Fitness: The Early (Dutch) Roots of a Modern Industry

Abstract

While sports and physical education originated in the nineteenth century, fitness on the other hand is generally seen as a typically late-twentieth-century phenomenon. In order to understand how the modern fitness culture has become what it is today, it is important to recognize how some of its roots had already evolved more than a century before. This article uses early developments of the ‘fitness industry’ in the Netherlands between 1850 and 1900 as an illustrative example. Against the background of the European struggle between Continental and Anglo-Saxon systems of physical education and sport, this article focuses on the connections that were made between industries, ideas, buildings, fitness equipment, manuals, magazines and the early body artists and entrepreneurs. The convergence between the early fitness industry and the ‘self-help industry’ contributed to a crucial shift from the ‘acrobatic, distant body’, to the commercialized, fit and good-looking bodies which were displayed and ‘sold’ as inspiring examples. This article questions some of the crucial preconditions of these processes of globalization of the early fitness industry.

Notes

 [1] Betts, ‘The Technological Revolution and the Rise of Sport’; Guttman, From Ritual to Record; Mangan, Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School; Mangan, The Cultural Bond; Mangan, Europe, Sport, World; Dyreson, ‘Globalizing the Nation-Making Process’; Dyreson, ‘Regulating the Body and the Body Politic’; van Bottenburg, Global Games.

 [2] Mangan, The Games Ethic and Imperialism. See also Peter Gay's portrait of a rising middle class during the nineteenth century, symbolized by the life of the ‘first hand witness’ Arthur Schnitzler: Gay, Schnitzler's Century

 [3] Hobsbawn, The Age of Empire; Meinander and Mangan, The Nordic World, 5.

 [4] Foucault, Discipline and Punish; Budd, The Sculpture Machine.

 [5] Thomas de la Peña, The Body Electric.

 [6] Rose, Muscle Beach.

 [7] A recent market report estimated that in Europe there are more than 20 million members of fitness clubs (penetration rate 5.5%, with variations from 10.9% in Norway to 1.9% in Finland; the Netherlands is third on the list with 9.2%). In the USA there are more than 40 million members (14.2%) (McNeil et al., The IHRSA European Market Report.

 [8] Augestad, ‘Architecture and the Education of the Body’.

 [9] Krüger and Sanders, ‘Jewish Sports in the Netherlands’. Kruger and Sanders state that because skating has been identified with Dutch nationalism, neither the German Turnen nor Swedish gymnastics caught on in the struggle of the Netherlands to maintain and regain independence. They write: ‘This is probably also the reason why physical education and gymnastics started relatively late’ (272). This is a possible yet insufficient explanation.

[10] Rijkens, Praktische Handleiding voor kuntsmatige ligchaams-oefeningen.

[11] de Haan, ‘Vigorous, pure, and vulnerable’.

[12] Mandell, Sport. A Cultural History; Mangan, Reformers, Sport, Modernizers.

[13] Mangan, Sport in Europe; Mangan, Making European Masculinities; Mangan, Militarism, Sport, Europe.

[14] Desbonnet, Hippolyte Triat; Delheye, Bijdrage tot de biografie van Hippolyte Triat.

[15] Delheye, Bijdrage tot de biografie van Hippolyte Triat, 2

[16] The Liverpool gymnasium opened as a private venture in 1860 and was claimed to be the largest in the world. Prestidge, The History of British Gymnastics, 21. The director of the Liverpool gym, A. Alexander, was also an entrepreneur in selling home training aids (such as Alexander's Physical Exerciser).

[17] There are several reasons for this evolutionary success. One of these is its ability to incorporate British sports within the same building. Height, needed for the rings, also made it possible, for example, to play basketball, and the triangular shape of the building very well suited to play indoor soccer or handball. Many gymnasiums still show this combination of nineteenth-century structure and modern equipment.

[18] Gemeentearchief Amsterdam, inv. nr. 323.

[19] Gemeentearchief Amsterdam, inv. nr. 398.

[20] J.K., Mededeelingen nopens gymnastisch onderwijs in Duitschland.

[21] This seems self-evident by now, but attempts were made indeed to incorporate gymnastic Turn equipment within the home situation.

[22] Hobsbawn, The Age of Empire; Mangan, Reformers, Sport, Modernizers, 253.

[23] Thomas de la Peña, ‘Dudley Allen Sargent and Gustav Zander’.

[24] Park, ‘A Decade of the Body’; Park, ‘Muscles, Symmetry and Action’; Stearns, Fat History; Todd, Physical Culture and the Body Beautiful; Green, Fit for America; Grover, Fitness in American Culture; Goldstein, The Health Movement; Perot, Le travail des apparences.

[25] One of these famous European strongmen was Peter Ducrow, also called the Flemish Hercules (Webster, ‘The Flemish Hercules’). Another famous athlete was Donald Dinnie (1837–1916), who carried the label of ‘Strongest Man in the World’ (Zarnowski, ‘The Amazing Donald Dinnie’).

[26] Sandow himself seems to be the only reference for this story: Adam, Sandow's System of Physical Training; Chapman, Sandow the Magnificent.

[27] Ernst, Weakness is a Crime; J. Todd, ‘Bernarr MacFadden’.

[28] De Coubertin, Olympism. Selected Writings; Torres, ‘What was Pierre de Coubertin Concerned About in 1889?’.

[29] One of the price-winning gymnasts in Paris was Dutchman Johannes Hubertus Stessen (1861–1943). Stessen won the world title on the horizontal bar and parallel bars and for that outstanding achievement received a telegram from the Dutch King, Willem III. Stessen built his own gymnastic equipment. For weightlifting he used rejected pieces of metal, weighing ten and 20 kilos each.

[30] Groth, Die starken Männer.

[31] Tyrell, ‘Marvelous Max’.

[32] For example, Tromp van Diggelen, a South African of Dutch descent and one of the founding fathers of the British Amateur Weightlifters Association, took Maxick to London and brought him in contact with the British elite in weightlifting (Tyrell, ‘Marvelous Max’).

[33] In Physical Culture Karres was called the ‘Bernarr Macfadden of Holland’.

[34] Mandell, Sport, a Cultural History.

[35] Hardy, ‘Entrepreneurs, Organizations, and the Sports Marketplace’; Dyreson, ‘Regulating the Body and the Body Politic’; Wedemeyer, ‘Bodybuilding in Germany’.

[36] Mangan, Reformers, Sport, Modernizers, 4–5.

[37] Budd, The Sculpture Machine.

[38] Mangan Europe, Sport, World, 3.

[39] Mangan, The Cultural Bond; Dyreson, ‘Globalizing the Nation-Making Process’.