24 Hour Fitness has 3.8 million members and a 22,000-strong workforce, and brings in more than $1 billion annual revenue.

Mastrov also recruited a number of celebrity partners, including Magic Johnson, Lance Armstrong, Andre Agassi, Madonna, Jackie Chan and a younger Arnold Schwarzenegger. For 10 seasons, contestants on "The Biggest Loser" got the services of 24 Hour Fitness personal trainers as part of a deal Matrov negotiated with NBC.

The company has sponsorship arrangements with the International Olympic Committee and Team USA's men's and women's basketball Olympians. The Bay Area's volleyball golden girl, Kerri Walsh, is one of three Team USA athletes partnering with 24 Hour Fitness to produce workout videos on YouTube.

Mastrov sold the company to Forstmann Little in 2005 for $1.68 billion, with some regret. "This is my baby," he said at the time.

In 2008, he started another business in the Bay Area, New Evolution Fitness, a private equity firm investing in health and fitness enterprises. They include a planned chain of Hard Candy Fitness centers fronted by Madonna, of which there are currently three - in Mexico City, Moscow and Santiago, Chile.

"Madonna's touch will be everywhere," Mastrov said in 2010.

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24 Hour Fitness, healthy chain, for sale

NASHVILLE, Tenn.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Healthways (HWAY) announced effective July 1, it is providing the Prime Fitness program to Novitas Solutions (formerly Highmark Medicare Services) of Camp Hill, Pa. and First Coast Service Options (FCSO) of Jacksonville, Fla. Both companies will provide Prime Fitness to their employees in all locations as a company-paid benefit as part of their commitment to enhancing employees health and well-being. The program promotes the benefits of physical activity with a combination of convenient access to facilities and motivational support.

Healthways Prime Fitness members have full access to more than 8,000 fitness centers nationwide, providing a variety of class, equipment and location options. Members also have access to an online portal that provides resources to locate participating centers, create fitness plans and set and track goals. Telephonic customer service support is also provided.

Regular physical activity prevents and controls health issues that influence healthcare costs and productivity. Research has shown that increasing physical activity from 0-1 times per week to more than 3 times per week decreased medical costs by $2,202 per year per person1.

By offering Prime Fitness to their employees, Novitas and FCSO are demonstrating their commitment to enhancing their well-being, while at the same time addressing rising healthcare costs, said Healthways president and chief executive officer Ben R. Leedle, Jr. By making fitness convenient, accessible and engaging, Prime Fitness gives members every incentive to participant in a program that is both highly rewarding and enjoyable.

Prime Fitness engagement specialists will work closely with Novitas and FCSO employees to create strategic, tailored campaigns that encourage ongoing participation in their programs. Aggregate reporting of member enrollment and use will guide the employee communication and programming strategy.

About Healthways

Healthways (HWAY) is the largest independent global provider of well-being improvement solutions. Dedicated to creating a healthier world one person at a time, the Company uses the science of behavior change to produce and measure positive change in well-being for our customers, which include employers, integrated health systems, hospitals, physicians, health plans, communities and government entities. We provide highly specific and personalized support for each individual and their team of experts to optimize each participants health and productivity and to reduce health-related costs. Results are achieved by addressing longitudinal health risks and care needs of everyone in a given population. The Company has scaled its proprietary technology infrastructure and delivery capabilities developed over 30 years and now serves approximately 40 million people on four continents. Learn more at http://www.healthways.com.

1 Cross, M. Spend Money on Healthy People. Managed Care. August 2004. Available at http://www.managedcaremag.com/archives/0408/0408.wellpeople.html.

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Healthways to Provide Prime Fitness Program to Novitas Solutions and First Coast Service Options Employees

ACCC chairman Rod Sims

A FITNESS club that claimed the carbon price would drive up the price of its gym memberships has been fined $6600 by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

Genesis Fitness Club in Berwick, Victoria, becomes the first business to be fined for making misleading claims about the impact of the controversial carbon tax, which came into effect on July 1.

The club sent a letter to more than 2000 of its members in April promoting a "rate freeze", offering its members a range of lengthy contract extensions at current or reduced membership rates.

The club told members that taking up the offer would help them avoid a 9-15% fee increase arising from the carbon tax.

It is believed more than 200 members took up the offer.

On top of the hefty fine, members who accepted the offer have been offered the opportunity to withdraw from the contract extension at no extra cost.

ACCC chairman Rod Sims said this was a good outcome who may have been misled by the health club's claims. Mr Sims said the gym did not have a "reasonable basis" for its claim.

"We are concerned that the false claims about the carbon price may have encouraged these people to sign lengthy contract extensions they otherwise would not have," Mr Sims said. "Businesses are free to set their prices as they see fit, but must carefully consider the basis for making carbon price claims and ensure such claims are truthful and have a reasonable basis."

Genesis Fitness Club operates more than 50 health clubs across Australia, including one in Coffs Harbour and Tweed Heads.

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Carbon tax fine for fitness club

HOOPESTON Main Street Fitness, 221 East Main St., Hoopeston, is relocating and expanding into Stebbins Furniture building on North Market Street.

The business closed its location July 25 and reopens today as Hoopeston Health and Fitness at 226 N. Market St., according to the announcement on its Facebook site.

"The new gym will include $8,000 in new equipment," said Kevin Jett, marketing director for Eliseo "Al" Zamora, owner. "It will be the premier fitness in health with more than triple his present space."

The hours will remain 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday, with the tentative possibility of being open Saturday.

"We are a full-service fitness facility, Zamora said. "We offer cardio, strength training, kickboxing, personal training and group training classes.

In addition to the new location, Zamora wants to open another fitness center in the area.

"We are working on creating another Main Street Fitness in the neighboring town of Milford," Zamora said.

Zamora, originally from Chicago, worked as a wrestling and football coach, but was by trade a union roofer, as was his father. He has always been active in coaching, martial arts and sports. When he moved to Hoopeston, he wanted something to do that he loved. The fitness center filled his need to stay active as a physical trainer. The Main Street Fitness center opened in July 2009.

To contact Zamora for questions or to join, e-mail: Zamora at mainstreetfitness1@yahoo.com or call 283-7399.

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Fitness business moves, expands

A FITNESS club has become the first Australian business to pay a fine for making a false claim about the carbon tax.

GFC Berwick, trading as Genesis Fitness Club, paid $6600 to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) as penalty for sending a letter to its members in April promoting a "rate freeze" offer.

The fitness club said that by taking up the offer, members could avoid a fee increase of nine to 15 per cent because of the carbon price.

More than 200 members took up the offer and extended their contracts.

"This raised concerns for the ACCC as the representation enticed members to sign lengthy contract extensions on the basis of false claims about the impact of carbon pricing," ACCC chairman Rod Sims told a small-business conference in Melbourne on Wednesday.

"When approached, the fitness club could not provide any information that provided a reasonable basis for the claims made."

Mr Sims said the company's CEO had written to all affected members offering them the opportunity to withdraw from the contract extensions at no cost.

Assistant Treasurer David Bradbury told reporters in Sydney the case was a timely reminder to consumers and businesses.

"We are concerned to hear of any instances where false claims are being made in relation to the carbon price," he said.

"But we have strong confidence ... in the ACCC, in their capacities in pursuing these matters."

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Fitness club first to get carbon tax fine

CHICAGO, July 30, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --Anna Henson, an employee of Charter Fitness of Bloomington, saved the life of a club member after he went into cardiac arrest on July 8, 2012. The club member had been sitting on a bench in the club when he passed out and fell to the floor. Hensontook immediate action.She called 911, retrieved the club's defibrillator and began CPR keeping the member alive until paramedics arrived. The member later recovered at the hospital.

"We are trained at Charter Fitness to respond to emergencies. I am glad that I could help and that he is OK," said Anna Henson.

In a statement from Bloomington Fire Department, Captain Brad McCollum wrote, "The patient's survival from this event was due in large part to the quick action of your employee (Anna Henson)."

"We take the health and well-being of Charter Fitness' members very seriously and are very proud of Anna Henson's life-saving efforts," said Dan Collins, Director of Sales, Charter Fitness. Every club is equipped with a defibrillator, and each employee is trained on how to respond to a serious event such as a cardiac arrest.

A week after the incident, the member came into Charter Fitness of Bloomington with flowers, gifts, and many thanks for Henson.

Charter Fitness Franchising LLC was recently approved to franchise its Charter Fitness Health Club brand nationally. The Company recently converted 38 Cardinal Fitness locations in Chicago, downstate Illinois and Northwest Indiana to the Charter Fitness brand, increasing the number of clubs to over 40 in five states. It is now the largest health club business in the Chicago, IL metropolitan area, and expects to hire 200 employees over the coming months.

About Charter Fitness Franchising LLC

Based in Orland Park, IL, Charter Fitness Franchising LLC is a health club franchise with over 40 locations in five states. Charter Fitness health clubs offer members a clean, comfortable and convenient workout experience with best-in-class fitness equipment for as low as $10 per month. Charter Fitness strongly believes in community involvement and is a member of the International Health Racquet and Sportsclub Association (IHRSA). http://www.CharterFitness.com

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Charter Fitness Employee Saves Club Member from Cardiac Arrest

If you can't keep a consistent exercise routine, it is because exercise has not yet become a habit for you.

Habits powerfully impact our everyday lives, and they happen without thinking. Covering your mouth after a sneeze isn't an instinct you were born with but a healthy habit you developed over time. All habits, like exercise, need to be learned. With time and consistency, they can become like second nature.

Exercise causes discomfort it's just a fact. You must be able to look beyond the discomfort the muscle burn, the soreness, the time commitment in order to form a healthy habit that makes it worth it in the end.

Here's the thing: We want instant gratification. This mindset is what leads those desperate for weight loss to resort to pills and fad diets, because exercise "takes too long."

While significant weight loss does take time, there are instant benefits to exercise. Immediately after a workout, your stress levels are reduced, your metabolism is revved and your feel-good endorphins are pumping. Learn to love this instant high, and work to feel it after every workout. Fitness is a journey, but focusing on the immediate benefits will motivate you each and every day.

The first and most important step to forming a lifelong exercise habit is to recognize that fitness is absolutely crucial. Everyone needs to work out. Everyone needs to lessen his or her risk of disease; everyone deserves to feel great, have more energy, keep up with the kids and look awesome in a swimsuit. Fitness is essential to living a long healthy life, no matter your age, weight or current fitness level.

Next, you are going to have to tough it out. It's OK to not want to workout, but don't take that feeling as an excuse not to get moving.

Schedule your workouts like appointments, and stick to them. Pack your gym bag the night before so all you need to do is grab and go. Enlist a workout buddy to keep you accountable and make exercise more fun. If that's still not enough to get you to the gym, hire a personal trainer so you have made a monetary investment in your fitness.

How do you know you've made fitness a habit in your life? Once you do it without question or once you experience some form of longing when you don't follow through.

You won't always have to force yourself to go to the gym, and soon, you will start to feel discontent if you don't.

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On Fitness: Building a habit that sticks

SEATTLE, July 30, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --Opscode, the leader in cloud infrastructure automation, today announced that Zumba Fitness, the world's largest and most successful dance-fitness program, has deployed Opscode Hosted Chef to automate its entire cloud infrastructure, from development environments to change control processes in its Amazon EC2 and Rackspace clouds. With Hosted Chef, Zumba has eliminated manual infrastructure management, saving significant amounts of time and money, while ensuring resource consistency and reliability for its high-traffic website.

"In many ways, our website is the hub of our business, with everything you see in the fitness parties first going through the web, from class schedules to our online store," said Douglas Jarquin, Technical Operations Manager, Zumba Fitness. "Hosted Chef ensures our website operates effectively around the clock by eliminating the risk of human error and ensuring resource consistency all the way up the compute stack."

Since its inception in 2001, the Zumba program has grown its dance-fitness program to more than 12 million people taking weekly Zumba classes in over 110,000 locations across more than 125 countries. To support its vibrant user base, Zumba's website provides everything from class schedules and locations to an online store and video archive. Powering its website are primary Amazon EC2 servers and failover Rackspace servers, providing a reliable and easily scalable infrastructure for Zumba's online operations.

Customer Benefits:

Using Amazon EC2 as its primary infrastructure and Rackspace for failover, Zumba needed an automation engine capable of managing the complexity and constant change inherent in using large-scale IT infrastructure in the cloud. Leveraging Hosted Chef, Zumba has automated every component of both its Amazon and Rackspace clouds, ensuring its development, staging and production environments operate seamlessly in bringing new applications and services to Zumba's website.

"Zumba is a great example of how businesses of all kinds are leveraging the economies of the cloud to rapidly expand their business," said Adam Jacob, Chief Customer Officer, Opscode. "By pairing its cloud infrastructure with Hosted Chef and a DevOps mentality, Zumba now has the business agility and resource consistency to continue growing its customer base."

About OpscodeOpscode is the leader in cloud infrastructure automation. Opscode helps companies of all sizes develop fully automated server infrastructures that scale easily and predictably; can be quickly rebuilt in any environment; and save developers and systems engineers time and money. Opscode's team is comprised of web infrastructure experts responsible for building and operating some of the world's largest websites and cloud computing platforms. More information can be found at http://www.opscode.com.

Press Contact: Lucas Welch lucas@opscode.com 206-745-0000

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Zumba Fitness Gets Infrastructure in Shape with Opscode

SAN RAMON, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

According to a recent member poll by 24 Hour Fitness, 65 percent of club members prefer to see an athletes warm-up and training routines when watching behind-the-scenes footage around the Olympic Games.

In celebration of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, 24 Hour Fitness proudly partnered with Team USA and three U.S. Olympic and Paralympic athletes to offer exclusive signature workouts fortheir fans. This elite team of athletes, known as Team 24 Hour Fitness, includes:

Designed to inspire 24 Hour Fitness members and fans to reach for their fitness goals and give them a sneak peek at what it takes to train like some of our nations best athletes, the workouts are available at the 24 Hour Fitness page on YouTube and on The Blog at 24hourfitness.com/teamusa.

Additionally, 24 Hour Fitness invites members and guests to participate in exclusive Team USA Boot Camps with exercises designed to enhance agility, speed, power, strength and quickness. Developed in partnership with the USOC, the boot camp provides a full-body workout to give members and guests a sense of the skills U.S. Olympic athletes use in their training regimens. These classes are being offered through Aug. 3 at participating 24 Hour Fitness clubs nationwide, with schedules available at 24hourfitness.com. Guests are also welcome to participate by downloading a free pass at 24hourfitness.com/pass.

24 Hour Fitness is a proud official sponsor of the United States Olympic Committee and Official Fitness Center Sponsor of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Teams. To learn more about 24 Hour Fitness visit 24hourfitness.com.

About the Member Poll

The 24 Hour Fitness club member poll, measuring how members are motivated and inspired by the Olympic Games, was distributed by email and fielded from March 12 to 21, 2012, to a random sample of more than 400 club members across the country.

About 24 Hour Fitness

Headquartered in San Ramon, Calif., 24 Hour Fitness is a leading health club industry pioneer, serving nearly four million members in more than 400 clubs across the U.S. Since the first club opened in 1979, the company has been dedicated to helping members change their lives and reach their individual fitness goals. With convenient club locations, personal training services, innovative group exercise classes and a variety of strength, cardio and functional training equipment - 24 Hour Fitness offers fitness solutions for everyone.

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24 Hour Fitness Releases Exclusive Team USA Workouts

WORCESTER, Mass., July 26, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --With the Summer Olympic Games expected to boost participation in organized, amateur sports as well as fitness activities, The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc. (THG), is helping independent agents tackle this large and steadily growing market.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120404/NE82147LOGO)

Through Sports & Fitness Advantage, The Hanover's agent partners can offer amateur sports and fitness-related businesses and organizations a broad, customizable line of industry-specific products as well as specialized loss control and claims services to provide complete and specialized protection.

The distinctive offering is available to agents through The Hanover's local middle market underwriters and small niche underwriters. It is one of the many industry-specific products and services within the company's Middle Market Advantage portfolio, which covers dozens of niches and segments. The Hanover's expertise helps agents capitalize on opportunities in specialized industries, creating more value for its agencies and their customers.

"We are dedicated to continuing to grow our innovative suite of industry capabilities to meet the needs of our partners, who increasingly are becoming more specialized," said Jack Roche, president, business insurance. "With this in mind, we are pleased to offer a comprehensive program that meets the unique needs of the amateur sports and fitness industrywhich is one of the fastest growing segments of our economy."

The program is available for a broad range of organizations and businesses, including:

The total solution provides customized coverage for commercial property, general liability, auto, umbrella, employment practices liability, emergency event management, professional liability and green buildings. Other highlights of The Hanover's Sports & Fitness Advantage include:

Emergency Event Managementincludes broad coverage to respond to emergencies such as actual or attempted acts of violence. Coverage includes income lost as well as public relations expenses, and post-event expenses such as medical treatment and victim counseling

Property Broadening Endorsementincludes 55 separate coverages, such as denial of access to an insured's premises, eCommerce and money and securities loss. The blanket limit also automatically includes six important coverages: accounts receivable; consequential loss of stock; electronic data processing equipment; fine arts; personal effects; and outdoor property

General Liability Broadening Endorsementprovides additional coverage that many Sports & Fitness organizations need, such as for subcontracted employees such as instructors, massage therapists, trainers and financial sponsors

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The Hanover Helps Agent Partners Tackle The Amateur Sports And Fitness Industry

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