From the gymnasion to the 24-hour gym: a short history of fitness

Every line below is quoted word for word from the linked source. We picked the passages and wrote the headings; the sources did the talking.

The first gyms

The first recorded gymnasiums date back to over 3000 years ago in ancient Persia, where they were known as zurkhaneh, areas that encouraged physical fitness.

— Wikipedia, Gym

The gymnasium in Ancient Greece functioned as a training facility for competitors in public games. It was also a place for socializing and engaging in intellectual pursuits.

— Wikipedia, Gymnasium (ancient Greece)

Progressive resistance training dates back at least to Ancient Greece, when legend has it that wrestler Milo of Croton trained by carrying a newborn calf on his back every day until it was fully grown.

— Wikipedia, Strength training

Jahn and the Turners

Physical culture, also known as body culture, is a health and strength training movement that originated during the 19th century in Germany, the UK and the US.

— Wikipedia, Physical culture

The first Turnplatz, or open-air gymnasium, was opened by Jahn in Hasenheide in the south of Berlin in 1811, and the Turnverein (gymnastics association) movement spread rapidly.

— Wikipedia, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn

The high point in membership came in 1894, with 317 societies and about 40,000 adult male members, along with 25,000 children and 3,000 women. The Turnvereine contributed to German-Americans’ integration into their new home.

— Wikipedia, Turners

Sandow, Macfadden and physical culture

Sandow organized the first bodybuilding contest on September 14, 1901, called the ‘Great Competition’. It was held at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

— Wikipedia, Bodybuilding

He began a string of gyms, started a mail-order exercise business, invented and marketed new exercise equipment, and sold food supplements.

— EBSCO Research Starters, Eugen Sandow

In 1899, he debuted Physical Culture, featuring articles by him illustrated with photos of his ripped form, nearly nude.

— HistoryNet, Putting the Fad in Macfadden

He coined the magazine’s motto: ‘Weakness is a crime; don’t be a criminal.’

— HistoryNet, Putting the Fad in Macfadden

Muscle Beach and health clubs

Muscle Beach dates back to the 1930s when the New Deal agency Works Progress Administration (WPA) installed exercise equipment immediately south of the Santa Monica Pier.

— Wikipedia, Muscle Beach

As early as 1936, at the age of 21, he opened the nation’s first modern health club in Oakland, California, which became a prototype for dozens of similar gyms bearing his name.

— Wikipedia, Jack LaLanne

Tanny also pioneered the annual membership, and offered a budget plan to draw working-class families.

— Wikipedia, Vic Tanny

LaLanne hosted the first and longest-running nationally syndicated fitness television program, The Jack LaLanne Show, from 1951 to 1985.

— Wikipedia, Jack LaLanne

Gold’s Gym and Pumping Iron

In 1965, Joe Gold opened the first Gold’s Gym in Venice, California. It quickly became a landmark for local bodybuilders despite the dirty fixtures of its first incarnation.

— Wikipedia, Joe Gold

In the 1970s, bodybuilding had major publicity thanks to the appearance of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Franco Columbu, Lou Ferrigno, Mike Mentzer and others in the 1977 docudrama Pumping Iron.

— Wikipedia, Bodybuilding

Aerobics and the running boom

In 1966 he coined the term, and his book Aerobics was published in 1968, which emphasized a point system for improving the cardiovascular system.

— Wikipedia, Kenneth H. Cooper

Frank Shorter’s victory in the men’s marathon at the 1972 Summer Olympics is credited with inspiring the running boom in the United States.

— Wikipedia, Running boom of the 1970s

The VHS workout

The Workout video was released on April 24, 1982, at the price of $59.95 for the video tape.

— Wikipedia, Jane Fonda’s Workout

Many buyers of the exercise video also required a playback device, boosting sales of VCRs. By 1985, about one-third of American households owned a VCR, up from 2.5 percent in 1980.

— Wikipedia, Jane Fonda’s Workout

The gym that never closed

In 1983, someone had the genius idea to open a gym that never closed.

— Polar Journal, A History of Training and Physical Fitness

The number of gyms in the U.S. has more than doubled since the late 1980s. Today, fitness gyms and private health clubs are a huge global business.

— Wikipedia, Gym

Sauna and the cold plunge

Western saunas originated in Finland where the oldest known saunas were made from pits dug in a slope in the ground and primarily used as dwellings in winter.

— Wikipedia, Sauna

In fact, it was not utilised for post-exercise recovery until the 1960s, by D H Clarke. However, the use of cold-water immersion for post-exercise recovery and treatment is by far the most popular and well-known use of the technique, despite being the most recent.

— Wikipedia, Ice bath

Counting steps

In 1963, in the lead up to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, Iwao Ohya, head of one of Tokyo’s biggest clinics, told Tokyo engineer Juri Kato of clockmaker Yamasa Tokei Keiki of his concern at the low levels of physical activity in 1960s Japan; the solution, said Ohya, was for everyone to walk 10,000 steps a day.

— Wikipedia, Pedometer

The first wireless EKG heart rate monitor was invented in 1977 by Polar Electro as a training aid for the Finnish National Cross Country Ski team.

— Wikipedia, Heart rate monitor

The Quantified Self has become a new phenomenon, where people use the help of technological devices to support their workouts. It is characterized by the use of gadgets such as pedometer, GPS, heart rate monitor and smartphone apps.

— Wikipedia, Fitness culture