Fitness is bullshit
Clickbait titles aside, the premise remains invariably true. Fitness, or the ability to run around in circles while accomplishing mostly nothing, is a sad, undying, hallmark of an industry that seems to subsist on asinine maxims like “never miss a Monday!”. Never directly tied to any quantifiable metric of progression, fitness is this thing that we keep convincing people that they want, even if we can’t give them any real reason as to why they want it. “Feel Great!”, we say. “Lose weight, tone up, get that lean, athletic look you’ve always wanted”, we say, even if we ourselves are only half-convinced that having abs ever made us feel any better about anything at all.
Fitness , as both an industry and a concept, relies on people holding onto the belief that maybe, just maybe, if they get to some enlightened state of corporeal perfection that then all will be right in the world. I should know, I’ve been guilty of selling that same enormous pile of horseshit for over a decade. Its easy to make money when you are able to attract customers that are equally desperate and ill-informed. If you simply don’t tell them that you can be skinny and “fit” and still loathe the skin you live in, feel generally awful, and be disappointed that fitness wasn’t the magic pill you thought it was going to be, well then you’ve got yourself a business.
That said, we can do better. A hell of a lot better. We can stop prattling on about “if you just do these 7.5 habits you too can be as amazing as I am!”. We can stop trying to convince people that losing weight has anything to do with literally any fucking thing at all. We can stop looking at lean people as some sort of demigods, and in doing so, remind ourselves that they’re nothing more than people with less bodyfat. Which, need I remind you, could be the result of a whole host of entirely unhealthy things.
Of course, its easy to anticipate the responses to someone like myself shitting all over something that has very likely been a large part of either your entire existence or your current obsession. You are reading this on a training studio’s website after all.
“Bu,bu,buuuttt……. fitness empowers people!”
“I do my fitness routine for my health!”
To which I want to make it very, very clear that the amount of physical activities one needs to for general health, in every capacity, is far less than what any slick gym advertisement is trying to tell you. No, you don’t need to have some alchemically perfect mix of cardio and strength and mobility training to realize your body’s true potential, or whatever it is that they are promising you’ll obtain. The sheer minimalism of doing what would actually promote the various metrics of health that fitness has long been touted to deliver is pretty fucking basic. Walk a lot. Sometimes quickly. Lift every now and then. Sometimes heavy. Get outside. Get on and off the floor without help. And if you’re feeling really fresh, move your spine. Surprisingly,, it will not explode if it deviates from neutral.
Of course competitive endeavors are a different beast, and not the subject of scrutiny here. Obviously, the pursuit of legitimate athletic efforts (no, your HIIT class isn’t one of them) require certain commitments. But to say that any person anywhere needs to do anything more than some basic shit on a somewhat regular basis is commerce, not health and wellness.