New trend sports are emerging which satisfy people’s hunger for fun, experience, adventure and enjoyment, but also address health concerns. A prime example of this development is fitness sports. All human addictions and cravings are concentrated in it: youth mania, personality development, self-expression, but also the striving to maintain and promote health. Findings from studies on motives in fitness sports can help, on the one hand, to take into account the special wishes of athletes in the design of offers and, on the other hand, to implement the marketing more effectively due to the more specific target group orientation. The present study provides an orientation framework for the field of fitness sports with regard to the exercise motivation of long-term participants. Members of a health-oriented fitness club in a large city were surveyed. The questionnaire consisted of 15 items that can be grouped into seven motivational domains. The questionnaires were available at the fitness club and could either be filled out directly on site or taken away and filled out at home. A total of 350 questionnaires were laid out, of which 278 were returned completed. The response rate was 79.4 %. The respondents were members who trained exclusively on equipment. The gender distribution is approximately equal with a slight surplus (just under 53%) of male respondents. The average age of respondents is 56.6 years with a spread around the mean of 13.1 years. Male respondents are, on average, slightly more than two years older than female respondents and the age distribution is slightly more homogeneous among males than females. Among respondents with membership of more than one year, the average duration of membership is 11.6 years (dispersion: 7.5 years). The results show demonstrable gender differences in motive mentions in only three of the 17 significance tests. In general, all gender differences are in the range of weak to very weak effect sizes, even for the highly significant differences. From a purely descriptive point of view, there are still further recognizable gender differences in the motive mentions. What is striking here is that, in general, women mention almost all motives more frequently and that the gender difference is mostly in a direction that is not expected? In detail, the following reliable gender differences can be found, which are not to be regarded as purely random effects of this specific sampling: a) Women name the motive "Continuous guidance and training control" more frequently than men (51.9% to 25.2%), b) Women name the motive "Bodybuilding" more frequently than men (52.7% to 35.4%) and c) Women name the motive "Special body shaping" more frequently than men (26.0% to 16.3%). Continuous support is obviously more important for women than for men. Women feel safer during training with professional advice, as they want to avoid mistakes when exercising. They attach importance to the conscientious and correct execution of the exercises, because they fear possible consequences of a wrongly executed training. Men also often have a longer sports biography than women, which is why they are more self-confident and have less fear of contact with the equipment. The results for women reflect society's expectations of today's women, who are expected to be slim, toned and fit. Being fit is in and those who are fit are also socially recognized. Fit, however, can hardly be separated from beautiful. Fitness is becoming a prerequisite for beauty. The results confirm that women place a high value on the status symbol of the body in order to find social acceptance.