Best health club

No need to brace yourself for sleazy pick-ups when you work out at Healthworks, this category's winner for the third year running. That notorious problem is of little concern at this all-women's health club, where sweating is done in a plush, supportive environment. Scale that rock-climbing wall and work those quads in style in the club's "cardio theater." Owner Mark Harrington has fought hard to keep the club strictly "for her," even after being sued by a "him" who wanted in. (Who could blame him?) Harrington won, and Boston's women can still claim this club as their own enclave.

This year's runner-up is the ever-popular, of-the-people YMCA, with numerous citations for its central location on Huntington Avenue and its branches in Brighton and Central Square.

Those without budgetary or gender restrictions registered their appreciation for Boston Sports Club, which recently opened its sixth location, at the Landmark Center in the Fenway. BSC may have been helped by its class catalogue, which rivals many universities' in its complexity: it includes such entries as Butt & Gut ("an intense sculpting of the abdominals and lower body"), Capoeira ("kicks, stylized movements, and elegant dance moves done to Afro-Brazilian music"), and Urban Athlete ("functional exercises to prepare you for the rigors of urban life").

Healthworks Fitness Center, 920 Comm Ave, Boston, (617) 731-3030; YMCA, 316 Huntington Avenue, Boston, (617) 536-7800; Boston Sports Club, (617) 266-7400.