Shake a Leg, Mrs. Plushbottom

By Anastasia Toufexis.

The scents of lemons, wisteria and pines perfume the California breezes. Or perhaps ocean spray invigorates the skin and spirit at the tip of Long Island. Or the clear desert air of Arizona reinforces the sense of being cleansed. Whatever the surroundings, the wake-up call likely comes at 6 a.m., and after a breakfast that could be served in a thimble and saucer, the hectic dawn-to- dusk pace rivals anything ever dreamed up by a drill sergeant. "By the end of the day," declares Diane Sepler, 46, a Miami interior designer who is a happy devotee of such regimens, "I'm like a noodle."

Welcome to the U.S. spa, 1980s style. Only a decade ago, the spa's hallmark was pampering and passivity. Fat farms, so they were called, catered to well- fed, well-spread Mrs. Plushbottoms. No longer. Most of today's spas are one- stop fitness shops, sweat-soaked emporiums where guests are run ragged during the day, fed near starvation rations at lunch and dinner, and then hectored on proper nutrition, stress reduction and healthy habits. Coddling facials, pedicures and massages serve as soothing, but temporary respites. "If you want to expose yourself to new things in health and fitness, diet and nutrition," observes Judy Kennedy, co-author of The Spa Book, "a spa week is the way to start."

, A virtuous vacation, refulgence not indulgence, is the new favorite of the fitness-minded. "Three or four years ago, I don't think I booked a spa except La Costa," notes Selma Weiner, owner of a travel agency in New York City. "Then suddenly it was Rancho La Puerta, Palm-Aire and Canyon Ranch." About 5 million people now sign up each year, says Edward Safdie, a spa developer. That is up phenomenally from 400,000 five years ago, and Safdie projects 30 million guests annually in five to ten years. To handle the growing popularity, spas are sprouting across the U.S. Only five years ago, there were no more than a dozen major establishments. Today there are perhaps 60, and new ones open seemingly every day. Next weekend Winthrop Hill in Watertown, Conn., registers its first clients. And doyennes are sprucing up. La Costa, near San Diego, is spending $70 million to remodel and add 240 rooms.

Middle-class baby boomers are overtaking the rich and elderly as the primary clients. Typically, 25 years ago, three-quarters of the customers were the wives of executives. Now half the women guests are themselves high up on the corporate ladder. They can afford the steep tariff, generally $1,500 to $3,000 a week, and consider it a necessity to get away when they are feeling frayed. Explains Michele Roskov, 27, a TV and film producer in Los Angeles: "It is an appointment with myself. The rest of the year is spent on appointments with everyone else." Another change: men now account for a quarter of all guests, and they fit right in, bringing a loftier tone in the opinion of some. Maia O'Farrill, a fitness instructor at a California spa, especially likes men's weeks "because they don't bitch and moan the way women do. Couples' week is fun too," she adds, "because the couples are very playful, teasing and pinching each other's love handles." Though they share a basic philosophy, spas vary considerably in style. At the ultraluxe end of the scale are Maine Chance in Phoenix, the haven of Elizabeth Arden loyalists, and the Greenhouse in Arlington, Texas, where ladies dress for dinner and are whisked off to Neiman-Marcus for an afternoon's shopping. At the other extreme is the bare-bones Wooden Door in Lake Geneva, Wis. Guests pay as little as $365 for five days and bring their own sheets and towels. "It's not primitive. It's rustic," declares Co-Founder Jill Adzia. "Primitive is sleeping in the woods without any indoor plumbing." California's spas are leaders in changing the image of fat farm to fitness | farm, and three in that state demonstrate the similarities and diversities: The Golden Door, which has been in business for 25 years, specializes in judicious cosseting of its 40 guests. Exquisite rock gardens, waterfalls and a pond with lazily swimming pink, black and red koi decorate the landscape. The Japanese-inspired setting in Escondido, 40 miles north of San Diego, may be serene, but the schedule is not. As gongs ring to signal new activities, visitors tug at lavender T shirts to get a look at pinned-on paper fans printed with their personal drill. Most get six hours of relentless exercise, beginning with a brisk 1 1/2- to 5 1/2-mile hike at dawn and climaxing in the afternoon with the women's aerobic circuit, WAC in the appropriate acronym. As Offenbach's cancan blares, exercisers WAC out on each of 22 pieces of alternating equipment, moving every 45 seconds from arm weights to a stationary bike to leg presses to the rowing machine. To help the medicine go down, there is often a spoonful of sweetener (not sugar, naturally). After the hike, instructors produce jugs of water, paper cups, sliced oranges and, finally, wet washcloths to wipe sticky fingers. As a refresher after bathhouse treatments, guests find cellophane-packaged blue toothbrushes--toothpaste already applied. Many find the week-long stay a real mind emptier. Returning home to Steamboat Springs, Colo., says Noel Hefty, 38, "I got off the plane, got in my car and couldn't remember how to drive."

Cal-a-Vie, in Vista also near San Diego, has been open only since January. Its clients, like those of many spas now, often arrive in good shape. "Many people are not coming to lose weight," notes Director Susan Power. "They're coming for maintenance and fine-tuning." And relief from stress. With that in mind, Cal-a-Vie is a pioneer in trying to add a European flavor to its U.S.-style exercise and dietary programs. Europe's spas, which date back to the Roman Empire, still favor mudbaths and water therapy, and Cal-a-Vie offers three Continental treatments that relax and help detoxify the body. The piece de resistance: thalassotherapy, from the Greek thalassa, or sea. Guests lie naked on a table while their bodies are painted with a deep-green seaweed paste. Then they are wrapped cocoon-like in a large plastic-coated heating blanket and roasted gently for 20 minutes. A shower, then a rewrapping, this time in aluminum foil for another 20 minutes, after which they shower again and stagger off to rest. The spa stresses elegance. Fresh flowers are ( everywhere, and gourmet, though low-cal, meals are served on china. Clients, however, dine informally in sweats. Like the Golden Door, Cal-a-Vie tries to send guests off on the right foot by providing a picnic with appropriate menu for the trip home.

The Ashram, 30 miles west of Los An-geles in Calabasas, offers no pampering frills at all. Bedrooms and bathrooms are shared by the ten guests, even celebrities like Barbra Streisand, Jane Fonda and Esther Williams (who ventured some hints on how to clean the pool). It's "purgatory," Owner Anne- Marie Bennstrom cheerfully confesses. Others would place it further below. "You can come to us anytime, even the middle of the night, if you feel like crying," Fitness Instructor Anniqa Foress says, to soothe newcomers. The twelve-year-old Ashram is notorious for hiking trails so steep and narrow that the only escape is to keep going up. After one laborious climb, Barbara Borkin, a vice president of Halston Fragrances in New York City, muttered, "War and Peace wasn't this long." The meals are justly infamous as well. "You eat here only what you throw away at home," chortles Bennstrom. Typical Ashram lunch: a small fruit plate, plus a dish of cottage cheese with six stranded raisins flanking a lone strawberry. A cowbell used to guard the refrigerator from desperate raiders; it was abandoned as excessive, but the food still is not. At dinner one night, Brad Rosenberg, 43, a Los Angeles real estate developer, set aside some hated squash. His tablemate leaned over and asked if she could have it. "What'll you trade?" he replied, greedily eyeing her plate.

In addition to following somewhat different approaches, spas are turning up in unlikely spots. A few cruise ships offer programs. The Golden Door runs a popular one aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2. And there are a growing number of so-called urban spas for time-pressed, cash-short city dwellers. Georgette Klinger's two-month-old Total Care Program in New York City features half-day and full-day schedules. At Le Pli, located by the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Mass., weekend guests stay at the hotel, get a fitness evaluation, nutrition advice, massages, facials and body wraps. Kathleen Keady, 30, a field sales engineer for a high-tech firm, plunked down $950 for one such spree and says it was worth it: "I got discipline from it."

The glitziest new wrinkle in the spa scene places them in the nation's gambling palaces. Two and a half years ago, the Desert Inn in Las Vegas ! invested $5 million in a state-of-the-art spa. Bally's in Atlantic City followed suit last year, spending $24 million on a teakwood, marble and coral extravaganza. Bally's chairman Richard Gillman sees it as a marketing ploy: "Gamblers can't gamble 24 hours a day; they need a place to relax and rejuvenate." And so do their nongambling wives, he says. "They need a place to go to swim, be massaged or do what they like rather than walk the boards, which they can't do at night anyway."

What the best spas do, says Psychologist and Spa Consultant Jan Kizziar, is emphasize "education to wellness rather than the quick fix." Agrees Golden Door Manager Rachel Caldwell: "The main part of our program is, 'What can I take home?' How can they pay $3,000 and lose just 4 lbs.? . . . 'How much a pound?' they're going to say." Spa owners are also worried that they are going to be asking, "What next?" "Higher and higher leg lifts?" asks the Golden Door's fitness director AnnHarriet Buck. "The answer to that question is to look inward and find the mind." The Door has started a new program, the Inner Door, that might be called brain massage. Such refinements may help boost return business, now an average 27% of the bookings in the spa industry and as high as 80% in some places.

Does it all work? Roy Blount, 44, had his doubts about spas. A writer, Blount went out on assignment two years ago to Tucson's Canyon Ranch intending to poke fun, but he quickly became a convert. "I always enjoyed eating fried foods, but I found I could get off on raw carrots," he says. "Now I'm not in as pure a state of nature, but I still have better eating habits, and I exercise." He offers the ultimate accolade: "I have been thinking about going back and actually paying for it." Blount got the message about homework in one try, but it took Kenneth Greenblatt much longer. Greenblatt, 40, producer of Broadway's La Cage aux Folles, was a regular spa patron for ten years, but not until a visit to Canyon Ranch last July did it click. Since his sojourn, he has worked faithfully with a personal trainer in New York City and has dropped from 234 lbs. to 165. Declares Greenblatt gratefully: "Spas are a great vacation and a great beginning."

With reporting by Georgia Harbison/Calabasas and Sue Raffety/Atlantic City