How I Went Out of My Gym to Make My Body Beautiful, and How I Ambed to My Muscle: A Journey Through the Looking Glass
I still feel like I’m hanging from the pull-up bars in elementary school gym class, struggling to get up. While other kids seemed naturally gifted with physical power, I came to believe my arms were best used for answering a question in class.
And yet, I have tasted physical strength since then. I took a weight lifting course in college and loved how the boost in muscle made me feel. Before my wedding, I got hooked on barre workouts, and discovered the satisfaction of being able to carry groceries for more than two minutes without resting.
When I was a teenager in the mid-90s, I didn’t think much about exercising to become strong. I ran a season of track and cross-country my freshman year of high school, but I was at the back of the pack. Behind the pack. I didn’t aspire to become athletic. I wanted to make my post-puberty body beautiful and mold it to be like my childhood one. Which meant a smaller one. And the now fully hatched fitness industrial complex offered me a cornucopia of resources promising to help me achieve this goal.
But working out to be strong? That was a fringe benefit. The pursuit of visible muscle — once a bold feminist action — had become, for many women, a secondary goal. It will be years before that will change for many American women.
In middle school, my fitness bible was “Beauty and Fitness With ‘Saved by the Bell,’” a slim 1992 manual featuring inspiration from stars Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, Elizabeth Berkley and Lark Voorhies. Working out can be enjoyable. the book promises. “Elizabeth, Lark and Tiffani all work out regularly, and they love it.” I devoured issues of Seventeen and YM for tips on how to improve each region of my body, awkwardly attempting to follow along with the photo guides of sweatless, perfectly made-up teen girls exercising on neon-hued mats.
The Rise and Fall of the Fitness Industry: Post-Pandemic Results from the Planet Fitness Group, London, March 7-9, 2021
Planning to hit the gym during rush hour? You will not find an open elliptical machine if you use a bench press, squat rack or 30-pound dumbbell.
Post-pandemic, the surge in the popularity of weight training has helped the gym industry recover. The number of gym memberships in the United States increased 3.6% in 2021 from pre-pandemic levels, according to the latest data from IHRSA, a trade association for the fitness industry.
ClassPass, a subscription-based fitness app, shows that strength training has been the most popular class over the past two years. In 2022, there was a 94% increase in strength training classes from the year prior.
“There’s [fewer] minutes spent on cardio [compared] to pre-Covid,” Planet Fitness CEO Chris Rondeau said on an earnings call Thursday. Planet Fitness members are doing more weight training and functional exercises like push-ups and squats, he said.
Changes in how people exercise have forced gyms to adapt, with new gym designs featuring more dumbbell and squat racks and open areas for lunges, deadlifts and other weighted exercises.
There are always people doing kettlebells. We have made sure that we maintain an open zone for those exercises.
During the early decades of the twentieth century, gyms were considered “sweaty dungeons” and the men who went to lift weights there were seen as “unintelligent or effete,” Petrzela writes in “Fit Nation.”
“People thought I was a charlatan and a nut,” recalled Jack LaLanne, founder of the modern fitness movement, who first opened a club in Oakland, California, in 1938. “The doctors were against me — they said that working out with weights would give people everything from heart attacks to hemorrhoids.”
An advertisement for a machine that made it possible for people to lose weight without doing any physical activity was seen in the 1960’s.
Running, jogging and swimming are promoted in Dr. Kenneth Cooper’s best-seller, “Aerobics,” which was published in 1968. Jane Fonda made a VHS workout video out of Coopers book and it became famous.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/28/business/gym-exercise-free-weights-cardio/index.html
Introducing free weights and benches to functional fitness: How fitness Formula changed the way people ran and walked on their first workouts with a Nautilus machine
Nautilus machines helped to bring strength training into the broader mix of exercises. Clubs with Nautilus in their name and the company’s equipment inside began popping up across the country.
Free weights are the more popular form of strength training. New research on the benefits has helped to drive the growth of weight lifting.
The latest federal health guidelines recommend at least two sessions a week of muscle-strengthening activities that are moderate- or high-intensity and involve all major muscle groups.
“Prior to CrossFit, that kind of equipment was associated with body building,” Petrzela said. “Seeing a lot of people do that for functional fitness has demystified it.”
Gale Landers, CEO of Fitness Formula Clubs in Chicago, said his clubs have removed 10% to 15% of cardio equipment to make room for more free weights and benches. Fitness Formula has also added turf areas where people can do functional training.