When Gary and Diane Heavin established a little club in the south Texas town of Harlingen in 1992, that was the beginning of Curves. Gary Heavin had lost his mother when he was just 13 years old. His mother passed away in her sleep, as Gary tells it, and Gary was the one who discovered that she was dead. The causes of death were not hard to discern: a long-running struggle with diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity. For many years she had been prescribed, and was taking, a long list of medications.

When he grew older, Gary decided that he wanted to do a job that helped people like his mother, so he began studying medicine. Gary noticed, however, that “People like my mother can’t be saved by drugs and medical treatment alone. What people like my mother really need are correct lifestyle habits. They need to exercise properly and watch what they eat.” From that moment, Gary began working toward the dream of creating a fitness club.
Pursuing his dream of “creating a fitness club that people like my mother could go to,” Gary tried various schemes, suffering many hardships, but nothing seemed to work. The people who go to fitness clubs were all men keen on physical training and young women who were already full of good health and vigor. Finally, after almost 20 years of trial and error, Gary opened a fitness club in Harlingen, Texas that was completely different from clubs that had gone before. “Curves, 30-minute Fitness for Women” was born.

This tiny fitness club won the support of large numbers of women. Curves locations quickly spread across the United States, then to countries around the world, and finally to Japan.
Gary tells it like this:
“Even now I suddenly think sometimes: What if, when my mother was still alive, somebody had taught her about the importance of exercise, taken her by the hand and exercised with her? She might still be here, smiling next to me today.”

That is how the history of Curves, a fitness club with about 2,000 locations in operation across Japan today, began.