The article is a report on the field research carried out in a local gym in a large city and in a commercial fitness club. A detailed description of these places, the people who frequent them and the relationships between them was used in the analysis of two types of social dependence — communal ties and ties of association. The concepts of community and society are deeply rooted in sociological tradition.That description can also be treated as a source of knowledge of the trends in the transformation of cultural patterns appearing in the popular culture of contemporary Polish society.