On the Workout Routine Through the Ages
There might indeed exist several good reasons to treat physical exercises as a rational human activity. Activity that shall fit and constitute an integral part of our modern and therefore rational — though too often sedentary — lifestyles.
But we should not be naïve and believe that a predefined sequence of carefully selected exercises strictly followed is something like a natural law of human physical fitness. The workout routine is a cultural, man-made artifact. It evolved through the ages. It has been amplified by marketing. And today the workout routine is a kind of dogma, too, because people are told to believe in it.
I have written a series of eight Medium stories on the changing role of the workout routine through the ages. The main purpose was to explore the past in search of the big bang kind of thing. When did the concept of the workout routine get onto the stage? And why did it happen the way it did?
These eight stories are wired by the following analytical index to outline the main argument.
[1] From an evolutionary perspective, we can infer that humans are as adapted to physical activity as they are adapted to inactivity. Because adaptations do not directly promote health, and natural selection never operated to limit negative consequences of chronic physical inactivity — which was rare until recently — biological evolution developed neither an optimal nor a minimal workout routine to keep health issues in check for which inactivity is a major risk factor today.
[2] Unaware of this evolutionary perspective, ancient philosophers and physicians including precursors of modern medicine regarded physical activity as a remedy for various health issues of their times. Regular, but not too frequent. Brisk, but not too strenuous. The common ground was moderation — nothing in excess. However, no argument was provided to tip the scale for or against the workout routine.
[3] A flying leap forward has been taken during the late Renaissance. All prior knowledge about physical exercises has been distilled into a medical compendium. There was no easier and more systematic way for physicians to devise an exercise prescription.
A selection from a set of generic items — which when individualized and put together into a workout regimen — was expected to tackle the diagnosed health issue provided that the patient strictly followed the advice. Routine was the consequence — at least during the treatment.
[4] A completely different rationale for why we should care about regular physical activity emerged and gained massive traction during the period of the Enlightenment. Physical education entered schools to revive the Greek ideal beyond the elites.
But it was the complex political context that made physical fitness play an indispensable role across nationalist movements in Europe — especially for patriotic reasons and ideological purposes. This was fertile soil for new concepts to emerge including the workout routine that grew from military drills.
[5] It took not long and even spiritual and religious concerns were brought forward to establish a link between man, moral virtue, and physical exercises. The imperative was to solve social problems of a new kind. And the workout routine was an effective means for the evangelical agency and its efforts to preserve young people from various immoral temptations that waited for them, especially at places where the Industrial Revolution was in full swing.
[6] Industrial capitalism brought division of labor and routinization of work to give productivity a push. But spillover effects were soon to be seen. Marxism was on the rise, trade unions got to power, and companies started to provide welfare services to their employees — not only for economic reasons alone.
Workers were allowed to play and exercise at generous sporting facilities established by their employers. However, working hours and occupational duties were of overriding importance. The workout routine had to comply.
[7] The quick and highly selective rush through history that we have made so far provides sound anecdotal evidence that a workout routine was rather required to enforce new ideas and their prescientific, medical, educational and political, spiritual and religious, or paternalistic and economic objectives — not to form habitual physical activity of the modern man in any explicit manner. The same seems to apply to the commercial ideas of exercise equipment entrepreneurs who established their businesses in the early 1900s.
[8] However, a watershed moment can be detected in the 1960s when jogging entered the scene. Many of the earlier ideas came into play but the problem to be solved was framed differently.
Plan and progress became the main concepts for an attempt to establish an explicit causal link between workout routines and everyday habits. A new paradigm was born, together with an all-time opportunity for marketing strategists to let human well-being rest on dogmatism.
All eight stories can be found here.
