Fitness doesn't have to be this way
Fitness doesn't have to be this way
You don't have to shrink yourself or compete
There was an article that was published just before Christmas. It was about how to keep exercising during the time that’s usually spent in the pub, on the sofa, sat in a car on the M25 dashing between relatives houses or stuck at Euston platform waiting for a delayed train. The headline was something along the lines of how little you can do to stay fit, which lured the reader into relief. Yet in the piece the writer described what they were doing on every single day of the festive break, ranging from a double-digit-mile run to a swim in cold water.
That’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with helping people keep moving - given it’s imperative for our mental health and that period makes us all feel a bit antsy - and however you want to do it is your prerogative. But the conflation of ‘you don’t need to do much’ with ‘try some hill sprints’ felt pretty painful.
Then there was the girl I watched at 7am on a Saturday morning in December being tied up in a tape measure by her trainer. He took the band around her arms, her waist, her hips, her thighs, her shins. It was obvious that the PT had promised her results, and that this was his way of proving them to her, but she shivered as she stood still in the door of the cold gym in a crop top and leggings, head down. I wanted to jump off my leg press machine and tell her she doesn’t have to measure every inch of her body and for every part of her to be smaller than last time in order to be ‘healthy’ or worthy.
I tell everyone time and time again that these things aren’t what exercise is about, yet it feels like the industry is often on a direct mission to prove me wrong. It’s the flippant ‘just do an eight mile run’ suggestions that become evidence for people who don’t regularly move that exercise isn’t for them. It’s the ‘this is about how you feel, not how you look’ messaging that sits on the same pages as before-and-after transformation photos. It’s the people pasting their Strava pace onto their stories with labels of ‘not my best work’ (reader: it was under a 5:30/km split) and the ‘beginners’ workout using words that sound like a foreign language to someone who is a genuine first-timer.
The fitness industry makes movement feel so inaccessible, so only-for-the-pros, so goal orientated, that most people just don’t bother. The way we talk about exercise suggests it’s embarrassing to not be good at movement, that you’re either born fit or shouldn’t try, that you have to always be doing the most, in pain, hating every second. Exercise is punishment, we all know that, right?
A reality check: I took a video at a Pilates class I was in recently for a social media friend. Watching it back, the only thing I noticed was how many times I went wrong. Not in a self-deprecating way, but in an ‘oh, I don’t do Pilates anywhere near enough to know how to balance on a springy platform while also doing a lunge’ way. I banged myself on the head with a Pilates ring, I got my left and right sides mixed up, I had to drop out of my squat and arch my back and purse my lips because of the burn. I ended up misunderstanding the teachers instructions and doing the wrong exercise a number of times and being corrected in front of the entire class. My friends, also shaking and sweating, laughed with me. That is what it’s really like to move your body to someone else’s instruction. To not be perfect, to find it funny, to use your body without feeling too serious about it.
It’s not to say people shouldn’t talk about their wins or how fast/active/great they are. Please, showcase how heavy you lift and how impressive your workout routine is. But the way we label and moralise exercise sets a standard that makes moving feel impossible in an industry that already leaves out everyone who isn’t naturally skilled, slim and confident. It tells us that unless we’re shrinking ourselves or competing with professionals, moving is pointless.
In a world littered with posts about sub 25-minute 5k runs, it is sometimes very useful to know that the average finish time for women in the UK is 38 minutes. And that the biggest benefits of exercise aren’t in those who improve by 1% but are seen when people who do nothing start doing something. And that while the goal of exercise might be to better our health and fitness, it’s rarely going to be a straight line of improving every week, every race, every session - and that most of the time the improvement happens deep within our organs and minds, rather than on the outside where it’s visible and measurable with tape.
On Saturday, there was a woman jogging in front of me and my friends. I don’t remember how fast she was going, whether the distance between us was growing or shrinking, but I do remember her delighted yelp. She called a man's name and we looked up to see someone, who I assume was her partner, with two young children on bikes entering the park. ‘Good timing!’ she panted at them from the track. ‘Mummy, mummy, mummy,’ yelled one of the children on the bike. ‘GO MUMMY!’ yelled the other. She waved, jogged on and her kids watched her with pride on their face. I thought: that is fitness.
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