Gyms Build Profits, Not Bodies
My first experience with joining a gym was in the mid-80s when the company I worked for built a beautiful new headquarters building that featured a “fitness center” (probably now called a “wellness facility”) for its employees. This center was state-of-the-art and included racquetball and squash courts (the Founder-CEO loved to play squash) and saunas. The dues were very reasonable, and conveniently, payroll deducted. Other amenities included showers, lockers, racquet storage, towels, and workout clothes laundry service.
The fitness center featured shiny white Nautilus machines all arranged in neat lines - the latest and greatest way to train muscles - and a string of three treadmills for cardio.
As a runner, I thought this setup was adequate. It served me on the rare nasty weather day that I could not join my friends outside for a five-mile run at lunchtime. Some of my buddies who were more oriented to bodybuilding thought otherwise and fought hard to add some free weights. They gained a few dumbbells and a single bench. They fought even harder to get a mirror installed to monitor their form.
This was the beginning of the corporate takeover of fitness. Before this time, we worked out in our basements with a bench, a bar, and assorted weights. We ran and played recreational volleyball or softball. Some people even continued to apply effective isometric strength exercise programs that dated back to the Charles Atlas era. These required no equipment whatsoever other than an opposing arm or towel.
With the corporate-run gym, everything changed. Now to get a proper workout, one was convinced by trainers, sometimes wearing white lab coats, that fitness required specialized machines at a monthly gym fee of $100 or more — one to form biceps, another triceps. One device works adductors and other abductors. One to pull back muscles and another to push chest muscles. All while remaining seated comfortably on a little bench that kept core muscles, balance, and stability far from the action. Oh, you want to work your core? There are machines for that too.
The companies like Natalus and others who built these fabulous workout machines knew that their business model would never succeed if it depended on selling equipment to the fitness devote who worked out in the bedroom or their garage. They needed large-scale gyms that could fill the entire floor with these beautiful inventions and convince an increasingly sedentary, office-bound public that they were the answer to the middle-aged bulge.
Just join a gym, pay the dues, come in a couple of times a week, sit on a machine, work the levers, drink a shake afterward - achieve fitness! No need to consult a trainer or to have a workout plan. Just follow the numbers pasted to the side of the machines. This business model has worked for decades to sell equipment to gyms and for gyms to sell memberships to people.
However, this training model didn’t work for most people. While gym memberships rose, so did obesity. From 1999 – 2000 through 2017 –2018, US obesity prevalence increased from 30.5% to 42.4%. During the same time, the prevalence of severe obesity increased from 4.7% to 9.2%.
Furthermore, this self-directed one-size-fits-all approach to fitness training has done nothing to help people identify and address dysfunction within the human movement system (HMS). Our office work environments and sedentary lifestyles have led to sometimes painful patterns of muscle imbalance formerly associated with advanced age, but that is now seen in people of all ages. These imbalances are where some muscles become shortened/overactive and others become lengthened/underactive.
Something was not working
Then came the COVID-19 pandemic. Gyms closed. People went looking for other ways to exercise. Companies like Peloton rocked Wall Street with well-produced training programs and well-designed equipment delivered in the home.
Also, home fitness became a thing once again. People started to realize that fitness does not come from machines. It comes from moving and challenging the body, and that it is achieved by stretching on the living room floor and with bodyweight exercises augmented by simple elastic bands and light dumbbells.
The key, as always, is to have a plan. Know what you are looking to achieve. Master basic body movements, mix in the proper acute variables and know how to progress to the next level.
The data is not yet available to show how this new orientation to achieving fitness will impact obesity, but we can be optimistic.
VirtaFitness provides a coach and a roadmap along with the encouragement to help you achieve your fitness goals with or without a gym.
Say goodbye to the expensive gym equipment that holds your body from becoming what it is meant to be. Say hello to building a better body.
