2022.04.27 健身行业不了解的情况

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HEALTH
What the Fitness Industry Doesn’t Understand
A new generation of fitness instructors teaches simple skills that make a difference. Why is beginner-level exercise treated like a niche?

By Amanda Mull
B&W photo of older women exercising in a large room
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APRIL 27, 2022, 2:56 PM ET
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If you tried to imagine the perfect gym teacher, you’d probably come up with someone a lot like Hampton Liu. He’s a gentle, friendly guy who spends most of his time trying to figure out how to make the basics of exercise more approachable, and he talks frequently about how he never wants anyone to feel shame for their ability or skill level. In other words—and with apologies to good gym teachers, who almost definitely exist—he’s probably the polar opposite of whoever lorded over your middle-school physical-education class.

And Liu is a gym teacher of sorts. He has amassed millions of followers across YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok by teaching a remedial PE course for adults from his Arkansas backyard. In many of his videos, he wears a T-shirt and jeans instead of specialized athletic gear, and he uses little or no equipment. The most popular installments take viewers through super-common exercises—squats, lunges, push-ups, pull-ups—with variations tailored to many different capability levels. For someone who has never exercised at all, a push-up might start as—or might just be—lying on your back and “bench-pressing the air” in order to expand your range of motion. There are several more types of push-up that Liu tells viewers to master before they assume the hands-and-toes position that’s long been taught to American kids as the One True Push-Up. (Kneeling variation acceptable for girls, if they must.)


Teaching a series of increasingly difficult movements, called a “progression” by fitness pros, is common at every level of exercise instruction and meant to build capacity over time. All progressions start somewhere, and most of the ones you can find on YouTube, through instructional services such as Peloton, or in classes at your local gym will assume a baseline of ability that a lot of people don’t have. The first step, for example, might be a standard squat, performed without weights. Over time, you might graduate to squatting while you hold a 25-pound kettlebell, and then to kicking out to the side with one leg in order to challenge a different group of muscles. But what if you can’t do a squat?


Fit Nation: The Gains And Pains Of America's Exercise ObsessionNATALIA MEHLMAN PETRZELA,UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
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Read: Peloton is stuck, just like the rest of us.

Liu focuses on teaching progressions for novices, which work toward the skills that other types of exercise instruction take for granted. There’s a real audience for these, he told me. Lots of people seem to assume that their inability to do sets of those basic moves is an irreversible failure—for many of them, it’s been their lot in life since elementary-school gym class.

For decades, exercise instruction for adults has functioned on largely the same principle. What the fitness industry calls a “beginner” is usually someone relatively young and capable who wants to become more conventionally attractive, get swole, or learn a trendy workout such as high-intensity interval training or barre. If you’re a novice looking for a path toward these more intense routines, most of the conventional gyms, fitness studios, and exercise experts that offer them don’t have much for you—come back when you’ve developed on your own the endurance and core strength to avoid barfing, crying, or injuring yourself in the first 10 minutes. The situation is even worse if you have no designs on getting ripped and instead just want to build a baseline of capability, whether that’s for hoisting your toddler, shaking off the stiffness of a desk job, or living independently as you age.

On the surface, this is pretty dumb. More than three-quarters of Americans don’t currently hit the CDC’s recommended minimums for regular exercise, and the fitness industry is a graveyard of once-buzzy businesses that abruptly stopped growing—much to their investors’ chagrin—at least in part because they never had a plan to turn anyone into a customer who wasn’t already pretty fit. But the numbers suggest that there is enormous demand for services such as Liu’s: His super-popular videos make him just one recent example of the teachers and trainers who have found significant audiences by courting true beginners. In doing so, they’ve created entry points for more types of people to do something near-universally regarded as essential to mental and physical health. Why has the industry itself been so slow to catch up?

For most inactive Americans, the problem with working out starts where their relationship to exercise does: in gym class. According to Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, a historian at the New School and the author of the forthcoming book Fit Nation: The Gains and Pains of America’s Exercise Obsession, public-school physical education became more widespread in the United States during the Cold War, as the federal government began to worry that America was falling behind Europe and not producing enough combat-ready kids to challenge the Soviets. (That concern stretches back to the early 20th century and has endured for decades beyond the fall of the U.S.S.R.) Perhaps unsurprisingly, building physical instruction around a national inferiority complex instead of childhood well-being has had some consequences, the most enduring of which is an obsession with testing “fitness” instead of teaching practical physical skills and helping kids explore new activities.

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The limitations of traditional American PE can be evoked pretty tidily with a single phrase: the Presidential Fitness Test. If you’re not familiar with the test or have repressed those memories, it was a biannual quasi-military exercise developed in the 1960s that required children as young as 6 to, among other things, run a mile as quickly as possible, do as many pull-ups as their little arms could handle, and get weighed, usually while all of their peers looked on. The criteria for passage varied over the years, and, in between tests, schools weren’t required to teach kids anything in particular that would help them improve their scores on the skill components. Instead, the test reflected the priorities of the system that created it: For example, kids deemed “overweight” couldn’t fully pass the test, even if they outperformed their classmates. The whole system was a big missed opportunity: Instead of engendering curiosity about physical activity and giving kids skills to build their capability, PE separated them into the physical haves and have-nots. Public-health officials admitted as much when they discontinued the test in 2013.

As it turns out, you can’t just teach millions of children that exercise is painful, humiliating, or a punishment for their failures and expect them to swan into adulthood with healthy, moderate beliefs about their bodies. Instead, they follow the lessons they’ve learned about themselves, and about exercise: Some people avoid ever entering a gym again and shy away from activities that might draw attention to their physical capabilities, such as hiking or dancing. Others emerge confident that they were born with the keys to the kingdom of athleticism.

Petrzela says that this dichotomy colors much of how American adults think about exercise, including who pursues careers in fitness, who can get hired in the industry, and how the audience for fitness services is defined. The fitness industry has changed a lot and for the better in the past 15 years—gym teachers have begun to piece together curricula that are more encouraging and creative, exercise gear is available in a larger array of sizes, and people who run fitness businesses have started to realize, however slowly, that shame might not be quite as reliable of a sales tool as it once was. But lots of stereotypes persist, and not just in the minds of people who are already regular exercisers. If you’ve been told all your life that only thin people are healthy, and that exercise is designed to make you healthier, then it’s only natural to believe that for a particular exercise regimen to “work,” it must make everyone who does it thin. If a business can’t create rock-hard abs for its instructors, what could it possibly do for you?

Equating thinness with instructor competence or exerciser success is pretty much a nightmare for all involved, from elementary school through adulthood, and it never abates. Petrzela, who also spent years as a fitness teacher, says that this is a common source of anxiety for people in that line of work, who risk losing their careers and credibility if their bodies change. It’s also not a great way to assemble a workforce with an intuitive understanding of what millions of inactive Americans need from them, whether that is beginner-level strength instruction or yoga-pose modifications for larger bodies. Research consistently suggests that movement—not elaborate boot-camp routines or long-distance running, just movement by itself—is a boon to both physical and mental health. Glenn Gaesser, an exercise physiologist at Arizona State University, argues that regular exercise has a much larger positive effect, in the long term, than dieting or intentional weight loss; and that for larger people, the effect of increased fitness is even more significant. Creating an environment where those same people can’t find instruction that addresses their needs—or where they can’t access it without being browbeaten if they don’t also restrict their diets and lose weight—only harms their health.

How to cater to this very large group of people isn’t some kind of long-unsolved mystery. The YMCA’s network of nonprofit facilities has offered popular, low-cost exercise activities and sports instruction for people across a wide range of ages and abilities for decades. Richard Simmons became a superstar in the 1980s and ’90s because there was real demand for his kinder, gentler approach and broadly accessible moves, even among people who wanted to exercise for weight loss. More recently, the gym chain Planet Fitness has become enormously successful with its beginner-friendly, no-shame, low-cost pitch to the general public. Couch to 5k, an app-based running program, has become an extraordinarily popular entry point for true beginners who want to start jogging. But these are the exceptions in the industry, not the rule. Media attention and lavish funding are still overwhelmingly aimed at businesses and exercise personalities that promise the kind of punishment that only a small portion of the population can take—and that most people don’t even want.

The responsibility for figuring out how to help more people find accessible introductions to exercise usually falls to the people who actually need these services in the first place, or to those who were clued into that need in intimate ways. Liu began making his instructional videos after his mom passed away in early 2020; he had spent the previous several years caring for her after a debilitating stroke. “I always think about, Would this be able to help her if she were still around?” he told me. “It never hurts to add an easier step.”


For Casey Johnston, who developed an eight-week starter course called Liftoff: Couch to Barbell, the impetus was her own experience attempting to pick up strength training. She tried a popular beginner’s program, but when she got in the gym, she realized that she wasn’t yet strong enough to lift a barbell, even without any weights attached. The bar itself weighs 45 pounds—more than lots of true beginners would be able to maneuver safely on their own. Johnston, who felt much more comfortable on the cardio machines, had to work her way up to that initial threshold using free weights. “The things that are mundane about strength training feel very intimidating to somebody who’s totally new to it,” she told me. “It’s this big, heavy barbell, or this big, complicated-looking squat rack, or the bench that only extremely jacked, really sweaty bros who are yelling ever use.” But Johnston bet that plenty of people would give it a try if she could make it more accessible.

So far, that bet has paid off for Johnston: Between her newsletter, called She’s a Beast, and her beginner’s program, she has replaced the income that she lost after getting laid off from a media job last year. Liu, too, now makes instructional material for beginners as his full-time job. Jessamyn Stanley, a fat yoga instructor with almost half a million Instagram followers and two successful books, has built a thriving virtual yoga business with The Underbelly, which has its own widely available app for phones and smart TVs. There is a very real market for this kind of fitness instruction, and lots of people really want to avail themselves of it.


Read: For women, is exercise power?

If you want to find truly beginner-level exercise services in person instead of online, things can be a little trickier. Morit Summers and Francine Delgado-Lugo opened Form Fitness in Brooklyn in 2018 after meeting in a more typical gym where Summers, who published Big and Bold: Strength Training for the Plus-Size Woman last year, was a trainer. “We really wanted to create a space where people could walk in and realize that you don’t have to have an aesthetic goal,” Delgado-Lugo, who’s also a personal trainer and health coach, told me. Scaling the business has been a bit slower going for Form than it has been for some of its online counterparts, partly because the studio has to pull in people from the surrounding area instead of the entire world, and partly because there’s no tried-and-true method for getting your fitness business in front of people who are used to being ignored or belittled by the industry. But Delgado-Lugo and Summers have done it, even with pandemic interruptions, and novices make up the bulk of their business. As it turns out, if people know you’re not going to punish them or shame them or try to put them on a diet, many of them feel more comfortable asking you to teach them things.

It is, of course, not entirely logical that any of these things should have to be profitable in order to exist, or that people who want to provide these services should have to make the math work out on their own in order to do so. To make exercise instruction and equipment available for everyone, no matter their level of fitness or mobility, would be a public good—improving population health, reducing health-care costs, and making millions of people’s lives better. This is the type of thing that a functional modern society should endeavor to provide to its members, regardless of individual ability to pay.

As Petrzela, the historian, pointed out to me, these services have been freely given to the public in the past. Before the private-sector fitness industry exploded in the 1980s, tax-funded recreation centers, youth sports leagues, and community pools were much more plentiful in the United States, she said, even if unevenly distributed among predominantly white and Black neighborhoods. “This is part of a greater austerity politics, which is affecting every aspect of our lives,” she told me. She calls it “the privatization of the good life”: Public funding for facilities and programming dries up, and wealthier people buy gym memberships and Pelotons and enroll their kids in private sports leagues. “In my lifetime, I have seen the prices of fitness products and experiences skyrocket,” Petrzela said. Poorer people can’t afford those things, and their neighborhoods are less likely to be safe for outdoor recreation, or to have intact sidewalks and functional playgrounds. The numbers bear out this split: Among the best predictors of how much exercise Americans get is how much money they make.

Liu thinks about the financial costs of exercise constantly. His instructional videos are supported by advertising instead of membership fees, he focuses on moves that use body weight or that can be done with around-the-house objects such as chairs or towels, and his full recommended routine is available on his website, free of charge. Because of Liu’s huge subscriber numbers, he can run a business without directly charging for the majority of his output, which isn’t possible for most teachers who go it alone. “I want to make as much knowledge free as possible,” he told me. “The more options people have, the more likely that someone will find something that they like and stick to it.”

Fit Nation: The Gains And Pains Of America's Exercise ObsessionNATALIA MEHLMAN PETRZELA, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS
BUY BOOK
Amanda Mull is a staff writer at The Atlantic.



健康
健身行业不了解的情况
新一代的健身教练传授简单的技能，使之与众不同。为什么初级运动被视为小众？

作者：阿曼达-穆尔
在一个大房间里锻炼的老年妇女的黑白照片
盖蒂
2022年4月27日，美国东部时间下午2点56分
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如果你试图想象一个完美的体育老师，你可能会想到一个很像刘汉东的人。他是一个温和友好的人，他的大部分时间都在试图找出如何使运动的基础知识更加平易近人，而且他经常谈到他从不希望任何人为自己的能力或技能水平感到羞耻。换句话说--在此向优秀的体育老师表示歉意，他们几乎肯定是存在的--他可能是你中学体育课上的主宰者的极度反面。

而刘是一个体育老师的角色。他在阿肯色州的后院为成年人教授补习体育课程，在YouTube、Facebook和TikTok上积累了数百万的粉丝。在他的许多视频中，他穿着T恤和牛仔裤，而不是专门的运动装备，而且他几乎不使用任何设备。 对于一个从未做过运动的人来说，俯卧撑可能开始于--或者可能只是--仰卧并 "卧推空气"，以扩大你的运动范围。还有几种类型的俯卧撑，刘告诉观众，在他们采取手脚并用的姿势之前，要掌握这种姿势，这种姿势长期以来一直被美国儿童当作唯一真正的俯卧撑来教。(如果一定要做的话，女孩可以跪着做（跪着的变化是可以接受的）。


教授一系列越来越难的动作，被健身专家称为 "进步"，这在每个级别的运动教学中都很常见，目的是随着时间的推移培养能力。所有的进展都是从某处开始的，你可以在YouTube上找到的大多数进展，通过Peloton等教学服务，或在当地健身房的课程中，都会假设一个很多人都不具备的能力基线。例如，第一步可能是一个标准的深蹲，不需要负重。随着时间的推移，你可能会发展到拿着25磅的壶铃下蹲，然后用一条腿踢向一边，以挑战不同的肌肉群。但如果你不能做深蹲怎么办？


健康国家。美国人对运动的痴迷的收获和痛苦娜塔莉亚-梅尔曼-佩茨拉，芝加哥大学出版社
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阅读。佩罗顿被卡住了，就像我们其他人一样。

柳传志专注于为新手提供教学进度，这些教学进度致力于培养其他类型的运动教学所认为理所当然的技能。他告诉我，这些课程有真正的受众。很多人似乎认为，他们无法完成这些基本动作是一种不可逆转的失败--他们中的许多人，从小学体育课开始，这就是他们的人生命运。

几十年来，对成年人的锻炼指导在很大程度上也是按照同样的原则进行的。健身行业所谓的 "初学者 "通常是指相对年轻和有能力的人，他们想变得更有传统的吸引力，变得更有魅力，或者学习一种时髦的锻炼方法，如高强度间歇训练或巴雷。如果你是一个新手，正在寻找一条通往这些更激烈的程序的道路，大多数传统的健身房、健身工作室和提供这些程序的运动专家对你没有什么帮助--等你自己发展出耐力和核心力量，避免在前10分钟内呕吐、哭泣或受伤时再回来。如果你不打算让自己变胖，而只是想建立一个能力的基线，不管是为了抱起你的孩子，摆脱办公桌上的僵硬，还是随着年龄的增长独立生活，情况就更糟糕了。

从表面上看，这是很愚蠢的。超过四分之三的美国人目前没有达到疾病预防控制中心推荐的定期锻炼的最低标准，而健身行业是一个曾经模糊的企业的墓地，这些企业突然停止了增长--这让他们的投资者感到非常懊恼--至少部分原因是他们从来没有一个计划来把任何人变成一个已经非常健康的客户。但数字表明，对刘的这种服务有巨大的需求。他的超级受欢迎的视频使他成为最近通过追求真正的初学者而找到重要受众的教师和培训师的一个例子。在这样做的过程中，他们为更多类型的人创造了切入点，让他们做一些几乎被普遍认为对身心健康至关重要的事情。为什么这个行业本身追赶得如此缓慢？

对于大多数不活跃的美国人来说，健身的问题是从他们与运动的关系开始的：在体育课上。根据纳塔利娅-梅尔曼-彼得泽拉（Natalia Mehlman Petrzela）的说法，她是新学校的历史学家，也是即将出版的《健康国家》（Fit Nation）一书的作者。在冷战期间，公立学校的体育教育在美国变得更加普遍，因为联邦政府开始担心美国落后于欧洲，没有培养出足够的战斗力的孩子来挑战苏联。(这种担忧可以追溯到20世纪初，并在美苏解体后持续了几十年）。也许不足为奇的是，围绕国家的自卑感而不是儿童的幸福感来开展体育教学已经产生了一些后果，其中最持久的是对测试 "体能 "的痴迷，而不是教授实用的体育技能和帮助孩子探索新的活动。

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传统美国体育的局限性可以用一句话很整齐地唤起：总统体能测试。如果你对这个测试不熟悉或压抑了这些记忆，它是20世纪60年代开发的两年一次的准军事演习，要求6岁的孩子尽可能快地跑一英里，做他们的小臂所能承受的许多引体向上，并进行称重，通常是在他们所有同龄人的注视下。多年来，通过的标准各不相同，在测试之间，学校不需要特别教孩子们什么，以帮助他们提高技能部分的分数。相反，该测试反映了创建该系统的优先事项。例如，被认为是 "超重 "的孩子不能完全通过测试，即使他们的成绩超过了同学们。整个系统是一个巨大的机会。体育课没有激发孩子们对体育活动的好奇心，也没有给孩子们提供培养能力的技能，而是把他们分成了有体能的和没有体能的。公共卫生官员在2013年停止该测试时承认了这一点。

事实证明，你不能只是教导数以百万计的孩子，运动是痛苦的、羞辱的，或者是对他们失败的惩罚，并期望他们带着对自己身体的健康、适度的信念进入成人期。相反，他们遵循他们所学到的关于自己和关于运动的教训。有些人避免再次进入健身房，并回避可能引起人们对其身体能力关注的活动，如徒步旅行或跳舞。其他人则自信地认为他们生来就拥有运动王国的钥匙。

Petrzela说，这种二分法给美国成年人对运动的思考带来了很多色彩，包括谁在追求健身事业，谁能在这个行业被雇用，以及如何定义健身服务的受众。在过去的15年里，健身行业已经发生了很大的变化，而且是向好的方面发展--健身房的老师已经开始把更多的鼓励性和创造性的课程组合在一起，运动装备有了更多的尺寸，经营健身业务的人已经开始意识到，尽管很缓慢，但耻辱可能并不像以前那样是一种可靠的销售工具。但是很多陈规定型观念仍然存在，而且不仅仅是在那些已经是经常锻炼的人的头脑中。如果你一生都被告知，只有瘦子才是健康的，而运动是为了让你更健康，那么很自然地相信，为了使某项运动方案 "有效"，它必须使每个做运动的人都变瘦。如果一个企业不能为其教练创造坚硬的腹肌，那么它又能为你做什么呢？

将瘦与教练的能力或锻炼者的成功相提并论，对所有参与其中的人来说都是一场噩梦，从小学到成年，这种情况从未减少过。Petrzela也做过多年的健身教师，她说这是从事这一行的人常见的焦虑来源，如果他们的身体发生变化，他们有可能失去他们的事业和信誉。这也不是组建一支对数百万不活跃的美国人的需求有直观了解的员工队伍的好方法，无论是初级的力量指导还是针对大块头身体的瑜伽姿势的修改。研究一致表明，运动--不是精心设计的新兵训练营程序或长跑，只是运动本身--对身体和精神健康都有好处。亚利桑那州立大学的运动生理学家格伦-盖瑟（Glenn Gaesser）认为，从长远来看，定期运动比节食或有意减肥有更大的积极作用；而对于身材高大的人来说，增强体质的效果甚至更为显著。创造一个环境，让这些人无法找到满足他们需求的指导，或者让他们在不限制饮食和减肥的情况下无法获得指导，这只会伤害他们的健康。

如何满足这一大群人的需求并不是什么长期未解之谜。几十年来，基督教青年会的非营利性设施网络已经为不同年龄和能力的人提供了受欢迎的、低成本的锻炼活动和体育指导。理查德-西蒙斯（Richard Simmons）在20世纪80年代和90年代成为超级明星，因为人们对他更亲切、更温和的方法和广泛的动作有真正的需求，甚至在那些想通过锻炼减肥的人中也是如此。最近，连锁健身房Planet Fitness以其对初学者友好的、无耻的、低成本的方式向公众宣传，获得了巨大的成功。Couch to 5k，一个基于应用程序的跑步项目，已经成为真正想开始慢跑的初学者的一个非常受欢迎的切入点。但这些都是行业中的例外，而不是规则。媒体的关注和丰厚的资金仍然压倒性地针对那些承诺提供只有一小部分人可以接受的惩罚，而且大多数人甚至不想要这种惩罚的企业和运动人士。

想出如何帮助更多的人找到可获得的运动介绍的责任，通常落在那些首先真正需要这些服务的人身上，或者落在那些以亲密的方式了解这种需求的人身上。在他的母亲于2020年初去世后，刘开始制作他的教学视频；在之前的几年里，他一直在照顾中风后虚弱的母亲。"我总是在想，如果她还在，这能不能帮助她？"他告诉我。"增加一个更容易的步骤永远不会有坏处。"


对凯西-约翰斯顿来说，他开发了一个为期八周的入门课程，名为Liftoff。从沙发到杠铃 "的课程，其动力来自于她自己试图学习力量训练的经历。她尝试了一个流行的初学者课程，但当她进入健身房时，她意识到她还没有强壮到可以举起杠铃，甚至没有任何重量的连接。杠铃本身有45磅重--超过了很多真正的初学者能够自己安全操作的重量。约翰斯顿在有氧运动机器上感觉更舒服，她不得不通过使用自由重量的方式来达到最初的门槛。"她告诉我："对于完全陌生的人来说，力量训练中那些平凡的东西让人感到非常害怕。她告诉我："就是这个又大又重的杠铃，或者这个看起来很复杂的深蹲架，或者只有极度肥胖、大汗淋漓的兄弟们才会使用的长椅。" 但约翰斯顿打赌，如果她能让人们更容易接受它，很多人都会去尝试。

到目前为止，这个赌注已经为约翰斯顿带来了回报。在她的通讯（名为 "她是一头野兽"）和她的初级课程之间，她已经取代了她去年从媒体工作中被解雇后失去的收入。刘也是如此，他现在把为初学者制作教学材料作为全职工作。杰萨明-斯坦利（Jessamyn Stanley）是一位拥有近50万Instagram粉丝和两本成功书籍的胖子瑜伽教练，她通过The Underbelly建立了一个繁荣的虚拟瑜伽业务，该业务有自己广泛适用于手机和智能电视的应用程序。这种健身指导有一个非常真实的市场，而且很多人真的想利用它。


阅读。对女性来说，运动是一种力量吗？

如果你想亲自找到真正的初级锻炼服务，而不是在网上，事情可能会有点棘手。Morit Summers和Francine Delgado-Lugo于2018年在布鲁克林开设了Form Fitness，之前他们在一家比较典型的健身房相遇，Summers去年出版了Big and Bold: Strength Training for the Plus-Size Woman，她是一名训练师。"我们真的想创造一个空间，让人们可以走进去，并意识到你不一定要有一个审美目标，"同时也是私人教练和健康教练的德尔加多-卢戈告诉我。对Form来说，扩大业务规模比一些网上的同行要慢一些，部分原因是工作室必须从周围地区而不是整个世界吸引人，部分原因是没有尝试过的方法让你的健身业务出现在那些习惯于被行业忽视或轻视的人面前。但是德尔加多-卢戈和萨默斯已经做到了，即使在大流行病的干扰下，新手也占了他们业务的大部分。事实证明，如果人们知道你不会惩罚他们，不会羞辱他们，也不会试图让他们节食，那么他们中的许多人就会觉得要求你教他们东西更舒服。

当然，这些事情中的任何一项都必须有利可图才能存在，或者说想要提供这些服务的人必须自己进行计算才能做到，这并不完全符合逻辑。让每个人都能得到锻炼指导和设备，无论他们的体能或行动能力如何，都是一种公益--改善人口健康，减少医疗费用，并使数百万人的生活更美好。这是一个正常的现代社会应该努力为其成员提供的东西，无论个人支付能力如何。

正如历史学家Petrzela向我指出的那样，这些服务在过去一直是免费提供给公众的。她说，在20世纪80年代私营部门的健身产业爆发之前，由税收资助的娱乐中心、青年体育联盟和社区游泳池在美国要丰富得多，即使在以白人和黑人为主的社区中分布不均。"她告诉我："这是一个更大的紧缩政治的一部分，它正在影响我们生活的各个方面。她称这是 "美好生活的私有化"。用于设施和节目的公共资金枯竭了，而更富有的人购买了健身房会员卡和Pelotons，让他们的孩子参加私人体育联盟。"Petrzela说："在我的一生中，我看到健身产品和体验的价格飞涨。穷人买不起这些东西，他们的社区不太可能是安全的户外娱乐场所，或者有完整的人行道和功能性操场。数字证明了这种分裂。预测美国人运动量的最佳指标之一是他们赚多少钱。

柳传志不断思考运动的经济成本。他的教学视频由广告支持，而不是会员费，他专注于使用身体重量的动作，或者可以用椅子或毛巾等家中物品完成的动作，他的全部推荐动作可在其网站上免费获得。由于刘的用户数量巨大，他可以在不直接收取大部分产出的情况下经营业务，这对大多数单干的教师来说是不可能的。他告诉我："我想尽可能多地让知识免费，"他说。"人们的选择越多，就越有可能有人找到他们喜欢的东西并坚持下去。"

合适的国家。美国人对运动的痴迷所带来的收获和痛苦娜塔莉亚-梅尔曼-佩茨拉，芝加哥大学出版社
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阿曼达-穆尔是《大西洋》杂志的一名工作人员。