On a Budget? Don’t Sweat It : The Life Fitness Center at Irvine Valley College is the newest of affordable, college campus facilities open to the public.

If you doubt that popular culture has been visited by the Invasion of the Body-Shapers, take a look at the number of ads for fitness centers, health clubs and gyms.

The ads, as the clubs themselves, are high profile and fairly seductive: Lots of rippling muscles and aerobicized hard-bodies frame the copy, which extols the latest in workout machines and urges you to get off the couch so that you, too, can look like this.

But the clubs with the familiar names are not the only game in town. In Orange County, there are a series of no-frills health facilities that offer nearly everything for the fitness-conscious that the name clubs do, and likely for less money.

These cut-rate pump-you-up palaces are neatly camouflaged by the county community colleges that surround them, but a growing number of people--and not just students--are taking advantage of them.

The newest of these collegiate health facilities is the Life Fitness Center at Irvine Valley College, which opened late last month. It is so new, in fact--and largely undiscovered--that it doesn’t even smell like sweat yet.

But the center is impressively complete. The weight machines in the expansive circuit are manufactured by both the familiar Universal and the newer Cybex companies, and there are full rows of step-trainers and stationary cycles for aerobic work.

Several of the machines are also equipped for use by persons with physical disabilities, and special sessions for the disabled are offered.

In fact, said Sue Long, chair of the IVC school of health sciences, physical education and athletics, everyone who uses the facility is placed on a mandatory initial workout schedule that alternates 30 seconds of work on weights and 30 seconds of aerobic exercise, the better to keep the heart rate elevated consistently.

This initial workout, called an “aerobic super circuit,” takes about 18 minutes, Long said, after which the exerciser can choose a more specialized workout on weights or aerobic equipment.

There is also a section of the 3,600-square-foot facility given over to free weights, but Long said she intends to eventually move them to a separate room, where serious weightlifters and bodybuilders can use them, and expand the main workout room.

It’s not possible, however, to simply arrive on the first day of your program and go straight to work.

The college requires that everyone who signs up for workouts go through an initial health screening, which includes tests for body fat composition (the caliper test), upper and lower body strength, flexibility, endurance and risk appraisal.

All this is included in the cost of the class, which the program technically is. Anyone age 16 and over can enroll in the class, either for credit through the college or as part of the college’s Community Education program.

Enrollment does not necessarily have to coincide with the beginning of a semester, said college spokesman George McCrory; participants can join the program at any time.

Whether the class is taken for credit or not, the price is about the same: about $45 for the semester. This includes the class fee and parking.

Still, it’s possible to pay for extras, several of which are as sophisticated as anything at a commercial health club.

For example, there is a special fitness assessment class, offered for $40, that includes such tests as a resting electrocardiogram, a sub-maximal stress electrocardiogram, an underwater weighing test to determine percentage of body fat, a cholesterol screening, plus all the tests included in the standard base-line screening for the weight and aerobics classes.

Which, said Long, is a pretty good deal, because “in the outside world, the underwater weighing test alone would probably cost you about $50.”

Center hours are: Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 6:30 to 11:30 a.m. and 4 to 7 p.m.; Tuesday and Thursday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 5 to 8 p.m.; Saturday from 9 a.m. to noon. However, Long said, when the program becomes better known and classes expand, so will the hours.

And, she said, fitness counselors with either master’s degrees or certifications from the American College of Sports Medicine staff the center at all hours and are available for individual fitness counseling.

The people who already have signed up have varied widely, Long said, from intercollegiate athletes to reformed couch potatoes, from age 16 to one women in her 70s.

No juice bar, no valet parking, no restaurant.

But it’s easy on the wallet, and if you sign up now you can tell your grandchildren that you actually worked out in a gym that didn’t smell like a gym.