
The Eternal Treadmill of Fitness Trends: From Hot Pants to Hot Mess - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/09/style/vintage-fitness-trends-photos.html
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UweSchmidt
It I was hoping for a better researched article on the lineage of various
workout philosophies. Crossfit as an offspring of circuit training, the large
family of aerobics including Tae-Bo and many other forgotten ideas.

I also found the tone towards all those excercises a little negative; working
out and staying fit is clearly good, and establishing and popularizing
excercising in the first generation in human history that had technology to
really help with many physical tasks is a difficult and noble task.

The consequence of insufficient excercise on human health is too severe than
to belittle the attempts or to focus only on the gender issues of the past.

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growlist
Indeed. I get a little tired of the sneery tone many journalists take towards
the past, giving themselves an implicit pat on the back for being sooo much
smarter.

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Bartweiss
Cynically, that sort of tone is much more newsworthy than "exercise is good,
health science is tricky and slow, so fads are probably bunk and anything is
better than nothing". Write one timeless article like that and you're
finished, but attacking the idiocy of whatever trend came before the current
one is a stable opportunity.

(Even more cynically, it's the same dumb presentist instinct that shows up
everywhere from film styles to foreign policy. "We've got to arm this faction
because the stupid idiots before us armed _that_ faction because the idiots
before _them_ armed the other faction...")

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noelwelsh
The truth of exercise is that the same stuff that worked 10'000 years ago
still works. There isn't really a need for innovation in the world of fitness,
but people like variety, or the promise of shortcuts, or the scene attached to
a style of fitness, etc. (There is gradual improvement in technique and
programming, but this isn't the kind of fitness fad the article is about.)

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JohnJamesRambo
What worked 10,000 years ago? Not being snarky, I'd like to know.

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deegles
Walking a lot, fasting (usually unintentionally), occasional higher-intensity
work. No easy access to sugar.

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antisthenes
Thinking about it, only time people would have easy access to carbs is during
the period of natural ripening of fruit, so late summer/early fall.

Perhaps harvesting and storing honey in limited quantities as well?

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JohnJamesRambo
tubers have lots of carbs though

