19th Century Fitness Industry: Military Needs, Sedentary Lives, and Early Marketing

Key Quotes

"I study the desire to look better naked. I'm like, in the last 200 years people began to care about how they looked when they were naked, but there's a lot going on. So my book is obviously about how fitness and gym cultures were kind of created 200 years ago and spread since then. So people think about like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jane Fonda and jogging in the 60s and 70s and that's when people started to care about their health. And with my wooden spoon from my Irish mother, I'd rap them on the knuckles and I'd say, no, it was the 1800s, not the 1980s."

Dr. Conor Heffernan argues that the modern interest in fitness and physical appearance is not a recent phenomenon. Heffernan highlights that the origins of this concern can be traced back to the 1800s, predating popular figures and trends of the 1960s and 70s. This suggests a longer historical trajectory for the development of fitness culture than commonly perceived.

"The second thing is industrialization stopped a lot of us from being physically active anymore because you know before industrialization in the 1800s if you're working in fields, you know working in agrarian pursuits like fishing, farming, anything where you're working with the land on the land, building, constructing, you're going to have an active life. Even something as simple as home care and domestic duties is a physical fitness writer in the 1830s, Donald Walker, who says the only physical training a woman needs is to clean a house, which is misogynistic regardless of the century, but there was a bit of truth in it because, you know, you clean a house before you had a vacuum cleaner, a dishwasher, a laundry machine, you know, a dryer, like it's physical work."

Dr. Conor Heffernan explains that industrialization significantly reduced the physical activity in people's daily lives. Heffernan notes that prior to this shift, occupations and even domestic chores required considerable physical exertion. This decrease in inherent daily movement created a need for intentional physical training.

"So, no marathons, no marathons at that time, but it's funny because there is a distinction there and someone recently asked me, you know, did they do cardio? Did they do jogging? Did they do running? I was like, well, actually, not really, because even though life was becoming more sedentary, it was more sedentary in the sense of your physical strength, you were still walking places, you know, you're walking long distances. Even Charles Dickens used to walk into London from his rural village. People would go on long walks as part of their day to day."

Dr. Conor Heffernan clarifies that while life became more sedentary in terms of strength-based labor, people in the 19th century still engaged in significant walking. Heffernan points out that long-distance walking was a common part of daily life, distinguishing it from modern concepts of "cardio" or dedicated running for exercise.

"So, you do have a lot of these competitions, especially from the 1870s onwards, that are testing people's strength and what's actually even more interesting is you have magazines being published, strength magazines, fitness magazines, where they're publishing people's standards and their records and they're saying who can beat this man or occasionally who can beat this woman. So you're getting the like competitions, trophies, belts, etc., but you're also getting the like benchmarks for what is strong, what, you know, what is an acceptable press overhead, what is a good time to swing Indian clubs for, etc."

Dr. Conor Heffernan highlights the emergence of formal strength competitions and the publication of fitness standards in the late 19th century. Heffernan explains that this period saw the development of not only contests but also accessible benchmarks and records. This allowed individuals to measure their progress and compare themselves to others, fostering a broader engagement with fitness.

"So, you get these really like acrimonious arguments between gymnasts and physical educators and then eventually bodybuilders and weightlifters in the early 1900s. Now, I will give you one very funny example of this, Eugene Sandow. I'm ragging on him, he died in 1924, so I'm safe. I think it depends on one's, you know, view of poltergeists and ghosts, that's a different podcast, but maybe he's still with us. Anyway, Eugene Sandow, they, listen, I built my body with heavy weight training, but you don't need to do that, you just need to buy my special patented light 5-pound dumbbell and squeeze it with all your might and concentration and you'll build the perfect body. No need to lift heavy weights."

Dr. Conor Heffernan illustrates the intense debates and differing philosophies within the early fitness industry. Heffernan uses Eugene Sandow as an example, noting how Sandow, despite building his physique with heavy weights, marketed a lighter dumbbell system. This highlights the commercial and sometimes contradictory nature of early fitness advice and the disputes between various training proponents.

"So, you get some really interesting innovation, especially from strong men and strong women in the 1860s and 1870s because, you know, you can't go to a Rogue Fitness, a like gym, like Technogym, York, whatever the case may be, and say, listen, I need a barbell that I can push, I don't know, 400 kilos on it. So they would get trained, like wagon wheels, they would use cannons, they would use bank vaults, they would use any number of wonderful equipment to show people their strength."

Dr. Conor Heffernan describes the innovative equipment used by strongmen and women in the mid-to-late 19th century due to the lack of specialized gym equipment. Heffernan notes that these individuals creatively utilized everyday heavy objects like wagon wheels, cannons, and bank vaults to demonstrate and develop their strength. This ingenuity arose from the necessity of finding ways to lift significant weight without access to modern barbells and machines.