As the number of workplace health initiatives grows, so does the variety of programming. This study examines a fitness apparel company's attempts to promote a fitness culture through a particular brand of "extreme" fitness known as CrossFit. CrossFit is an intense fitness regimen that has generated controversy with a cult-like reputation. We looked at the evangelical promotion of CrossFit as a new corporate wellness initiative. Based on interviews and participant observations, we used a critical-interpretive lens to understand employee reactions to the extreme wellness initiative. The evangelical introduction of this program by management led to high rates of participation, influencing employee perceptions of health, fitness, and identity. Yet, we also found that employee resistance emerged, which helped to mark the limits of this managerial intervention in workplace fitness. Ultimately, the study advocates for more co-construction of workplace wellness initiatives.
This article examines the “Xtreme” fitness zeitgeist and its implications for agency beyond the gym. Specifically, we explore CrossFit, a particularly prominent fitness program, in light of the ways that neoliberal discourses and the exigencies of being self-made pointedly inform contemporary understandings of gender and the body. Drawing on data from an ethnographically inspired study, we suggest that CrossFit constructs its ideal participant through the three discursive mechanisms of (1) reclamation, (2) self-making, and (3) exceptionalism. Ultimately, we argue that the ideal Xtreme fitness participant, made possible in part by personal branding, reproduces neoliberal self-made discourse by physically wearing one’s moral choices. Moreover, although these discourses complicate gender possibilities, they ultimately reproduce hegemonic ordering that appeals to neoliberal embodiment.
Management has long concerned itself with controlling workers’ bodies, with organisational wellness discourses being its latest fixation. This article’s purpose is to introduce and understand ‘whose body counts’ – a discourse of bodily exceptionalism in performative organisational cultures. Using ethnographic methods, this article presents an analysis of a CrossFit workplace health promotion at an underperforming US corporation, to identify a complex process of empowerment, self-exploitation and disciplinary regulation to produce performative outcomes. This research illustrates how the workplace health promotion generates a pervasive discourse of exceptionalism underpinned by workers’ reflexive exploitation, overarched by peer-surveillance and reflexively embraced through extreme individualised performativities. Critically, it is revealed how individuals competitively engage in communicative labour to demonstrate devotion to self-care that is translated into organisational commitment. Specifically, unquestioned discursive ambiguities are shown to cunningly empower limitlessness meritocratic striving that pits workers against each other, creating constant negotiation of ‘whose body counts’ by subjugating others.
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