The Fitness Revolution. Historical Transformations in the Global Gym and Fitness Culture

Abstract

T oday, fitness gyms and private health clubs are a huge global business. Fitness has turned into a folk movement, but not one comparable to the old 20th-century movements, often connected to national sentiments, but instead a highly individualized preoccupation. In this article the historical development of modern gym and fitness culture is described and an analytically developed approach to the understanding of the emergence of this multi-billion-dollar phenomenon is developed. The analysis suggest that the techniques, tools, and physical exercises used today in gyms all over the world are the results of a physical culture developed and refined during the 20th century. The body ideals, exercises, techniques, and the pedagogy of fitness have become an increasingly international enterprise. A tentative analysis of the globalization of gym and fitness culture is developed and presented. Three important and decisive phases in the globalization of gym and fitness culture are identified and analyzed.

“If it’s not Iron it’s Iron f*cking biggest Ironman”: personal trainers’ views on health norms, orthorexia and deviant behaviours

“…In line with this, scholars have asserted that norms and values inside and outside organized sports settings differ (cf., as cited in Tan, Bloodworth, Mcnamee, & Hewitt, 2014). Within formal sports settings (Dale & Landers, 1999; Sundgot-Borgen & Torstveit, 2010) and among competing fitness and bodybuilding participants (Andreasson & Johansson, 2015a), extreme and regulated food and exercise behaviours are standard practice. For instance, among elite athletes in combat sports these behaviours are regarded as part of the sports’ culture (Pettersson, 2013).…”

“…In a Swedish context, ON is understood in terms of unhealthy exercise, and it has been linked to fitness gyms and emerging aggressive health and exercise trends (Håman, Barker-Ruchti, Patriksson, & Lindgren, 2016). Indeed, gyms are a central place for taking care of one’s own health (Andreasson & Johansson, 2014, 2015a). At the same time, they are a place where unhealthy and destructive eating and exercise behaviours have been reported (Bratland-Sanda & Sundgot-Borgen, 2015; Hale, Roth, DeLong, & Briggs, 2010; Höglund & Normén, 2002).…”

“…Several norms regarding health, exercise and diet prevail in gym settings, which influence PTs’ learning and ideas (Andreasson & Johansson, 2015b). For instance, strict diets and high volumes of exercise constitute some of the existing norms at the gym (Andreasson & Johansson, 2015a; Bratland-Sanda & Sundgot-Borgen, 2015). These norms can complicate work to promote health and to detect and handle problematic behaviours related to diet and exercise (Bratland-Sanda & Sundgot-Borgen, 2015).…”

“It’s More than Doing Sports Together, You Know. It’s Deeply Personal”: Preliminary Findings of an Ongoing Qualitative Study on the Relationships between Personal Fitness Trainers and Trainees

“…Andreasson and Johansson (2014) provide a different perspective on personal training suggesting that personalised one-to-one exercise provides an alternative to what has been described as the McDonaldization of gym training [1]. McDonaldization, a term coined by Ritzer (2008), describes how contemporary social practices are permeated by principles of efficiency, calculability, predictability, standardization, and control [21].…”

“…Training at the gym has become without question one of the most popular leisure pursuits in contemporary Western societies [1]- [7]. Fitness gyms vary in location, membership fees and serve different social and economic milieus.…”