‘Fitness Doesn’t Make You Special Any More' – Here’s Why That’s a Good Thing
This essay is part of our Men’s Health at 30 collection, an exploration of how the wellness landscape has transformed for British men since 1995 – and where there’s work yet to be done.
Here, coach and Men’s Health Fitness Director Andrew Tracey celebrates the evolution of ‘training’ as a lifestyle.
I was a scrawny 17-year-old when I took my first job in a gym. Men’s Health was just 10 years old at this point, but its ‘cover model search’ was already an institution.
We had a magazine rack on the counter at the gym. Members would leaf through the mags while I whizzed them up a chalky protein shake (you kids don’t know you’re born with your Grenade bars and Vimto Clear Whey…). There were several publications, mostly bodybuilding-oriented, but MH was the only one that appealed to the everyman. At the time, however, the everyman just wasn’t all that into working out.
It might be hard to imagine now, but looking back even 20 years, training for training’s sake was pretty fringe. I lived in a large town, but there were only two gyms and a leisure centre. When I qualified as a coach, I was the third or fourth in the area. There were bodybuilders, there were athletes who played a sport of some description – and there was everyone else.
There was no meaningful middle ground, where exercise and movement formed a pivotal part of your existence, yet you had no particular ambition. The first time someone asked me about my ‘training’, I replied, ‘But I’m not training for anything.’ The idea of being fit and strong simply to improve my everyday life hadn’t occurred to me – or, it seemed, the rest of the world.
If you’d told me back then that the fitness industry would grow to be worth $100 billion and that many teenagers would choose a chest-day pump or Hyrox PB over Heinekens in the park, I wouldn’t have believed you. Yet now, as a 36-year-old, I can count on one hand my friends who don’t exercise.
Placing the gym at the core of your identity doesn’t make you special any more – a fact that’s undoubtedly frustrating for some. I’ve had to take up new hobbies to annoy people with, now that they’re genuinely interested in hearing me talk about how to lift heavy things. And I think this is all incredible.
This cycle is self-sustaining. People have taken an interest in improving their lives by working on their bodies, and businesses have capitalised. This, in turn, makes these pursuits more visible, bringing more people into the fold. The tide rises.
Sports supplements are now stocked in every supermarket. You can access well-equipped gyms 24 hours a day for less than a lot of people spend each month on coffee. And although it can seem like all you hear is, ‘There’s so much bad information out there,’ advice on how to approach your workouts skillfully and sustainably has never been more easily accessible.
This is good news for the next generation. My advice to parents – advice I try to live by as a father – is, yes, make sure your kids understand the importance of cultivating strength, fitness and vitality. But don’t do it by discussing exercise as some exalted activity that makes you special or superior. Instead, make it normal. Or, to borrow a well-used phrase, like brushing your teeth.
I think this attitude is becoming the norm. And, I would say, with confidence, that Men’s Health has played a big role in this. To me, this magazine has always been a lighthouse for the everyman – meeting the average guy where he is, offering him something to aspire to and the map he needs to get there.
It can feel like we live under a perpetual cloud of bad news. And yes, health inequalities are widening; the British Medical Association has warned that the UK is ‘getting sicker’ and these are issues that urgently need to be addressed. But – and I say this as someone who came from modest beginnings, with no interest in fitness – if you are interested in doing something, anything, to improve your quality of life by changing how you treat your body, there has truly never been a better time to be alive.
Men's Health at 30 – More From This Series
Why More Could (and Should) Be Done to Engage Men With Our Health Services
Fatherhood Has Transformed in the Past 30 Years. Here’s Why Society Needs to Catch Up
How the ‘Metrosexual Revolution’ Changed Men’s Bodies – and the Burden it Left Behind
How Much Progress Have We Really Made Around Men’s Mental Health?
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