Earlier this month at a Hyrox competition in Beijing, China, Australian athlete Joanna Wietrzyk soiled herself … and continued competing. As a result of her decision to not leave the course, her fellow competitors found themselves exposed to her waste. The photos went viral. People from across the globe weighed in. Eventually came online abuse and death threats, prompting Wietryzk to issue an apology and forfeit her win. This decision, likely influenced by the backlash, was a reversal of her earlier position: “Go hard or go home,” she wrote in a since-deleted post, “a win is a win.”
Wietryzk’s words echo the same kinds of sentiments coming from many gyms and “fitfluencers” in the US. “Stay hard!” “Nobody cares!” “Ditch the excuses!” “No limits!” The ideology is clear: Having an Instagrammable body comes at a cost, and if you aren’t willing to pay that cost, then fitness isn’t for you. But the problem with this mentality is that paying too many of these costs can undermine the very goals some of us are trying to achieve.
While Wietryzk doesn’t deserve any of the abuse she continues to suffer, this episode, and her original cavalier response to it, have prompted long-needed conversations about the multi-billion-dollar fitness industry. Put simply: Is the fitness industry contributing to our health or undermining it? On the one hand, we could argue that Wietryzk doesn’t represent the fitness industry, as demonstrated by the fact that plenty of fitness folks criticized her decision to stay in the competition. On the other hand, we could wonder if these folks attempted to distance themselves from her because she let out the secret that a good chunk of the industry is premised on her “go hard or go home” mentality.
Fitness professionals and gyms have helped many people, including myself, so this article isn’t intended to dismiss an entire industry. I do, however, think the Wietryzk episode calls to mind certain problematic excesses of the Fitness Industrial Complex, and it’s in the interests of public health to critically reflect on these.
The Out-of-Control Costs of Pursuing Fitness
When we consider that most Americans fall below federal guidelines for aerobic activity, it does seem that the fitness industry is not serving most of us. This isn’t to lay blame at gym owners’ and fitfluencers’ feet, but it should prompt us to wonder if the industry is making itself unavailable to most Americans. While gyms like YMCAs and Planet Fitness offer affordable membership options, boutique gyms, CrossFit boxes, and various training clubs price themselves beyond the reach of many folks. Most of these spaces charge high monthly fees, and those only get you in the door. Once inside, you’ll be pressured to pay for expensive add-ons, like personal training, small-group training, and nutrition counseling. These price tags are increasing exponentially as mentorship programs saturate the market, promising gym owners easy paths to push their take-home pay to six figures. Add to this online coaching via social media platforms (coaches who usually ask you to disclose your income level when you apply for their services), and it’s not difficult to imagine that many people believe fitness is a luxury for the upper classes.
The creeping pharmaceuticalization of exercise
If accessing fitness professionals wasn’t already cost-prohibitive for many people, now imagine that some of them will push you to incorporate weight-loss drugs, supplements, and even testosterone into your fitness plan. Depending on your insurance plan, GLP-1 drugs might not be covered if they’re prescribed for weight loss. But in addition to cost concerns, we need to wonder about the risk of pharmaceuticalizing exercise. I’ve known male athletes in their 20s and 30s who take testosterone solely to achieve fitness goals. Also common in these elite fitness spaces is regularly tracking your biomarkers via bloodwork. Which leads to another troubling concern.
The willingness to constantly monitor your body
Health surveillance is increasingly normalized in many fitness spaces. It’s not uncommon for these folks to panic when their fitness tracker tells them they didn’t “recover” fully in their sleep. How they feel doesn’t matter. What matters is the data their devices and biomarkers give them. But unless they’re trained as a healthcare professional or scientist, they won’t be able to correctly interpret this data. What an athlete might believe to be cause for concern might just be a normal fluctuation to a physician. In fact, there’s a good case to be made that subjecting the body to constant surveillance might lead to anxiety and other mental health issues.
Disordered eating
In addition to surveilling their bodies, many of these athletes heavily surveil their own food by weighing everything they eat. While studies have demonstrated the health benefits of keeping track of one’s food intake, including keeping a food diary, there’s a point at which accountability crosses the line into obsession. There’s a wildly popular fitness influencer who tells people to “normalize” bringing their own food to social gatherings. To be fair, some fitfluencers criticize this advice, and offer their clients other “anti-tupperware” strategies for not falling off the nutrition horse in social settings. But whether you show up to Christmas dinner with Tupperware or limit your food intake the day before, the underlying issue is a potentially problematic relationship to food.
While the dangers of anorexia and bulimia have been made known, orthorexia hasn’t received enough attention. But there’s research to suggest that the latter is a problem among CrossFit populations. Being mindful of your food intake is one thing, but feeling bad about indulging, or avoiding social interactions because of the menu, or judging other people’s food choices is problematic. Humans are a meal-sharing species; eating delicious food together is not only one of life’s joys, but it’s a crucial element of bonding. Eating twelve ounces of protein and six pieces of asparagus alone while everyone sits in another room eating Thanksgiving dinner together is not healthy, no matter what a fitfluencer tells you. (Perhaps many fitness experts don’t take disordered eating seriously because many of them have never formally studied nutrition, which means they are unqualified to help their paying clients set and meet nutrition goals in safe, evidence-based ways.)
All of this suggests a certain mindset that has come to typify the fitness industry: that people who are serious about their health are willing to pay an exorbitant amount of money; that they will subject their bodies to surveillance and pharmaceuticalization in the attempt to look a certain way; that they will prioritize working out over hanging out with friends and family; and that they will hand over their bodily autonomy to fitness devices and food scales. If we aren’t willing to do this, the Fitfluencers tell us, then we aren’t serious about our health. No pain, no gain. Looking good isn’t free. Go hard or go home. A win’s a win.
Thankfully, some fitness professionals cultivate gyms and programs that actively push against these harmful ideas. But plenty of these well-intentioned folks still price out middle- and low-income people. What is needed, then, is a rethinking of fitness on the level of community health: how can neighborhoods be restructured to support aerobic movement and good nutrition? How can poor people who want to improve their fitness access affordable professional trainers? How can the fitness discourse become less elitist and narrowly focused on aesthetics? How can we get out the message that going hard and going home aren’t the only two options?
Brandon Ambrosino, PhD is an Assistant Teaching Professor at Villanova University and an Adjunct Professor of Bioethics at Loyola University Chicago.