Gym

(Photo by Johanna Kaiser for boston.com) Reebok CrossFit owners Josh Plosker and Michael Cahill hold a check for $150,000 from Boston Local Development Corp. with Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Reebok Chief Marketing Officer Matt O'Toole. By Johanna Kaiser, Town Correspondent A new gym is opening in the Back Bay complete with no weight machines, no treadmills, and no individualize televisions, and a goal of offering full body workouts in a group setting.

I joined a gym recently and so far I've lost $19.99 a month for the next three years.   Daniella Capolino / Belmont comedian, who will appear at Kowloon Komedy in Saugus Friday and Saturday

I joined a gym recently and so far I've lost $19.99 a month for the next three years.   Daniella Capolino / Belmont comedian, who will appear at Kowloon Komedy in Saugus Friday and Saturday

The idea first came to Mayor Thomas M. Menino during Thanksgiving, while he was giving out turkeys to families in need. A woman came in with her son, a youngster seriously overweight. "What chance does this kid have?" Menino remembers thinking. "He is only 12 years old and is already so overweight. " From that encounter, Menino's million-pound challenge was born. The citywide campaign, dubbed Boston Moves for Health, is scheduled to be launched Monday by the Boston Public Health Commission and will encourage Bostonians to shed a collective 1 million pounds over the next year.

When it comes to working out, Massachusetts comes out on top for gym memberships. One out of four state residents belonged to a health club last year - more than in any other state. Whether that correlates to actually being the most physically fit in the nation is unknown. Gym membership nationwide in 2010 reached an all-time high of 50.2 million members, according to the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association, which surveyed nearly 40,000 individuals. Gym members used their health club an average of 98 days in 2010.

With all the wet weather we've been having, many outdoor fitness buffs may be heading back to their gyms for exercise - just in time for cold and flu season. Viruses and bacteria can lurk for hours on the handles of crosstrainers and weight machines. "You can pick up an infection at the gym, just like you can get infected on the T," said Bill Hanage, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health. Norovirus - which Hanage calls "winter vomiting disease" - can also make its rounds at fitness facilities during winter months.

Police and fire officials say what appears to be a homemade bomb has exploded in the Cheshire High School gym, but there are no injuries or damage. Police Lt. Chris Cote tells The Hartford Courant (http://cour.at/vROf3A) Friday night that emergency responders who went to the gym found a plastic bottle filled with chemicals. The bottle was tossed into the gym near where the girls' volleyball team was practicing just after 5:30 p.m. Police said two coaches were taken to a hospital after complaining of skin irritation.

Dance Collective's new program, "Launch," is so mixed media that it includes a tennis ball machine, acknowledgement that the company is performing this weekend in a Boston University gym. Modern dance has been relegated to the gym or the church basement since its birth, and eventually got around to turning unorthodox settings into a plus, which is what happened with "Not Never Anywhere," by Olivier Besson and Liz Roncka, billed as "improvisational collaborators....

Police say an early-morning brawl in an upstate New York gym led to a man dying of cardiac arrest after he was hit with at least one stun gun jolt. They say officers went to the Gold's Gym in the Albany suburb of Colonie just after 6 a.m. Monday because of reports the man was causing a disturbance, fighting with another person and damaging equipment. The first officer to arrive reported the man threw things at him and it took the help of two other officers and gym patrons to subdue him. Police say more than one officer used stun guns during the struggle, but...

By Patrick Rosso, Town Correspondent In November 2009 ,Jon Feinman founded InnerCity Weightlifting to give troubled youths an outlet. After working out of other gyms, Feinman and his partners decide to open their own location in South Boston. Some neighbors of the proposed Southie gym fear it could become a haven for gang members, but and Feinman said today that he wants to work with the community to allay those concerns. In an interview, Feinman spoke of his passion for athletics and working with young people.

Celtics players Rajon Rondo and Brandon Bass were at the Bates Elementary School in Salem as part of Covidien's "Fit to Win" program. Rondo (above) was fit to have fun with the kids, too, goofing off and doing cartwheels in the gym.

The ending was not what Alijiah Robinson and his teammates on the Holbrook High School boys' basketball team had in mind. After completing the season 16-2, including a 14-0 run through the Mayflower League, and earning the top seed in the Division 4 South sectional, the Bulldogs were ousted by Millis, 49-42, in the first round of the tournament on Wednesday. "This season was great," said Robinson, a 6-foot-6 sophomore, of his first year with the Bulldogs. "We came out here and won a league title.

By Johanna Kaiser, Town Correspondent Opponents of the Huntington Ave. YMCA 's plans to demolish and rebuild its gym and pool as part of a project to erect a Northeastern University dormitory expressed ongoing distrust and frustration with the proposal at a contentious public meeting Wednesday. "This will only hurt members rather than help them," Andre Jones, a Y member, said at a meeting to discuss the demolition of the facility's pool and squash courts and a portion of Bates Hall.

Inside the no-frills Brockton gym he ran with his brother for 42 years, boxing trainer Goody Petronelli turned a teenage high school dropout into the middleweight champion who became known as Marvelous Marvin Hagler. When Hagler showed up at the beginning of the 1970s, a refugee of riot-torn Newark, he had holes in his sneakers and nothing in his pockets. "I believe Goody Petronelli was the best trainer in the world," said Hagler, who thought of the Petronelli brothers, Goody and Pat, as the foundation of his career for 20...

The last day to register to vote in the March 6 presidential primary is Feb. 15, when the town clerk's office will be open until 8 p.m. The last day to submit an absentee ballot is March 5, from 8 a.m. to noon, at the clerk's office. Lakeville voters will cast their ballots at the Austin School gym, 112 Howland Road, from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. There are nearly 7,000 registered voters in Lakeville, according to the 2010 town report. - Paul Kandarian

(Photo by Johanna Kaiser for boston.com) Reebok CrossFit owners Josh Plosker and Michael Cahill hold a check for $150,000 from Boston Local Development Corp. with Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Reebok Chief Marketing Officer Matt O'Toole. By Johanna Kaiser, Town Correspondent A new gym is opening in the Back Bay complete with no weight machines, no treadmills, and no individualize televisions, and a goal of offering full body workouts in a group setting.

The idea first came to Mayor Thomas M. Menino during Thanksgiving, while he was giving out turkeys to families in need. A woman came in with her son, a youngster seriously overweight. "What chance does this kid have?" Menino remembers thinking. "He is only 12 years old and is already so overweight. " From that encounter, Menino's million-pound challenge was born. The citywide campaign, dubbed Boston Moves for Health, is scheduled to be launched Monday by the Boston Public Health Commission and will encourage Bostonians to shed a collective 1 million pounds over the next year.

Celtics players Rajon Rondo and Brandon Bass were at the Bates Elementary School in Salem as part of Covidien's "Fit to Win" program. Rondo (above) was fit to have fun with the kids, too, goofing off and doing cartwheels in the gym.

They hog the treadmills. They clog all the classes. They wander around with journals, writing down every rep. And, in a few weeks, many of them will be back on the couch. It is January, the month when the New Year's resolution throng descends on the gym. For the $20 billion health club industry, it is an annual cash cow as gyms dangle big deals to lure the "I've got to lose weight and get in shape" crowd into long-term contracts. But for gym regulars, it is the month of dread, when eyes are rolled and routines adjusted to avoid the long lines formed by the resolution rush.

As school districts slash gym time in favor of more academics, researchers have been conducting studies to see whether this has had opposite the intended effect: causing grades to drop rather than rise. A review of the latest research published today in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine found that the amount of physical activity kids get correlates with their academic performance but also concluded that better studies are needed to measure the actual impact of exercise on academic performance.