Fitness clubs and gyms across the country will also be pushing through the pain barrier to get new customers through their doors.

"It's a cut-throat market, " said Ben Dunne, who owns the Westpoint, Northwood and Carlisle clubs in Dublin.

In the ten years since the former Dunnes Stores boss opened his first gym in Blanchardstown, the land grab has proceeded apace. Competitors such as Jackie Skelly Fitness, Crunch, and Total Fitness have all flexed their muscles. US franchises such as women-only chain Curves and Cuts, which offers a similar service to men, have rolled out across the country.

The fitness boom of the past decade means finding locations for new clubs is now a lengthy and expensive process, according to Dunne, who has ambitions to expand his chain further but is finding them frustrated. "Site acquisition has become the biggest difficulty, " he said.

The site for his first gym cost just 600,000. The site in Santry, north Dublin , where his third club opened last year, set the company back 3.5m. Building and fitout costs came to over 12m. With that level of investment, Dunne said the club needs to attract 7,000 visits a week to make money.

Attracting 7,000 regular weekly visitors is no mean feat. The rule of thumb in the industry, according to the Institute of Leisure and Amenity Management (Ilam), is that only one in five new gym members will be retained after their first year; the other four either cancel because they never use the facility or move on to another club.

Finding a location with an available site at a reasonable price with a large enough catchment area to support a health club is not easy. Dunne has begun to turn his attention to England. He has paid 4.4m for a site at New Malden in Surrey, where he hopes to start construction on a new club before the end of the year.

Rival chain Total Fitness, which also operates three clubs with a combined 25,000 members in the Dublin area, takes a similar approach to Dunne. A spokeswoman for the Irish-based company, which also has 21 clubs in the north of England , said it had "no immediate expansion plans" in Ireland.

Competition between the clubs already open is growing more intense. Dunne has pursued an aggressive pricing strategy, undercutting rival operators, but even he admits price competition has become much tougher. "I attempted to sell membership this year at 495. I did it for about three months and my sales went stone flat, " he said.

Killian Fisher, chief executive of Ilam, which represents over 300 gyms, health clubs and other leisure facilities in Ireland, said the signs are that the larger urban areas, particularly Dublin , Limerick and Cork, have now reached their quota. "In some areas we have reached, I think, saturation, " he said.

Fisher said it was telling that many of the hotel-based fitness clubs around the country were adding new facilities such as health spas and "wellness centres" to their premises. A gym on its own, it seems, is no longer enough of a draw in an increasingly crowded market.

"For a club to make money it does need a good population density. It isn't as easy a business as maybe it seems. There's lots of clubs really struggling out there, " said Fisher.

In that context, Fergal Lynch, the master franchisee for Cuts Fitness in Ireland, looks to be facing a task every bit as difficult as the new gym inductee vowing to beat the bulge. Lynch became acquainted with the chain while working in Boston. Cuts operates small, pareddown, no-frills gyms where time-poor members hit the weights and machines for 30-minute circuit training sessions three times a week and pay a not unreasonable 39 a month for the privilege.

"Most of the gyms are hitting at least 55. We haven't had to drop the price and we don't envisage that we will, " said Lynch.

"We have to compete on price and convenience because we can't compete on having the luxury of a swimming pool or a sauna."

When Cuts launched in Ireland two years ago Lynch's initial target was to have 35 outlets open by the end of 2006. That target proved optimistic. "Our projections were maybe a little off, " he said.

Cuts is just about to open its 15th gym and, according to Lynch, has sold another 10 franchises to owners who are currently looking for locations.

The slower-than-expected roll-out is mainly attributable to difficulty in finding suitable sites and delays in the planning process, he said. Cuts also ran in to teething troubles when trying to recruit members.

Despite the amount of competition in the market Lynch remains convinced that there are still opportunities.

"A lot of people think Jackie Skelly and Ben Dunne have it sewn up, " he said.

Lynch believes, however, that Cuts' strategy suits the Irish market. "There's definitely room for our model, " he said.

The chain is looks for retail units of between 2,000 and 2,500 square feet, which is less than a tenth of the size of the average Dunne or Total Fitness club. The set-up costs estimated by Cuts range from 70,000 to 100,000 for franchisees. Lynch said its outlets can break into profit once they hit the 500-member mark. That, he said, makes Cuts a better bet for "secondary locations" such as outlying suburbs of the larger cities and smaller regional towns. Of the chain's 15 units open to date, just four are in Dublin, with the rest spread around the country in locations such as Sligo, Wicklow, Cavan and Kerry.

Even outside the major population centres, competition is fierce, according to Lynch. He said Cuts had looked at towns such as Killarney and Cobh but decided against them on the grounds that they were already well catered for in the fitness department.

"Cobh has four or five gyms for a population of 12,500. They can't be making money, " he said.