← Today, Explained
Today, Explained
The golden age of exercise
00:27:09
Americans are flocking to gyms and fitness classes. It wasn't always that way.
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- [00:00]
John Quillen Hill
Support for Explain it to Me comes from Pure Leaf Iced Tea. When you find yourself starting to slump in the afternoon, you need the right thing to revitalize you like a beverage. And not just any beverage. Pure Leaf Iced Tea is real brewed tea made in a variety of bold, refreshing flavors with just the right amount of naturally occurring caffeine. The next time you need to hit the reset button, have a Pure Leaf iced tea. Time for a tea break. Time for Pure Leaf.
- [00:30]
Hadi Mwagdi
Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now. I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited Premium Wireless for $15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made $15 bills, but it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try@mintmobile.com switch upfront payment.
- [00:52]
John Quillen Hill
Of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first 3 months only. Speed slow after 35 gigabytes of networks, busy taxes and fees ext mobile.com huge emphasis on wanting to look thin.
- [01:04]
Hadi Mwagdi
A lot of dudes walking around with abs and you know, I work out.
- [01:07]
Madeline Agler
To feel strong and confident, feel healthy.
- [01:13]
John Quillen Hill
This is Explain it to Me from Vox, the show that tackles the questions that matter to you most. I'm John Quillen Hill. For the past couple weeks we've been talking about all the things we do in the name of wellness. This week we're continuing our journey and exploring exercise. Dozens of you called into the hotline to tell us about your relationship with making your body move. I do this thing called exertainment where I do one class and then I.
- [01:40]
Danielle Friedman
Do another and another. Not to lose weight per se, but.
- [01:45]
John Quillen Hill
To be there for my daughter, to.
- [01:47]
Danielle Friedman
Be a role model in that regard.
- [01:49]
Hadi Mwagdi
You know, I went from never working out, really not having much energy, having kind of crappy mental health, to going about four to five times a week. Recently I just completed my first marathon and I got a sub 4. And I love running and I build my whole life around it. My, my whole relationship to exercise has changed and that has transformed my relationship to my entire life.
- [02:10]
John Quillen Hill
Producer Hadi Mwagdi is back to tell us how exercise is changing in 2025.
- [02:16]
Hadi Mwagdi
So I looked into the numbers JQ and according to a recent report by the Health and Fitness Association, a record breaking 77 million Americans, nearly a quarter of all people over the age of 6 years old are members of fitness clubs like Equinox and 24 Hour Fitness as well as boutique fitness studios like Core Power Yoga and Orange Theory. And then there are, of course, the budget friendly gyms like Planet Fitness and Gold's Gym as well. People really love those places.
- [02:47]
John Quillen Hill
Yeah, I can't lie. I love me a reasonably priced squat rack.
- [02:51]
Hadi Mwagdi
Oh, yeah, I understand. I too had a membership at Gold's over the years, though. These days, I've been working out at a climbing gym with exercise classes and a yoga studio. It's been a great place for making community. Anyway, the last category I mentioned, the budget friendly gym, is actually the fastest growing sector in the fitness industry. Experts say it's likely because of the cost of entry. Take Planet Fitness, for example. A monthly membership there starts as low as $15 per month.
- [03:24]
John Quillen Hill
Okay, so budget friendly gyms are the fastest growing sector of the fitness industry, but what sector is the biggest right now?
- [03:34]
Hadi Mwagdi
So these numbers come to us from an industry report again released last year from the Health and Fitness association. And they say 23.1 million Americans had a membership at a fitness studio at some point during the year of 2024.
- [03:50]
John Quillen Hill
Okay, that is a ton of Americans. Do we know why these studios have the largest portion of memberships?
- [03:57]
Hadi Mwagdi
Well, that's what I wanted to find out.
- [03:59]
John Quillen Hill
We are heading to a solid core class. It's like a Pilates situation Reformer, but it's a little more intense. There's fun music. I have been a few times. You have not.
- [04:12]
Hadi Mwagdi
I've never been, no.
- [04:13]
John Quillen Hill
How do you feel? Are you excited? Nervous?
- [04:17]
Hadi Mwagdi
I've done Reformer Pilates. I've done mat and floor Pilates. They all challenge me in a way that, like, traditional weightlifting or yoga does not. But yes, I'm nervous because their catchphrase is fail with us.
- [04:32]
John Quillen Hill
Oh, yeah, you're gonna fail. But the point is the failure, because it's muscle failure. We're gonna start with core. Bella, Core is a full body workout on.
- [04:42]
Hadi Mwagdi
So, as you know, jq, we took a class at Solidcore's Navy Yard studio with coach Makia Love, an educator and fitness enthusiast who told us that there weren't too many kinds of exercise that she doesn't love, but that what she loved most about Solidcore is I loved.
- [05:00]
John Quillen Hill
How hard it was. I loved that the coaches didn't apologize for the intensity. And I loved, like, feeling myself grow.
- [05:07]
Hadi Mwagdi
Like you can feel yourself growing, getting.
- [05:09]
Madeline Agler
Stronger, like, class by class.
- [05:11]
Hadi Mwagdi
So with that in mind, we began our class, and honestly, it was pretty tough.
- [05:17]
Madeline Agler
Mrs. Field time.
- [05:18]
John Quillen Hill
Sustainable.
- [05:19]
Madeline Agler
You're here for six more seconds.
- [05:22]
Hadi Mwagdi
Return to full race out first. Three, two, and one. Incredible.
- [05:26]
John Quillen Hill
Mowing for kicking.
- [05:28]
Hadi Mwagdi
During the class, my muscles were shaking. I struggled to control my breathing. But when we were working our obliques. I know you remember working your obliques.
- [05:39]
John Quillen Hill
Oh, boy, do I. I could feel.
- [05:41]
Hadi Mwagdi
My ability to hold the poses get longer. Plus, being in a group made me feel like I wasn't alone on the struggle bus. And after the class, I ran over to a woman who seemed to be Makia's star pupil. Her name was Genesis. She had been to about 50 classes in just a few months when we met her.
- [06:10]
Madeline Agler
When I started, I was 60 pounds heavier. I had upper body issues, muscular issues. It's been transformational. I come almost every other day and it's just a part of my livelihood routine now.
- [06:28]
John Quillen Hill
Hadi, that's really awesome. I think when you think of what you want to get out of exercise, it's everything she just said, 100%.
- [06:37]
Hadi Mwagdi
I spoke to a fitness instructor back in Austin named Carla Mae o'. Connor. Working with your strong tempo, she's taught all the trendy sorts of classes. Dance bar, high intensity interval training. And she told me that she has seen a shift in what her clients want from classes over the past decade.
- [06:54]
John Quillen Hill
I think that cardio was so huge then, right? Everybody was focused on how many calories can I burn, how much can I sweat.
- [07:01]
Hadi Mwagdi
Carla May says people working out today want different physical results from their workouts too.
- [07:06]
John Quillen Hill
I would say, you know, eight years ago, I'm getting started, I'm talking to.
- [07:09]
Madeline Agler
A lot of people, like, why are you here?
- [07:10]
John Quillen Hill
They're saying, oh, I want to lose.
- [07:12]
Madeline Agler
Weight, I want be thinner.
- [07:14]
John Quillen Hill
Now when I talk to my clients, they say, I'm coming here because it's made me feel stronger.
- [07:18]
Hadi Mwagdi
Strength, functionality, community, even improved mental health. These are the sorts of things clients say they want from fitness studios. Bodybuilders want the peak. We want the height of the bicep, if I want. I visited another spot in Austin called Correct Fitness, and I talked with the owner and CEO Alex Earl. Alex showed me around the massive industrial building where Correct Fitness is located. And talk to me about some of the things this studio offers clients. Main gym. This is where a lot of the classes, the classes kind of move around throughout the whole space, but anybody who's a member here, regardless of the membership level, they can come in and use any of this equipment. This gym is serious business. There are cold plunges, saunas, free weights, but also, like, heavy items that look like medieval weaponry. You know, we use steel maces and kettlebells and steel clubs. Alex says these memberships are definitely more expensive than a traditional big box gym. But he says that the group workouts, which take months to develop and are led by world class trainers and are included with every membership, sort of make the cost a pretty good deal. We do a workout on Friday called Fuck you Friday that has become insanely popular, but there's so much camaraderie. There's so much. I mean, it's grueling, but by the time you're done with it you're like, oh my God, this is great. I can get started on an amazing weekend now. I don't know how to calculate whether Alex is right, jq, but I looked up the cost for booking an hour of personal training as well as an hour of group training. And a personal trainer would likely cost about $150 an hour. And if I did that twice a week, I would already be at the cost of the second tier membership at Correct Fitness. And that includes small group training classes too. So honestly, Alex might be right. This might be a pretty good deal.
- [09:22]
John Quillen Hill
Okay, Hadi, thank you so much for helping us get a handle on how folks are exercising nowadays.
- [09:28]
Hadi Mwagdi
Absolutely, JQ up next, we'll take a.
- [09:31]
John Quillen Hill
Look back at the history of exercise and we'll get a handle on how we got to where we are today. Support for Explain it to Me comes from Pure Leaf Iced Tea. Picture this. You've been working hard all day. You had lunch not too long ago and now your shoulders are starting to droop and your motivation is starting to tank. We've all been there, but the clock only reads 3pm and as much as you might want to call it a day, you still have a lot of stuff left to do. Well, you can bounce back from that slump with a refreshing beverage in hand and you can take a real break. A Tea break with Pure Leaf Iced Tea. Pure Leaf Iced tea is real brew tea made in a variety of bold flavors. With just the right amount of naturally occurring caffeine. You can renew your mindset and your motivation so you can be ready to take on what's next and close out the day strong. The next time you need to hit the reset button, have a Pure Leaf Iced Tea. Time for a Tea break Time for Pure Leaf.
- [10:43]
Hadi Mwagdi
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- [11:12]
Madeline Agler
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- [11:37]
Hadi Mwagdi
Goes up, isn't that new logo gorgeous?
- [11:40]
Madeline Agler
Everything will go off without a hitch.
- [11:43]
Hadi Mwagdi
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- [11:56]
John Quillen Hill
We're back. Okay, so classes are full. There's a line at the Squat Rack, and someone you know probably has a stationary bike sitting somewhere in a corner of their apartment. When it comes to exercise in 2025, we're kind of in a fitness golden age. Danielle Friedman says that's a real progression. She's the author of the book let's Get Physical How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World. But if we go back to the 20th century, that's a different story.
- [12:31]
Danielle Friedman
It was the post World War II era. It was actually a time when Americans were moving less than ever before. That helped give rise to what would come. But after all of the hardships of the Great Depression and the war, Americans were really embracing what they called the modern way of life, which largely meant sort of exerting yourself physically as little as possible, particularly in the middle and upper classes. You know, push button appliances became popular. Ranch houses eliminated stairs. Driving replaced walking in a lot of cases. And TV exploded. It became this huge national pastime. So the good life meant a life of little sweat for the most part. And it was at that point when the first real fitness influencers stepped onto the scene through tv.
- [13:29]
Hadi Mwagdi
Thanks very, very much for letting me come into your home. My name is Jack lalanne and I'm here for one reason and one reason only. To show you how to feel better and look better so you can live longer.
- [13:42]
Danielle Friedman
In the late 1950s, there were a few really popular TV fitness personalities.
- [13:47]
Hadi Mwagdi
Host Grape Nuts Presents Bonnie Prudence Want to take some off of here?
- [13:53]
John Quillen Hill
And possibly a little there? Feet apart, hands up. Twist.
- [13:58]
Danielle Friedman
Twist. Who had to work really hard to convince the country that exercise first of all would not kill you. There was a lot of fear.
- [14:09]
John Quillen Hill
Oh, what?
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Danielle Friedman
Yeah, there was a lot more fear about overexertion than under exertion at the time. There were still, you know, outdated kind of beliefs about the idea that you were only born with a certain number of heartbeats, and you didn't want to waste them on exercise. Okay?
- [14:26]
John Quillen Hill
Oh, yeah.
- [14:27]
Danielle Friedman
And for women, exercise was seen as especially dangerous. There was a widespread belief strenuous exercise would make your uterus fall out. Muscles were seen as unseemly and unladylike beyond just the, you know, the life of leisure. Because heading into the 60s, people like Jack LaLanne, Bonnie Pruden were saying, no, no, no, no, no, it's safe. You need to do it. And as people started following their lead and discovering that a regular exercise habit made them feel good, in some cases improved measures of health, slowly the cultural messaging began to take off.
- [15:12]
Hadi Mwagdi
A push up is a little thing, but little things add up the way little words mount up to make important sentences.
- [15:19]
Danielle Friedman
We also had a president at the time, jfk. Well, he famously wrote a piece in Sports Illustrated before he even was inaugurated called the Soft American.
- [15:30]
Hadi Mwagdi
There is nothing, I think, more unfortunate than to have soft, chubby, fat looking children.
- [15:38]
Danielle Friedman
So all of these cultural forces were sort of helping to shape what happened in the early 60s. And we started to see some of the first really early group fitness classes.
- [15:52]
John Quillen Hill
Let's fast forward one decade. Parliament Funkadelic is on the radio. People are wearing bell bottoms. It's the 1970s. This is a decade you've written that changed fitness forever. What happened in the 70s, there was.
- [16:07]
Danielle Friedman
The rise of the women's movement and books like Our Bodies, Ourselves, you know, the seminal feminist health tome actually had a chapter about exercise. And they were telling women, you know, muscles, it's okay for women to have muscles. And it was all sort of part of this messaging that women can be independent and self sufficient. There was the passage of title IX in 1972, which created, you know, so many more opportunities for girls to play high school and college sports. So there was a whole new generation of women who were active and wanted to continue to be active. And there was also the birth of exercise science, which is huge. And so for the first time, really, in the late 60s, there started to be research into the physiological effects of. It was mostly aerobic exercise at that point. And in the 70s, we saw what we would now look at as like, almost like the virality of so many workouts and modes of exercise that laid the groundwork for how we move today.
- [17:20]
John Quillen Hill
What are some of those exercises that laid the groundwork?
- [17:25]
Danielle Friedman
Running or jogging? Before the early 70s, people who ran for fun and ran in public were really seen as kind of kooky, and they would sometimes, like, have cans thrown at them. The Idea that you would run for the sake of running, for health, for fitness, was not established yet. And particularly for women, women were not allowed to run most marathons.
- [17:55]
John Quillen Hill
Wow.
- [17:55]
Danielle Friedman
It was in 1972 that for the first time, women were officially allowed to enter the Boston Marathon. The 70s was in many ways the decade of dance. A Chorus Line was this huge Broadway hit. You know, there was disco, there was Saturday Night Fever.
- [18:15]
John Quillen Hill
We just washed the hair.
- [18:16]
Danielle Friedman
Dance was cool, like everyday. Americans wanted to have good dance skills and that helped to fuel the rise of aerobic dancing. And at the time it was. Jazzercise was the most successful of the aerobic dancing brands. And for a lot of women at that time, going to a jazzercise aerobics dance class was the first time that they had ever worked out as adults. Before the seventies, while there were some bodybuilding competitions, of all of the world workouts we've talked about, it was probably the most kind of fringe. Is this sort of thing though a sport or is it just sort of self love? Men who really focused on strength training and building muscles were viewed sort of suspiciously either as being narcissists or kind of in pop culture. In movies, they were often portrayed as like thugs or bodyguards. Enter Arnold Schwarzenegger.
- [19:23]
Hadi Mwagdi
I'm like getting the feeling of coming in the gym, I'm getting the feeling of coming at home, I'm getting the feeling of coming backstage when I pump up. So I'm coming day and night.
- [19:31]
Danielle Friedman
Who was a champion Austrian bodybuilder at the time and kind of defied a lot of the stereotypes that had existed about male bodybuilders because he was very charming, it was very articulate, he was kind of a ladies man and he really not completely single handedly, but almost helped to make bodybuilding and strength training aspirational in this country. None of them had quite the impact as Jane Fonda. So Jane Fonda at the time, and this is the late 70s, was already an Oscar winning actress and she had become kind of notorious for her anti Vietnam War protests. So she was the first Hollywood celebrity also to become a fitness influencer. And part of her success was kind of selling herself and the idea that if you do like me, you can be like me. But her biggest impact came in 1982 when she released the Jane Fonda workout video. She, more than anyone who came before her, made exercise aspirational, especially for women.
- [20:56]
John Quillen Hill
Next, what happens to wellness when we put mind over matter?
- [21:11]
Hadi Mwagdi
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- [22:09]
John Quillen Hill
We'Re back. This is Explain it to me. So far we've spent some time talking about the kinds of workouts that make you sweat and where you do those workouts. But now we're going to explore a practice that's less about burning calories and more about the mind.
- [22:25]
Madeline Agler
Inhale one so by taking a deep breath, undeniably when you're moving energy, you're going to feel that more aliveness. You're just going to activate that part of your nervous system that's going to.
- [22:36]
Danielle Friedman
Allow you to feel more of you and more energy.
- [22:40]
John Quillen Hill
Producer Hadi Miwagdi and I met up with the Guardian's lifestyle and wellness reporter Madeline Agler at a holistic wellness space in Arlington, Virginia. Right before we started class, Hadi asked us how we were feeling.
- [22:53]
Madeline Agler
I am feeling pretty tense right now. I'm coming down from it.
- [22:56]
John Quillen Hill
I've been running a little anxious lately. I will say I've been a little high strung lately. A lot of running around, a lot of just like, okay, what's next? Not great odds for relaxing, but we did our best. Just take a deep breath in through.
- [23:10]
Hadi Mwagdi
The nose.
- [23:13]
Madeline Agler
Exhaling it out.
- [23:18]
Hadi Mwagdi
Give me more deep breath in through.
- [23:21]
John Quillen Hill
So a lot of today's wellness treatments and exercises and practices, they promise this idea of physical health and inner peace and improved performance and self actualization. How much of that is true?
- [23:35]
Madeline Agler
You know, the hard thing about wellness is that a lot of the practices, there's a kernel of truth there. The problem is a lot of wellness marketing takes these tiny kernels of truth and just sort of runs with them and makes really outsized claims about them. You know, I remember writing a story about lemon water at one point and it's like, is having a glass of lemon water in the morning. Good for you. It's probably fine. But people were making claims like this can, you know, reduce your cancer risk. And like, that's a really big claim. That's pretty dangerous.
- [24:07]
John Quillen Hill
Yeah, it's refreshing, it's delicious. It's a great way to hydrate. But yeah, that's probably a bit much.
- [24:13]
Madeline Agler
Right. And I think the truth, truth is that a lot of these things might make your life 1 or 2% better, but ultimately it's best to think of them as sort of the cherry on top of a healthy lifestyle. Otherwise, because you still need to take care of the baseline of your life.
- [24:31]
John Quillen Hill
You wrote an article for the Guardian about breath work. Why did you decide to write that? How does breathing fit into the overarching concept of wellness for you?
- [24:41]
Madeline Agler
So, I mean, for me, the best part of covering wellness is I love trying things, I love trying different classes, different trends. So I'm always on the lookout for sort of what people are doing. And breath work was something I was a little familiar with. I've meditated and done yoga for years and so I've done sort of little bits of breath work in, in those. And also at the time there was some reporting going around of people having sort of psychedelic experiences from doing breathwork. And so I was really curious about that.
- [25:13]
John Quillen Hill
I want to take a step back. What is breathwork? Describe to us what it actually means.
- [25:19]
Madeline Agler
So breath work is any, you know, intentional manipulation of the breath. So, you know, right now if you try to calm down by breathing more deeply, that's breath work. A lot of people are familiar with box breathing where you inhale for four breaths, hold it, exhale for full breaths, hold it.
- [25:43]
Hadi Mwagdi
1, 2, 3, 4.
- [25:46]
Madeline Agler
1, 2, 3, four.
- [25:50]
Hadi Mwagdi
Oh, that shit works.
- [25:51]
Madeline Agler
That's breath work. It doesn't necessarily need to be an hour long class. It can be these very little exercises where your breathing sort of helps ground and center you.
- [26:00]
John Quillen Hill
So breathwork practitioners also kind of make a lot of the same promises that a lot of other wellness folks makes, you know, that inner peace, that improved performance. Where did the idea come from that breathing exercises can be a little bit of a cure?
- [26:13]
Madeline Agler
All breathing exercises date very, very far back. They're very ancient, and I don't know that they were always considered sort of a cure all. But what I do think is really interesting is breathing exercises sort of popped up around the globe. So the ancient Greeks did it. Ancient Greek athletes would do it to sort of help with performance. In China, there are qigong breathing exercises which date back thousands and thousands of years. So around the world, people very early on realized, oh, our breath can be a tool. This is something we can use to our advantage.
- [26:45]
John Quillen Hill
I have to say, I feel a lot better after breathing, personally. Does it actually affect our health and well being? Is there science behind this?
- [26:54]
Madeline Agler
Yeah, there's actually a lot of science behind it. It's a pretty well researched area and there's a lot of findings that deep breathing can help reduce stress and lower our blood pressure and lower our cortisol levels. And that's our stress hormone in the body. And some of how this works is our brain associates different breathing patterns with different mental and emotional states. So, you know, when you're really stressed out, you tend to breathe pretty quickly and shallowly. And when you're more relaxed, you breathe more deep and slowly. And so what breath work can do is sort of reverse engineer that. And so say you're feeling really stressed. If you start breathing very deeply, that activates your parasympathetic nervous system, which is your body's fight or flight response. It lowers cortisol. You're telling your body, I'm actually okay, we don't need to be stressed. See how I'm breathing? Slowly. We're good.
- [27:45]
John Quillen Hill
So you started talking about the class. Support for Explain it to Me comes from pure leaf iced tea. We only have so many minutes in our day, so when you need to take a minute to breathe, you can do it with a refreshing, revitalizing beverage in hand. Pure leaf iced tea is a real brewed tea made in a variety of bold flavors with just the right amount of naturally occurring caffeine. So the next time you need to hit the reset button, have a pure leaf iced tea. Time for a tea break. Time for pure leaf.