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Fit for purpose, not for profit

MONTHS ago we booked our annual week away with the dogs at a farmhouse in the Free State. It was a very poignant drive through a dry and devastated land; nothing but dust devils scouring the parched soil.

The first couple of days were vrekwarm, but we walked up the ridge in the earliest part of the day. We lingered a bit longer on Day Two, and as we walked downhill again, I saw our dogs dashing, with a peculiar skippety-hop step, like a barefoot kid crossing a carpark, from patch of shade to patch of shade. We turned off the road and bushwhacked home to save their paws from burning. The next day, it rained - 40 mm in nearly ten steady hours. Birds, insects, trees, grass all sang with joy.

For six days we climbed the ridge (a stiff, steep hike) and scrambled over rocks to explore the edge of the plateau. We left for home with golden brown skins, feeling much fitter.

Fitness is a big topic at this season, naturally, as we gear up to meet our goals for the New Year. And it’s big business: last year the Sports and Fitness Industry Association reported that the industry represented “$84.3 billion in wholesale sales in the United States, according to the 2015 Manufacturers’ Sales by Category Report published by the Sports & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA). The $84.3bn is an increase of over $10bn from 2010 when the industry topped $74bn wholesale.” 

It’s money-making time for the gym chains, signing new members madly. “The gym had capacity to hold only about 300 people, but had signed up 6 000 total members. Half of the Planet Fitness members don’t ever go to their gyms,” according to an article in the Independent UK on January 5 this year.  This is part of the business model, the Independent’s writer said: get the guilty and out-of-shape to sign up (the media, working on skeleton staff in holiday season, do a great job of advertising by running endless articles about New Year’s resolutions, featuring much talk of fitness).

On offer are usually long-term contracts at a premium rate which are snatched up by people the gym knows will only crowd their equipment for a couple of months at best. Then they’ll drop out, even though they’re bound by an unbreakable contract which will pay plenty to the chain over the next two years… while the premises go back to their familiar state of echoing emptiness for much of the day.

Is gym a good investment? I’m not knocking fitness here – my father, who survived prisoner of war camps in World War II (read Dr Karen Horner’s excellent book, In Enemy Hands, to find out about what South African prisoners endured), returned determined to be fit for action, and took up weight-lifting, squash and other forms of exercise; he was a champion of ‘physical jerks’ all his life.

Chris McDougall, in his new book, Natural Born Heroes, reminds us that ‘gym’ used to be based on fight-training, training for boxing, as opposed to today’s expensive equipment-based model, and had a very different outcome in mind – not gleaming, bulging biceps and washboard abs, but fitness for purpose: “But at the end of the 1970s, the curtain suddenly dropped on fight training… [In 1977] Pumping Iron was released, and thanks to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s swaggering charisma and chemically-enhanced physique, body-building was transformed from underground entertainment into a worldwide phenomenon. Arnold would become Hollywood’s most bankable star, and bodybuilding – a form of male modelling that has nothing to do with agility, endurance, range of motion or functional skill – became the new gold standard for gym training.”

McDougall outlines the kind of fitness envisaged by George Hébert back in 1902, when he devised his Mêthode Naturelle (Natural Method), with the motto ‘Être fort pour être utile’ (be strong to be useful). His trainees gained fitness by climbing trees, lifting and carrying a human body, throwing a boulder or log. Their fitness was ready for action, ready for surprises, aimed at ‘being useful’ and prepared to react to crisis and disaster.

And here’s the thing: that kind of fitness can be achieved by quite simple methods that barely cost anything. Go walking and running in your local park, make an obstacle course out of the fallen tree trunks and rocks, take a ball and toss it to your dogs or kids, climb a tree or jungle gym on the way, and if you do this at least three times a week, you’ll soon achieve useful fitness (and exercise in nature, as studies have shown, is both more effective and better for stress relief). You’ll be gaining “agility, endurance, range of motion or functional skill” which will serve you well lifelong, and cost you – what? A decent pair of shoes?

Here’s my take-home message after 22 years of writing about health: if it’s become an ‘industry’, and someone is making industrial-strength profits out of it, ask yourself if there isn’t a simpler, more fulfilling and cheaper way. Eat more greens instead of buying the supplement; run with the dog; cycle to the train station; do your own gardening/house painting. That way you’ll save money and not risk dropping out of gym on an expensive contract within the first trimester of the year.

*Mandi Smallhorne is a versatile journalist and editor. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on Twitter.

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