Trends in fitness in the 2000s have given to new sports, such as the
CrossFit games, and new athletic entertainments in the form of American Ninja Warrior. Daniel Kunitz traces the rise of this new fitness
culture, which he calls New Frontier Fitness or NFF, in his Lift.
Kunitz goes back to the
ancient Greeks, who revered physical beauty and fitness and considered it the
obligation of citizens (only men
were citizens) to keep themselves in good shape in order to serve and defend
their nation. The Greek word for this training was askesis.
The English word asceticism has it root in askesis. While we now associate it with self-denial, the Greeks associated it with
purposeful self-discipline. Participants in NFF have embraced
this old-fashioned asceticism, training purposefully with benefits that spill
into all areas of life.
As an aside, Christian asceticism is often associated with
self-denial, sometime extreme, for the purpose of penance. When I read Paul’s
writing on denial of self, I see it described in the context of disciplining
oneself with the purpose of living a higher life. He even uses athletes as an
example. He is not denigrating athletes for training for a worthless prize. He
is reminding Christians that they have and even more important calling that
deserves at least an equal commitment and effort.
Of course, few cultures
since then have reveled in physical achievement. Exercise at times has been considered
dangerous to health. Weightlifting too much resembles
labor, a task for lower-class people that wealthy and middle-class people were
reluctant to embrace. Even when exercise became more acceptable, starting in
the 1960s and taking off in the 1980s, the focus was often on appearance.
NFF is not concerned
with appearance. It is concerned with performance. If one trains to perform
well, appearance will take care of itself.
Because of this focus on
function, NFF eschews many of the machines found in gyms. Exercises resemble
tasks one might actually perform, though with greater intensity intended to
push skill and physical capacity. NFF participants train like an athlete,
constantly reaching to do better, not to look better but to live better. As
Kunitz says several times, they are “training for life.”
From a historical point
of view, Lift covers a lot of the
same ground as Making
the American Body by
Jonathan Black.
However, Kunitz is specifically intending to give context to NFF and its
influence on how people think about being fit today.
Though Kunitz is a
professional writer, he is also a fan of NFF. He practices CrossFit, which he
discusses in the book, and Olympic lifting. He also talks to people who
train in other functional regimes like parkour and sweatier forms of yoga.
If you’re interested in
this book, you may also be interested in
The Age of Edison by Ernest Freeburg
Arthur & George by Julian
Barnes
Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes
Mr. America by Mark Adams
The Power Makers by Maury Klein
The Real World of Sherlock Holmes by Peter
Costello
The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hajdu
Kunitz, Daniel. Lift: Fitness Culture, from Naked Greeks and
Acrobats to Jazzercise and Ninja Warriors. New York: Harper Wave, 2016.
