Gym Bodies

Exploring Fitness Cultures

James Brighton, Ian Wellard, Amy Clark

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781317214106
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Médecine
• Categoría: Santé générale

Drawing on empirical research, this fascinating new book explores the embodied experiences of 'gym goers' and the fitness cultures that are constructed within gyms and fitness spaces.

Gym Bodies offers a personal, interactive, ethnographic account of the multiplicity of contemporary gym practices, spaces and cultures, including bodybuilding, CrossFit and Spinning. It argues that gym bodies are historically constructed, social, sensual, emotional and political; that experience intersects with multiple embodied identities; and that fitness cultures are profoundly important in shaping the body in wider contemporary culture.

This is important reading for students, tutors and researchers working in sport and exercise studies, sociology of the body, health studies, leisure, cultural studies, gender and education. It is also a valuable resource for policy makers and practitioners within the fields of sport, leisure, health and education.

1 Introducing (our) gym bodies and fitness cultures

James Brighton, Ian Wellard and Amy Clark

Introduction and aims

The phrases ‘I’m going to the gym’ or ‘I’m working out’ have become ubiquitous in the everyday vocabularies of millions of people in contemporary Western society. What exactly ‘gyms’ are however, or the diverse embodied practices that take place within fitness spaces as they have aggressively stratified in recent times, remains unclear. Also absent are embodied forms of sociological analyses that explore the deep carnality of ‘doing’ gym-based exercise and the profound meanings attached to these experiences (Allen-Collinson & Hockey, 2017). Contextualised through our lifelong submergence in gyms and fitness cultures, the primary aims of this book are therefore to provide critical sociological analyses of contemporary gym spaces and fitness practices through our own lived, enfleshed, sensuous bodies. As we will argue, reflecting on the embodiedness of these experiences provides a rich corporeal grounding upon which discussions about the importance of ‘going to the gym’ can be developed. Before going any further however, we must first introduce ourselves, our bodies and the relationships with the gym spaces that we intend to explore. We are mindful that our relationships have been generally positive, but at the same time our experiences are not necessarily uniform. The self-reflexive ‘confessions’ offered below therefore attempt to acknowledge and remain constantly aware of the specific dispositions that we have towards our own bodies whilst remaining equally alert to the contrasting experiences that other individuals are exposed to.

James

I first stepped into a ‘gym’ at high school, where my Physical Education teacher had cleared a dusty and dank storage cupboard on the outskirts of campus and filled it with worn out antiquated resistance equipment. A couple of benches whose brown leather upholstery had cracked and corroded from years of spilled sweat, a rack of raw rusting iron dumbbells, a primordial version of a Smith machine and a multi-gym were haphazardly arranged on a cold cracked grey concrete floor. There were no carpets or mirrors, just a small, dingy, dimly lit room with a corrugated iron roof. Eager to do any form of physical activity as a sports obsessed 14-year-old, I went along to supervised sessions in which the basics of using resistance machines were taught and we completed ‘circuits’ of exercises isolating specific body parts. Nirvana’s Nevermind album would crackle out of the tape player in the corner, adding to the grimy and grungy feel. We would emerge 45 minutes later, foreheads glistening, hands covered in rusty residue, ears ringing from the clanging of metal plates, adolescent biceps pumping, and return to the routine of the academic timetable still smelling of sweat and iron. I enjoyed using the school gym, more because I was part of the ‘barbell club’ and that any gains in physical strength and power would aid and enhance my performance in the various sports I played, in which I had aspirations of excelling.

As time progressed and I left school and attended university, I used gyms sporadically. My life was consumed with football in which my talent was emerging, playing for my university 1st XI and gaining selection for the national student squad. I was wholeheartedly committed to improving further, living what Douglas and Carless (2009) call a ‘high performance narrative’ in which I relentlessly dedicated myself to fulfilling sporting goals at the expense of the development of other aspects of my life and self. As I experienced further success, I increasingly constructed a ‘glorified sense of self’ (Alder & Alder, 1989), an aggrandised sense of being as a sportsperson which further contributing to narrowly defined expressions of self. Little did I know then that gyms were about to take on far greater meaning and significance in my life. Indeed, they were to become my salvation. During a pre-season game, the blades at the bottom of my football boots got caught in the sun hardened ground and my knee buckled, hyperextended and snapped backwards. Waking up in hospital the next morning amidst a blurry haze of painkillers and metronomic electronic bleeping, I looked down at my forlorn body. My knee was wrapped in a white bandage with illuminous red blood seeping through the sutures. “James, you’ve damaged your knee severely, we’ve operated on it, it’s in pretty bad shape and it won’t ever be the same.” The consultant’s words rang in my head. At the age of 19, my high-level sporting career was over.

On my return to university I was unaccustomed to inhabiting a failed body and my inability to contribute to the jock culture that I had previously embodied. My sense of self, which had been contingent on my functional and performing sporting body, was now incoherent as I came to know myself as a ‘broken jock’ (Sparkes, Partington & Brown, 2007). Ravaged by the ‘alien presence’ (Leder, 1990) of injury, I became consumed in denial, uncertainty and desperation. With no sporting storyline to follow, I felt like a leaf in a hurricane. Rather than reach out into the world as a ‘communicative body’ as I had previously done, I increasingly became an insular ‘monadic body’ (Frank, 1995), depressed and fearful of a future without sport and a sense of direction. More than ever, I became aware of what Zaner (1981) terms my ‘corporeal implicatedness’, how physical sensations profoundly impact on constructions of self-understanding. In other words, when the body suffers, so does the self.

Over time, and numerous surgeries, I figured that even if I could not compete in sport again, I could at least reconstruct a sense of athletic identity by maintaining the ‘look’ of an athlete and displaying visible signifiers of masculinity, discipline, control and virility through my bodily appearance. By building up the rest of my body I could also regain feelings of control and strength in response to the unfamiliar sense of fragility I was experiencing. The best way to attempt transformation from a tall, skinny kid with a failed body to a ‘real man’ was to work out more aggressively so I joined a local ‘commercial’ gym. After I had been given a standard induction in which I was given a tour of the facilities and introduced to the resistance and static cardiovascular machines, more as a disclaimer than of any pedagogical use, I began my gym journey in earnest. Initially not confident of my lifting technique, I concentrated on using the fixed machines in an attempt to hypertrophy the musculature in my upper body. However, as I gained more of a “feel for the game” (Bourdieu, 1998: 25) I slowly graduated to using free weights where muscular ‘gains’ were made more rapidly. As my arms, chest and shoulders grew stronger I began to lift more weight, more fiercely, more regularly.

One by one, muscles in my deltoids, pictorials, biceps, triceps and lats¹ inflated, their striations becoming visible under my skin when I tensed. As my body hypertrophied, I filled t-shirts for the first time. I increasingly held myself with a greater sense of authority as I embodied the look of force and competence, key markers of masculinity (Connell, 1987). As my body inflated, so did my sense of masculine ‘physical capital’ (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). Others began to notice my physical incarnation and interacted with me in different ways. Experiences that were previously inaccessible to me as a skinny goofy teenager suddenly became available as I metamorphosised into a more muscular version of myself. Enjoying these rewards, I placed more and more emphasis on the aesthetic appeal of my body rather than its functionality for sport or practical movement. Before long, I became engrained in the commercial gym ‘habitus’ (Bourdieu, 1977) and gathered ‘ethno-scientific’ knowledge (Monaghan, 1999; 2001) from other gym users of how to build the ‘perfect’ body. Every night I booked a one-way ticket on the gains train and faithfully completed the same movement routines, in the same sequences, again, and again, and again. Over time the routine of the workout became ‘sedimented’ into my body (Merleau-Ponty, 1962), each rep acting as an individual building block in making me the strongest, biggest and best version of myself.

The gym, however, offered far more than a utilitarian function of building muscle. It provided a sense of escape and therapeutic, ritualistic and remedial qualities. The familiarly of routine itself provided security and structure in response to the chaos of the outside world. Lifting iron became the prescribed medicine to heal internal conflict, emotion and dissociation I was experiencing post injury. Driven by a corrosive sense of self-pity, I took my fury out on the weights. took my fury out on weights. Every time I was angry, I lifted. Every time I was upset or sad, I lifted. Every time I was stressed, I lifted. Enduring struggle and discomfort was crucial in this catharsis. Only after I had ‘beasted myself’ was I able to emerge on the other side, cleansed, calmed and healed. Each session was made further transcendent through an accompanying soundtrack. I would work out in solitude with headphones plugged in, listening to deep house music or heavy rock riffs in my own private brooding world, getting “sucked into” the rhythms and flows of the music (Phoenix & Orr, 2014: 99). I’d often latch on to a beat, or an aggressive lyric, and channel it into the weight. My favourite was the bellicose Zack de la Rocha from the band Rage Against the Machine screaming “Fuck you I won’t do what you tell me”. Listening to his words, I refused to let the iron control me. Instead I asserted my will over it by ‘sending it’ into the air to complete a rep. “Fuck you,” I’d think to myself as I raised it over my head. Whenever I went to the gym to ‘chuck some tin around’, I was embarked on a corporeal, immersive and emotional journey to a sense of inner calm and contentment.

Now a bona fide ‘gym rat’, I continued to use a variety of gyms around the world as my life progressed and took me to different places. My interest in working out had begun to shape my career and I became qualified as a personal trainer and gained employment in a variety of commercial and corporate gyms in which I preached the virtues of ‘keeping fit’. Eventually, I undertook a role as a Sports Science lecturer at a specialist sports college in which I was also required to act as strength and conditioning coach for the football team. Here, I completed the United Kingdom Strength and Conditioning Association (UKSCA) weightlifting workshops in which I was introduced to more functional lifts (e.g. deadlift, squat) and ‘Olympic’ techniques (clean, jerk, snatch). Moving the body more freely and functionally in powerful compound movements had an instant appeal to me. Not only did I like the feel of using my entire body to lift heavy weight but I felt like was moving more powerfully and naturally. Furthermore, there was continual emphasis on improving technique, which reminded me of my competitive sporting days. Almost immediately, I made the transition from building an aesthetically valued body to forging a more functional body once again, and concentrated on developing expertise in these movements (Figure 1.1).

Some years later in my early thirties, I left the specialist sports college and started a job at an established university in order to pursue my academic career. Now in a different environment, and lacking a gym facility where I could practice Olympic lifts, my training stagnated. At the same time, I was increasingly aware of a fitness phenomenon called CrossFit. In spite of apparent tensions between the discipline of strength and conditioning and CrossFit, including a threat to technique and the quality of movement as a result of completing lifts under anaerobic and aerobic fatigue, I was intrigued. CrossFit promised a staggering variety of exercises and a seemingly unparalleled level of exercise intensity. As it was packaged into a structured programme under the supervision of a coach, I hoped that faults in my lifting techniques would be identified and I would improve. It also looked fun. Having spent the last 15 years working out on my own, I was ready to train with others. I was excited, and daunted. Having now endured six surgeries to my knee I assumed I was unable to do CrossFit or compete against others. I had also seen the online videos of elite competitors at the CrossFit Games achieving superhuman feats and had attempted one or two of the exercises with little success. My evolution into becoming a ‘CrossFitter’ is where my gym journey currently resides, the experiences of which are explored in Chapter 7.

Figure 1.1 ‘Chucking some tin’ around the gym.

Photograph courtesy of Fiona Cole Photography.

Ian²

I had initially started going to the gym in my early twenties when I damaged a tendon in my shoulder whilst playing tennis. I was advised to strengthen the muscles around my shoulder, as well as adapt the technique on my service action. I was at university in London at that time (in the late 1980s) and started attending a large gym in Covent Garden. The gym was a revelation for me. I had previously considered gyms to be the haunts of bodybuilders, but this one was frequented by a disparate group. They included local workers, dancers, actors, sports enthusiasts and bodybuilders. There was a noticeable gay presence as it was at a time when bodywork and muscularity were becoming increasingly popular within gay culture (Simpson, 1994; Alvarez, 2010). However, because of its location, the gym was also frequented by many familiar television personalities and it was exciting to be working out alongside a TV Gladiator or film star.

Consequently, the gym became a space that I enjoyed going to, not only as a means to physically strengthen my shoulder, but for many other contrasting reasons that related to the negotiation of my social and personal identities. Particularly important for me was the revelation that a ‘sporting’ space could be one where I could feel more relaxed about bodily and sexual identities. During this time I was playing tennis at a local club. These sports spaces were, however, extremely hegemonic (Connell, 2005) and I did not feel that there were opportunities for me to negotiate my sexuality in any other way than by keeping quiet and performing in ‘expected’ ways (Wellard, 2009). That period of time was spent negotiating a range of separate identities where sport and personal life never really crossed paths. This particular gym offered one space where it felt for me that the two could mix.

It was during that period in the late eighties that I developed a ‘love’ of going to the gym. It was in that ‘safe’ space that I was able to develop the skills (or perform in the manner required) often seen as part of the unwritten rules that determine participation in other gyms (such as presumption of ability, bodybuilding knowledge and hegemonic displays of sporting masculinity). Consequently, although I have never possessed a bodybuilder’s body, my knowledge of the ways to ‘perform’ within the context of a gym (...