Sexes Go Their Separate Ways at Gym Time

For the most part, the Murrays are one of those inseparable couples.

They live together, work together and even walk a few miles in unison at sunrise.

But for an hour or so each day, there’s a “legal separation” of sorts within the Murrays’ relationship that they said adds to their happy marriage.

Their secret: separate gyms.

More couples are going their separate ways, leaving behind the co-ed gym scene and taking their bodies to exclusively male or female gyms.

For Bill Murray, a 67-year-old psychologist from Costa Mesa, his sanctuary is the University Athletic Club in Newport Beach. For his wife, Jacquelyn-Adams Murray, 44, it’s Leon Skeie’s Health Club for Women down the street.

Many athletic couples throughout Orange County have found that for a variety of reasons, joining separate health clubs is the best way to meet their personal fitness needs.

Cherie Schokman, a personal trainer at Exclusively Woman in Seal Beach, said several of the club’s 500 members have told her they were drawn to the single-sex gym after bad experiences at co-ed health spas.

“The younger women say they don’t want to have to dress up and wear makeup to work out,” Schokman said. “The older members say they feel self-conscious because men are there.”

A few women have even complained of degrees of sexual harassment within the co-ed clubs, relating stories of men whistling, making suggestive comments and even grabbing them while they were exercising, Schokman said.

Men have somewhat different reasons for choosing all-male fitness environments, according to Brad Jensen of the Newport Beach Athletic Club, which has more than 600 male members.

“They’re distracted by the co-ed gyms, with all the girls walking around,” Jensen said. “And their wives and girlfriends don’t like it either.”

Bill Murray said he feels more comfortable not sharing exercise space with women, and enjoys the camaraderie offered at his all-male gym.

“There’s no distraction. There’s no young chicks running around with hard bodies to distract from what I’m doing,” said Murray.

He used to go to co-ed gyms but said the University Athletic Club better suits his needs.

“This way, I do what I’m there to do instead of looking around and gaping all the time,” he said.

Roger Clark, an investment real estate broker and University Athletic Club member, said he and his wife of 25 years like the convenience and small crowds at single-sex gyms.

“At the co-ed clubs, the parking’s a hassle, and they don’t have everything for you like they have here,” he said.

Clark said his wife, Carol, enjoys working out at Leon Skeie’s Women’s Health Club, and even teaches a morning aerobics class there. “All of her buddies are there, and they have a lot in common,” Clark said.

Jeff Huff, fitness director at the University Athletic Club, which has 750 male members, said that although women are welcome to visit and have lunch at the facility, the small club isn’t designed to accommodate them. Huff said management has discussed the possibility of memberships to women, but no such program is currently offered.

Gyms that exclude members based on sex have faced opposition. The city of Los Angeles launched an anti-discrimination complaint against the Jonathan Club, which then opened its membership to women in 1987. The suit was dropped in 1989, and the club now welcomes women members in the second-floor bar and grill, formally called the Men’s Grill.

Representatives of the Girl’s Gym in Newport Beach said they have received several calls since the gym opened 11 years ago from men challenging their women-only membership policy. “We just tell them to come on down and join,” said manager Kathy DeStefano. “They never come.”

There shouldn’t be any controversy to it, according to gym owner Leon Skeie. “There will always be times when men want to work out without any women around, and times when women would rather work out without men,” Skeie said.