When a March 5 fire ravaged Total Fitness Athletic Center, the health club's 3,100 members were left out in the cold with no place to do their regular fitness routines.
And many members according to Lawrence media reports sounded genuinely crestfallen at the turn of events.
Some said they were accustomed to working out as many as five or six times per week, and the club at 925 Iowa was part of their everyday lives.
Where would they go now to pump iron, sweat on the StairMaster and trot on the treadmill?
To those who aren't devoted exercisers, it's hard to understand how anyone could be blue about having a good excuse like a fire at your health club to miss a workout.
Judging by statistics on how many of us exercise regularly, most Americans would probably greet the news of a fitness center closing as another reason to sink back on the couch and pop open a pint of Ben & Jerry's.
So what's up with people feeling bad when they can't exercise? Could they actually have some kind of fitness addiction?
It's a social thing
Dennis Jacobsen doesn't think so.
"Any behavior like exercise or eating can get to be a compulsive deal," says Jacobsen, an associate professor in Kansas University's department of health, sport and exercise sciences.
"But the percentage of people who do that (with exercise) is probably less than 1 percent. The problem we have is getting people to exercise enough.
"Even using the more liberal classifications of exercise, only about 20 percent of the American public exercises at a level that would benefit them."
It's no mystery to Jacobsen that Total Fitness members are having withdrawal symptoms.
"As much as anything, it's the psycho-social aspect they're going to miss. It's a social thing; it's not much different than going to classes. They like the environment," he says. "A lot of people go just to be seen at the health club."
Even if it is possible to become "addicted" to exercise, some experts say that may not be such a bad thing.
"That's a positive addiction, because exercise is good for you. People miss the exercise; they don't feel as good without it as they do with it," says Wayne Osness, an exercise physiologist who has been chairman of health, sport and exercise sciences at KU for 25 years.
"I would assume there are very, very few people who exercise too much. I've known 70-year-old marathon runners, and for them, it's not too much. There's very little evidence that too much exercise is bad for you," says Osness, who also has been a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine for almost 40 years.
Pushing the limits
But Rita Stuckey, a licensed Lawrence psychologist, says there are people who are addicted to exercise.
"One type of people are those who are addicted to the biochemistry of exercise, to the endorphins or adrenaline (that are released). It's like any other addiction to drugs, but these just happen to be inside your skin," she says.
Compulsive exercise could also be an extension of an eating disorder, such as anorexia nervosa, according to Stuckey.
People with this disorder are often driven to burn off as many calories as possible through exercise.
"Those are the folks who are most likely going to feel they are horrible and fat if they miss a workout. Those kinds of folks really need to seek professional help," she says.
It's possible for people to become addicted or compulsive about their exercise routines, Stuckey says.
"You can overdo anything. If it starts to be at a place where you're really in pain and you're exercising anyway, that's getting pretty intense."
But in most cases, getting into the habit of regular exercise and missing it when you don't work out is positive.
"With the exception of the eating disorder concern, this is the probably one of the best things to be addicted to," Stuckey says.
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