The cold, clammy post-Christmas horrors of Stephen's Day may be behind us, but the joy/pain sine wave has a few days still to go before flatlining with annual indulgences extending all the way up until New Year's Day when the first chilling light of 2008 will bring with it resolutions as firm as the tight fist pounding inside your head.

Remember - your expanding waistline will remind you if you can't - that your exercise regime was reduced to the occasional push-up off the couch in search of a bottle opener? 2008 will be different, you say: it's the year this ugly duckling will become a swan, or at least an ugly duckling with less cuddly bits around the middle.

Which is where the gym comes in, or would do if you could find one. It turns out the days of the simple, no-pain-no-gain gym are over: they're not gyms any more, they're "fitness experiences".

Gone are the sweaty rooms filled with grunting weight-trainers and tinny techno music, replaced by holistic health hubs quicker than you can raise your pulse rate on a cross-trainer.

Not only do most of today's fitness centres boast the usual prerequisites of sauna and jacuzzi, but sun beds and nail bars have somehow become essentials in the "fitness experience". In this future world of 2008, your gym experience as much about primping up as it is about working out.

As New Year dawns, the battle commences for your monthly membership fee, with health clubs enticing new members with add-ons unheard of in the early days when four treadmills and a couple of weight machines were enough to encourage a handsome annuity.

Today, Total Fitness in Castleknock boasts free internet access and PlayStations, while its Sandyford branch has a laser hair removal clinic on site. While the likes of Westpoint in Blanchardstown may be making do with a hair salon and beauty treatment centre, the Locker Room in Cork has a massage room while the Crunch Fitness Group even boasts a philosophy: "Achieving a balanced life and a healthy, fit body has a distinct significance to each individual."

Elsewhere, its website proclaims that: "A workout is a triumph over laziness and procrastination. The mark of an organised, goal orientated person who hastaken charge of his or her own destiny."

It is generally accepted that gymscome into their own at this time of year. According to Kieran McCormack of Spirit One Fitness and Leisure in Galway's Radisson Hotel, every new year brings a rush of new members. "January and February would be busy times because everyone's feeling guilty after the Christmas."

Ed Whelan, membership consultant at Jackie Skelly Fitness Centre's Park West branch, says their branch is expecting some 220 new members next month, while 1Escape in Dublin's Smithfield also expects a surge in membership.

"I suppose it wouldn't be unusual to get 100 to 150 people joining in January," says Ciara Lefroy, sales and marketing manager for the gym. She says these are unlikely to drop off over the year, claiming that the days of the short-lived gym rush may be behind us. "Our retention rate is 80 per cent."

So, firm in the knowledge that once 2008 hits, your gym-joining resolution is statistically quite likely to be the one that holds for the year, it's worth enjoying your last few days of indulgence and idleness before the calendar flips. With the Year of the Fitness Experience just around the corner, crack open your last tin of biccies and pop yourself a cork or two. After all, you've only five days as an ugly duckling to go.