Writing
Gym culture
Read the article and reflect on how the phenomenon of Gym Culture has developed over the past decade or so. Write down key ideas and topic-specific vocabulary from the text so you can exchange ideas with an online fellow learner on the topic. Write your text and share it in the unit forum
Lisa Andrews was looking for a quick fitness fix. The 34-year-old had “a bit of weight to lose” a year after having her first baby and, being both time-poor and on a budget, she decided to do it with the help of an online 12-week training programme she’d seen advertised on Facebook. “There were hundreds of transformations on there,” Lisa tells me. “I was so excited to start. The programme had several different levels so you could begin at whatever level you thought worked for you. Stupidly, I picked intermediate. It was really challenging, with daily sets of high-intensity exercises, and I would frequently feel exhausted and totally out of breath by the end of it – but I was on a high. As I got fitter, I began to really love the training. I looked forward to it, talked about it all the time, got friends to sign up. I became quite evangelical. Sometimes I’d even do two sessions a day. I’d skip other activities to work out – because if I had to miss a session, I’d feel depressed and worried it would derail my progress.
But when “niggling pains” in her feet and ankles developed into something more severe, Lisa was unable to go to work. An X-ray confirmed that she had stress fractures in two places in her foot. Bound up in a big boot-like aircast, she struggled to walk for weeks and was told to avoid any weight-bearing training for months, until the bones had fully healed “I had become obsessed,” she says now. “I was completely into it and the ‘community’ of people online doing the same thing. I’d be on Instagram all the time, looking at other people’s transformations. I do feel silly. I should know better – but it is psychologically intoxicating.”
Using Instagram, blogs, and YouTube to get fit is fast becoming de rigueur. And despite getting collectively fatter and more sedentary, the British spend record amounts of money exercising. The sector is worth more than £4.7bn annually .. A quick search for the #fitspo hashtag on Instagram brings up almost 47 million images – people in workout gear lifting weights, close-ups of ultra-defined abs, bulbous biceps, “transformation” pictures (taken before and after fat loss) – each one advocating a programme more punishing than the last.
These days, hardcore fitness sells. Even Nike, which made its name with that inclusive Just Do It tagline, has taken to lambasting joggers in its latest ad campaign: “If You Like It Slow, Jog On”, or “You Win Some Or You Win Some”, proclaim its new billboards. Gyms run “go hard” promotions, with discounted packages for those taking up unlimited classes for short periods of time, such as 10 classes in 10 days – the kind of training that many dub “binge workouts”.
But nowhere is full-on training more powerfully advocated than on social media, where inspirational quotes such as “Pain is Weakness Leaving The Body” and “Sweat Is Your Fat Crying” are liked and shared millions of times. In the age of “wellth”, a well-honed tricep is more desirable than the latest pair of designer shoes. The so-called world of “fitspo” began as a niche way for gym nerds to share tips and document how their bodies changed, before spreading into a whole lifestyle movement. Instagram’s short videos lend themselves to fitness content; people started following routines in the gym.
High-intensity training (mixing all-out bursts of activity with short rests) gets mixed reviews from health professionals: some swear by the fast results, while many believe that unsupervised exercise of this kind can cause health problems.
Many young people are completely obsessed with Instagram fitness stars, and they follow workouts from so-called trainers they don’t know, which may not be right for their body or their levels of fitness. Fitness athletes are stars online, but their followers often try to train at the standard of a professional athlete, without the core level of fitness. Following these kinds of workouts can very often lead to injury and burnout.
The National Careers Service advises that training to become a fitness instructor can be done on the job at a gym, as an apprentice, or via a college course. Becoming a personal trainer (PT) is more advanced. PTs are usually self-employed, and they need insurance, first-aid training, an awareness of anatomy and physiology, and a qualification, which takes anything from six weeks to three months to achieve. Increasingly, trainers report that gyms are looking for another asset in their PTs: they want them to be photogenic, with a big social media following.
Some Insta-fitness personalities have personal training qualifications, but many do not. Often, there is no way of telling who is trained and who isn’t, without asking them. Anyone with more than 100,000 followers, however, regardless of their qualifications, is deemed an “influencer”, courted by brands eager to reach their followers. That’s a fact that angers many offline personal trainers, who feel that the unqualified yet famous ones devalue their profession. “Online programmes want people to feel as if they have their own – affordable – personal trainer,” one tells me. “As some of them are totally unskilled and the programmes are really ‘one size fits all’, the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. It makes reputable personal trainers seem outrageously expensive.”
These days, a strong Instagram following, good gene pool and even better spray tan can make you a fitness star, regardless of what qualifications you have. Not only do many of these ‘fitness stars’ know little about what constitutes safe exercise (the truth is that no amount of likes come in handy when you need to solve a gym-induced injury), but they also create a false sense of what fit and healthy looks like. Add to that the fact that these social media stars get paid to promote fitness gadgets, gimmicks, and protein shakes, and you have a whole load of dangerously misguided followers.
No one would deny that people becoming more active is anything other than a good thing. Millennials claim to enjoy working out as much as going out; gyms have become stylish, social spaces where people spend their Friday nights and Saturday mornings, often doing back-to-back classes. Spinning, boxing, and hybrid cardio-barre workouts at city-centre-based studios often have waiting lists for evening or weekend sessions, when people would traditionally be kicking back with a drink (fewer people aged between 16 and 24 drink than ever before, according to the Office of National Statistics). Gyms are designed with sleek interiors and high-impact feature walls – all the better to post to Instagram.
According to a 2008 Journal of Health Psychology study, women reported an increased negative mood, depression, and anxiety after only 30 minutes of viewing fitness magazines that promote an “athletic ideal”. Social media means you don’t have to buy a magazine to see these images; they’re in your newsfeed. The British Medical Journal has identified exercise addiction as a growing problem, affecting up to 10% of the exercising population. Meanwhile, research from Flinders University in Australia found that online “fitspo” images mostly depict the thin or athletic ideal for women or the muscular ideal for men which, says clinical psychologist Dr Lisa Orban, can lead to psychological problems, too. “Images seen on Instagram can represent one uniform, idealised standard of attractiveness – one not achievable to most young people.”
Lisa Andrews has now made a full recovery, but is determined not to succumb to online training a second time. “I have deleted social media from my phone so I can’t fall back into that vortex. And I’ve joined a gym where they’ve made a programme, especially for me. It’s early days and I know it will take time, but I’m having fun again.”
Adapted from: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/sep/30/has-extreme-fitness-gone-too-far-instagram-gym-classes