EDITOR’S LETTER
LET’S FACE THE NEW FRONTIER OF FITNESS TOGETHER
We have a feature in this issue dedicated to the future of fitness. It’s a fascinating, absorbing and, at times, exhausting read. Our writers test out virtual reality fitness classes, which effectively amount to ‘gym’ workouts that take place inside individuals’ headsets. They are put through their paces by AI trainers and form-checkers, and afterwards sample the very latest in fitness tracking and recovery tech. Some of what represents the
Tomorrow’s World of exercise is almost literally out of this world – one contributor finds himself performing boxing drills on the moon. We’re talking hardcore geekery in shorts.
Many of you will (hopefully) find this of interest and be excited by the prospect of technological advancements in both the way we train and our ability to measure progress. My personal view, however, is that working out in the metaverse seems a little… well, lonely.
I’m not really a gadget guy, truth be told. I err towards the analogue. I realise I’m probably in a minority here – many of my colleagues swear by their Whoops and Garmins – but I don’t even get on with music in my ear when I run, let alone a dulcet voice from Cupertino informing me of my split times. Even so, it’s not the tech itself that leaves me cold so much as the kind of behaviour it engenders. A friend of mine raves about the way he can jump on a hotel Peloton bike when away on business and engage with his favourite instructor. At which point my mind turns to Bill Murray in Lost In Translation.
During the five years or so pre-Covid, the rise of fitness communities didn’t just change training culture, it changed culture per se. Getting your fit on stopped being simply a form of physical discipline or absolution, it became a social event. People started frequenting spin or HIIT classes after work, where once they might have bonded over a coffee or a pint. Business types would ‘sweatwork’ with associates instead of the time-honoured long lunch. Group events from Tough Mudder to local CrossFit competitions made sweat and endurance a new kind of communal experience.
But with lockdown came distance, dissociation and detachment. Yes, we marvelled at how Zoom kept friendships alive. We worked out with our favourite trainers and athletes on Instagram Lives – for a bit. Yet the social strictures that were imposed upon us as a condition of the pandemic ultimately yielded a period of isolation and partition. And technology – dehumanising virtuality – stepped in to fill that void. Whether it filled that void with something as nourishing or edifying as human contact, however, is moot.
Let me rein myself in a little here. I’m not suggesting that tech turned us into a nation of automatons. PostCovid, specialised fitness communities are thriving. Indeed, as well as AI and VR, our ‘Future Of Fitness’ feature also includes a section dedicated to community-focused brands such as Hyrox, which are evolving their concepts in the competition space. Meanwhile, my local gym, Farm Fitness, with its self-described ethos of ‘a back-to-basics approach to exercise designed around strength gained from functional movements performed at high intensity’, is a buzzing hive of like-minded, strong-willed, adrenaline-fuelled amateur athletes training together in real life. (I don’t go all that much.)
But the fact that IRL has now become a widely used social abbreviation is also revealing. Because this kind of stuff – community training, in real life – is a comparative novelty, and largely the preserve of enthusiasts. It’s the more quotidian forms of exercise, already in decline before the pandemic – the park tennis courts, the local football club, the leisure centre weights room – that appear to be slower to recover in health and numbers, especially in inner cities.
State Of Play, a recent report into how Covid impacted grassroots football in the UK, highlighted the importance of local clubs in benefitting the physical and mental health of communities. It concluded that the closure of such clubs over successive lockdowns had deleterious effects on the wellbeing of young players.
I said earlier that the future of fitness sounded a little lonely to me. This in itself is cause for concern. According to the ONS, 3.3 million people in the UK are ‘chronically lonely’. And the lonely aren’t just melancholy. Social isolation is associated with increased likelihood of developing dementia and carries health risks comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It’s estimated that they’re costing UK employers £2.5bn every year due to loss of productivity. These kinds of stats are what play on my mind when I think of those who didn’t come running out of hiding to resume their old lives as soon as the Covid curfews had been lifted. Or when I see green spaces being sold to developers. Or when I hear of the cost of living crisis coming in the way of people joining clubs.
This missive is not meant to be an unremitting harbinger of doom. If anything, I’ve written it to help galvanise my thoughts and perhaps commit Men’s Health to doing something about it over the coming months. The technology available to us now in terms of increased performance, feedback, interactivity and efficiency is incredible to behold. Tomorrow’s advancements will no doubt appear remarkable to today’s eyes and ears. But we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that exercise can only truly deliver on all its promises if it remains, at heart, social.