Can you remember a time when there weren’t 24 hour gyms in every strip mall? Or P90X infomercials every hour on the hour? If you can say yes, you’re at least as old as me. If you can’t, you should know there was once a time in our not so distant past that the “health and fitness” industry was not always the multi-billion dollar empire it has become. People have been “working out” since the beginning of time but the last 50 years or so have seen the most dramatic changes in our methods, some good, some bad, but most of them driven by money, sex appeal, and fads. Paradoxically, the fitness industry is the most lucrative it has ever been since fitness became a business, yet our country is the most unhealthy and injured it has ever been. Here’s a quick breakdown of where we’ve been and how it affects you and your fitness and exercise choices today.
Fitness for Combat
Go waaaay back, more than 5,000 years, and you will find that the first known group of people in recorded history to perform resistance training to enhance strength and power were Soldiers in ancient China, for the purpose of improving combat readiness (Dreschler). Soldiers of these ancient eras went by the mantra of, “The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war” – Sun Tzu, The Art of War
In the five thousand years that followed, there were many evolutions in military physical training regimens, especially among societies who warred and battled often. The Spartans were notorious for their military training of young boys, who left their families at age 7 and spent 13 years in training camps to become lethally trained citizen-Soldiers, feared by rival Armies and revered for their mental tenacity and physical prowess (East, 2013). Many other societies placed significant value on men being strengthened for battle, both physically and mentally. For example, the ancient Greeks were the first known reference of a group using “dumbbells” to get stronger and they often trained for and engaged in “games” that demonstrated fighting skills such as throwing javelins, footraces in full battle gear, and brutal cage matches (think UFC – but to death!).
As modern warfare advanced in the last few hundred years, many other cultures and countries also developed physical training programs for their militaries that included rucking, running, gymnastics, fighting, and combat skills, with a focus mainly on body weight training to promote endurance, strength, flexibility, and mental discipline and tenacity. In 1892, the US Army’s War Department published its first training manual and doctrine, entitled “Calisthenic Exercises,” in order to provide standardized training for Soldiers to enhance sport, exercise, and combat leadership through a combination of gymnastics and various body weight exercises and endurance training (East, 2013).
Fitness for Sport and Aesthetics
Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, the popularity of resistance training via free weights was becoming established as a sport for civilians, not just for militaries. 1896 was the first year that weightlifting officially became a sport at the Olympics. Its popularity gradually gained traction in small clusters around the world as lifters learned largely by trial and error and teaching each other. Then around the 1930’s, companies began mass producing barbells and dumbbells and the first magazine devoted to strength training, entitled, “Strength and Health” or simply, “S & H,” was launched, bringing tips and advice from the cloistered confines of small tight knit powerlifting circles to the outside world for the first time (Dreschler).
From the 1930’s through the 70’s, civilian weightlifting was still not for the masses, but reserved for athletes of certain sports such as American football and a fringe segment of hardcore lifters with the focus on producing big bodies and pushing physical limits of strength, brute power, and aesthetics. Some exceptions existed, such as in 1936 Oakland, CA, where you could have joined the first “modern health club,” which was the brainchild of self-proclaimed fitness nut and ahead-of-his-time outlier, Jack LaLanne, but there were not really many business established to “sell fitness” just yet (www.jacklalanne.com). Many weightlifters were not yet thinking about the health benefits like our friend Mr. LaLanne, but aspired to compete in competitions such as Mr. Olympia, which judged participants on the basis of muscle mass, symmetry, and definition. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s acting career really took off after he famously won several Mr. Olympia titles in the 1970’s and he cemented his status as the king of bodybuilding with this cult classic 1977 documentary, Pumping Iron.
As the sport of bodybuilding progressed, new methods were constantly being tried to push the limits of size, strength, and aesthetics. Enter Arthur Jones circa late 60’s / early 70s. He was the first to mass produce machines developed especially for lifting weights through his Nautilus brand and is considered to be the driving force behind the commercial gym revolution (www.nautilusinc.com).
Fitness for Profit
The mass proliferation of resistance training machines not only made Arthur Jones insanely rich, but also brought a massive shift in the fitness business. Corporations formed to “sell fitness.” Franchises, like wild strawberries, popped up far and wide across this great country. Men and women alike were “getting gym memberships” and starting to “go workout” like never before. Dance-based aerobics and step classes gained popularity, giving the world the hotness of leotards, leg warmers, and Richard Simmons, but also paved the way for other types of group fitness classes. This massive influx of people coming to gyms to lift weights and attend classes spurred an entirely new career field for personal trainers and group fitness instructors. Becoming a personal trainer became an actual career, requiring education and certifications, as opposed to just paying the local meathead at the gym to show you what to do. Franchise clubs started using aggressive marketing methods and teaching their trainers and membership reps selling skills and began turning the selling of fitness into big business. Stores like GNC started marketing health supplements and another new industry exploded, spawning the mass market creation of protein powders, creatine supplements, and every possible version of weight loss supplements imaginable.
Fitness for Function and Performance
In the early 2000’s, the fitness industry experienced another major shift, away from machines and the drudgery of endless hours imprisoned on cardio row, back towards more functional methods of such as bodyweight training, outdoor bootcamps, running, yoga, adventure races, mixed martial arts, and CrossFit. Not only were these new options more effective at training our bodies, they were great for our brains too. The new message is that working out can be fun. It can be competitive. You can challenge yourself and become more resilient and tenacious, skills you can hone in the fitness arena that can help you win at life as well. Looking back, you have to admit there is a great irony in the fact that the workouts that are gaining the most in popularity today more closely resemble those that ancient militaries used than the machine based programs that dominated the last 40 years!
The number 1 thing that I LOVE about the shift to functional fitness is that it heavily emphasizes chosing fitness programming for performance purposes, not just for appearances. This is the crucial difference because it dovetails so wonderfully away from the fitness agenda of the last 40 years, which was to lift heavy, lift hard, pump up your pecs & quads & do your crunches to get your body looking tight for the beach, and do your cardio on a machine to burn your body fat. Most people, especially men (sorry guys) NEVER stretched. The prevailing attitude was simply that working out was to make the body look a certain way and nobody had time to stretch because they wanted to spend that time getting more reps in to pump up their pecs.
Functional fitness differs because in this model, exercises and stretches are selected to improve your body’s posture, mobility, joint stability, or prevent injuries for the activities you enjoy doing, from playing sports to picking up your babies. In other words, you should be worried less about what your ab muscles look like and more about if they can properly do their jobs – for example, protecting your back when you swing that tennis racquet or pick up your babies. One of the greatest quotes to capture this comes from Gray Cook in his classic textbook, Movement, “first move well, then move often.” It means stripping your form down to the underlying movement patterns. It means making mobility and stability the base of your programming and only once you’ve learned how to move well, then do you begin to add strength and power.
Mobility > Stability > Strength > Power
Hundreds of new training systems and products have hit the market with functional fitness being the operative word used (some would say overused) as the new umbrella catch-all for every exercise being done off machines. I’ll explain more on what makes a movement functional or not in the next post (a lot of them are not actually) but your take-away from this article is simply that functional fitness is more than a trend and at FPM, I plan to provide you with the knowledge you need to see through the “trendpieces” being posted in every fitness magazine and website and understand if a movement is functional or not. Functional fitness, when dosed properly, is beneficial to every BODY, every athlete, stay-at-home mom, weekend warrior adventure racer, and especially those that sit on their bums behind a desk all day for a living.
Another wonderful thing about functional fitness is that it’s incredibly empowering for consumers. You don’t have to join CrossFit to get functional fitness training. CrossFit didn’t invent the burpee but it has definitely figured out how to sell it! Other than for the camraderie and socially rewarding aspects of gyms and CrossFit boxes, you actually don’t really need them or their rows of expensive equipment at all to get fit. Functional fitness is empowering because at bare minimum, with a cohesive plan, you can produce totally effective workouts for life, just like the Soldiers of ancient armies did with nothing but their own bodies and a few pieces of crude equipment.
Fitness Post-Modern
In philosophy, post-modernism is defined as a “late 20th-century movement characterized by broad skepticism, subjectivism, or relativism; a general suspicion of reason; and an acute sensitivity to the role of ideology in asserting and maintaining political and economic power” (Encyclopaedia Britannica). When it comes to fitness, I think the time has come for us to make sure we, as fitness consumers, are making better choices for our health and fitness. You can shape the evolution of the business models by chosing how and where you spend your fitness and nutrition dollars. You can break old mindsets of how you were taught to lift back in high school or college or what your learned from your bros in the 90s.
Today, we are writing the next chapter in the history of modern fitness, and witnessing firsthand the next big shift in our fitness history, which is just as big, if not bigger than when Jones was building Nautilus machines for every city in America. It’s important to know the history of how fitness as a business evolved because in the cockpit of this starship enterprise, YOU are the commander of your own fitness. The shift is happening not only in the style of the workouts themselves, but in your options as a consumer too. The gyms want you to believe that you need them in order to get fit but it’s simply not true. Why? Because fitness can’t be bought. You can pay $50 a month in gym fees, $300 for P90X workout-at-home DVDs, $200 a month for a CrossFit membership, and unlimited amounts of cash on personal trainers, supplements, and the latest gadgets. But fitness is not something you can buy, it’s something you have to DO. It’s the lifestyle you have to CREATE and MAINTAIN that along with exercise also includes nutrition, stress-management, sleep, and hydration. Anybody can get fit. It just takes knowledge and dedication.
The most effective piece of equipment you need in this post-modern world is your mind. Open it to learning new ways of programming your workouts and emphasizing a new mindset of balancing your body to prevent injuries. Be skeptical of trends, fads, and ANY products that offer “miracles” or “fast” results. Pay attention to what you are putting in your body, don’t just trust the promises of food and supplement corporations. Don’t allow gyms, CrossFit boxes, celebrity trainers, or infomercials to allow you to believe they are your only path to fitness and health. Your fitness circle of influence is largely controlled and influenced by the type of information you seek from friends or the books/mags/websites you read. Make it a point to seek out knowledge that is provided by professionals who go the extra mile to provide scientifically proven methods. Don’t just sweat more to weigh less. Sweat smarter and use your workouts more purposefully. Improve your body so it can perform better and bring you more joy, not just look better!
References:
Cook, G et al. (2010). Movement. Aptos, CA: On Target Publications
Definition of Post-Modernism. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online. Accessed Dec 2014. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1077292/postmodernism
Dreschler, A. Accessed Nov 2014. http://www.teamusa.org/USA-Weightlifting/Weightlifting101/History-of-Weightlifting
East, W.B. (2013) “A historical review and analysis of Army physical readiness training and assessment. http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/aprt_whitfieldeast.pdf
Jack LaLanne. Accessed Nov 2014. http://www.jacklalanne.com/jacks-adventures/
Nautilus Company Website. http://www.nautilusinc.com/brands#nautilus-panel
