20 Strange Things People Did In The Name Of Fitness Throughout History

In 1929, adman Charles Roman and bodybuilder Angelo Siciliano—better known as Charles Atlas after winning the 1922 title of “America’s Most Perfectly Developed Man”—started promoting comic-book ads with dramatic titles like “The Insult That Made a Man Out of Mac.” The ads claimed that Atlas’s magnificent body came from his no-equipment-required “Dynamic Tension” workouts. Quite the sales pitch, I say, considering Atlas had actually built himself up using good old-fashioned barbells and dumbbells!

Beginning in the autumn of 1928, American Tobacco president George Washington Hill launched the “Reach for a Lucky Instead of a Sweet” advertising campaign through ad executive Albert Lasker’s agency. Public relations pioneer Edward Bernays separately helped shape public opinion around smoking. The campaign encouraged women to reach for a Lucky Strike cigarette instead of sweets as a way to control their weight—diet advice that has aged spectacularly badly. Sales grew steadily until pressure from the candy industry forced the slogan to change.

Shaking doesn’t really burn fat, but from 1927 onward, ads claimed that it did. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg introduced the “Battle Creek Health Builder,” a motorized device with belts you would secure around your waist or thighs that vibrated at up to 3,000 times per minute. The Health Builder was popular in salons and in private homes throughout the 1950s.

The Prussian strongman and pioneer of physical culture, Eugen Sandow, moved his business emphasis away from feats of strength to the beauty of physique. His 1894 book included training courses you could order by mail as well as his famous spring-grip dumbbells. Sandow held “The Great Competition” in the Royal Albert Hall in London. The event, adjudicated in part by Arthur Conan Doyle on September 14, 1901, is considered the first major physique contest.

The name “Pilates” was only widely applied to the exercise system after its creator, Joseph Pilates, died in 1967. He called his method “Contrology,” which focused on controlled breathing and exercises using spring-based equipment, including what became known as the Reformer. Joseph developed the method during World War I while interned in England, where he reportedly attached springs to hospital beds so bedridden patients could exercise. In 1926, he and his wife, Clara, opened a studio in New York City that became popular with dancers. He’d probably be delighted to see his last name plastered across fitness studios everywhere today!

Back in the 1850s, inventor J. L. Pulvermacher came up with the “Chain Band,” a type of belt made with zinc and copper plates. When activated with sweat or vinegar—yes, vinegar—the metals generated a small electrical current that passed through the body. Heavily advertised and sold into the 1900s, the belts were claimed to cure nervous exhaustion and fatigue. The shocks, however, amounted to little more than a tingle.

Theodore Roosevelt, statesman Elihu Root, and even novelist P.G. Wodehouse all endured the rigors of William Muldoon’s 1890s health resort in White Plains, New York. Rising at 6 a.m. entailed a cold shower, chopping wood, horseback riding, and tossing medicine balls. Smoking and drinking were strictly off-limits. Muldoon, an undefeated wrestler, got credit for creating the medicine ball, when he really just popularized the modern-day leather version.

“Fletcherism,” a dieting craze promoted by American health enthusiast Horace Fletcher, was essentially the art of chewing your food into oblivion. Popular from the late 1890s through the 1910s, it attracted followers like John D. Rockefeller, inventor Thomas Edison, and novelist Henry James. Fletcher insisted on chewing each mouthful anywhere from 32 to more than 100 times until the food became liquid, with any solid remnants spat out. He believed this practice could reduce calorie intake and increase stamina, and backed his claims with informal tests involving Yale athletes.

Rubber wasn’t all that practical until Charles Goodyear invented a vulcanization process for making it. From the 1890s to the 1910s, rubber suits, girdles, and corsets were advertised. These airtight garments caused profuse sweating and supposedly melted fat by trapping body heat. Wearers were left with only irritated skin and temporary water weight loss, however.

Before Japan introduced its famous Rajio Taiso radio exercise broadcasts in 1928, a similar idea was already on the air in the United States. Metropolitan Life Insurance began a daily exercise program in April 1925, broadcasting from New York at the rather ambitious hour of 6:45 a.m. Hosted by physical educator Arthur E. Bagley, the exercises were performed to live piano music, while millions of policyholders received free exercise charts by mail so they could follow along at home. Japanese postal insurance officials later studied how the program worked and adapted the idea for Japan.

Bernarr Macfadden, an American fitness promoter and publisher, advocated raw foods, daily exercise, and spending time in nature, but he went much further by claiming that several-day water fasts could cure disease. In 1899, he started the magazine Physical Culture and later built health resorts, including an entire New Jersey community that existed from 1905 to 1908 called, naturally, Physical Culture City. He crusaded against corsets and packaged foods and preached the gospel of physical fitness. Some ideas aged considerably better than others!

Boston physician George Barker Windship, only 5 feet tall, lifted more than 2,000 pounds using a short-range platform harness (not a full deadlift from the floor) by the late 1850s. His motto, “Strength is Health,” inspired promoters to franchise commercially successful “Health Lift” parlors in U.S. cities in the 1860s and 70s, but in 1876, Windship suffered a fatal stroke at age 42.

My System is an exercise regimen book by Danish lieutenant J.P. Müller, published in 1904. It sold over 2 million copies and was available in 26 languages. The book promotes a 15-minute regimen of 18 different exercises that don’t require any equipment, focusing on core exercises and deep breathing. The exercises are concluded with a bath and vigorous towel rubs, which Müller claims improve circulation and invigorate internal organs.

British officers in South Asia would watch local athletes train with mudgars, heavy mace-like exercise clubs, and take home a lighter version: wooden clubs. Swinging these “Indian clubs” for joint mobility rather than strength became popular in the West following an 1866 book by American fitness promoter Sim D. Kehoe. The practice became part of U.S. military training and school gym classes, and even an Olympic medal event in 1904 and 1932.

In 1861, homeopathic physician Dio Lewis, who objected to the use of heavy iron drills, opened the Boston Normal Institute for Physical Education. The next year, Lewis published a book describing his system of “New Gymnastics,” which used lightweight wooden dumbbells, interlocking rings to build flexibility, and beanbags, which he invented, tossed back and forth in rhythmic movements between partners.

The poor state of urban women’s health led educator Catharine Beecher to write Physiology and Calisthenics for Schools and Families in 1856. Beecher proposed a system of calisthenics, a light and rhythmic set of movements done in accompaniment to music, that would promote good health without breaking Victorian decorum standards. Her system focused on improving circulation and posture without undue physical exertion.

Swedish physician Pehr Henrik Ling developed a system at the Royal Central Institute of Gymnastics, founded in Stockholm in 1813, that divided movement into four types: educational, military, medical, and aesthetic. His “Medical Gymnastics,” an early form of movement-based therapy, combined active exercises performed by the patient with passive physical manipulation by a trained practitioner. The Ling system of gymnastics spread throughout Europe and reached the U.S. between the 1850s and 1880s.

When London undertaker William Banting lost 35 pounds after following his surgeon Dr. William Harvey’s advice to cut out bread, sugar, beer, butter, milk, and potatoes, he decided to share what had worked for him. He published the now-famous Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public in May 1863. The self-published pamphlet became an instant bestseller, and “to bant” even became common Victorian slang for dieting. Yes, people were talking about cutting carbs in the 1860s!

In 1917, the US Navy called on Yale football coach Walter Camp to create a calisthenics routine for its members. Camp later published the twelve standing exercises, which require no equipment, in his 1919 book Keeping Fit All the Way. In the 1920s, the routine became widespread via radio broadcasts and phonograph records. People ranging from factory workers to members of President Woodrow Wilson’s cabinet did the exercises.

Gustav Zander’s 19th-century exercise machines may look more like medieval torture implements than gym equipment, but they were surprisingly sophisticated for their time. When the Stockholm Mechanico-Therapeutic Institute opened in 1865, it had 27 of Zander’s machines, which used levers, pulleys, and adjustable counterweights to create variable resistance for therapeutic and muscle-isolating movement, including passive exercise. Zander’s machines won a Gold Medal at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. They became early predecessors of the fitness equipment you’d recognize in gyms today!

This content was created with the help of AI.