This review of Lift: Fitness Culture, from Naked Greeks and Acrobats to Jazzercise and Ninja Warriors, by Daniel Kunitz (Harper Wave/HarperCollins. 2017. ISBN 9780062336194) was originally published in the Wall Street Journal in July 2016.

When I entered the world of serious cycling in 1980 I met a man named Phil Guarnaccia, a burly weight-lifting gym rat who could also pedal a bicycle with ferocity. On local group rides in Southern California he would routinely trounce men half his age (like me), and then retreat to his home gym and push iron for another couple of hours. I lived near Phil and worked out with him, and I would often see world-class athletes and Olympic cyclists there trying to figure out what they could do to enhance their performance (legally). He liked to tell the story of how, in 1952, he won the Mr. California bodybuilding contest and the Mr. Physical Fitness competition, and on a lark one Sunday morning he joined the San Francisco Wheelmen for a 30-mile loop through the rolling hills around the bay area. “I was dropped on the first hill and it wasn’t even that steep,” he told me. “And here I was, Mr. Physical Fitness, being thrashed by a bunch of skinny cyclists.” Phil realized that looking buff was not the same as being physically fit, and he vowed thereafter to train his whole body through multiple modalities. (He had a $5,000 challenge to anyone who could follow him through his daily gym workout routine and last the entire 45 minutes, which no one was able to do, including me).

This vignette is emblematic of the ever-evolving nature of fitness and the industry surrounding it, artfully narrated in Lift by Daniel Kunitz, a writer for Vanity Fair and Harper’s Magazine and an editor at the Paris Review. The latter is apropos for this book because the publication’s co-founder, George Plimpton, carved a literary niche for himself as a sports participatory journalist, famously playing quarterback for the Detroit Lions, going into the ring against the Light Heavyweight world champion boxer Archie Moore, playing goalie with the Boston Bruins hockey team, and flying through the air on a circus trapeze. But Plimpton wasn’t interested in actually becoming a jock, whereas Kunitz set out to sculpt his flaccid body (“muscles were for lunkheads” he once believed) into a physically fit athlete. But what does it mean to be fit? This book, among other things, sets out to answer this all-important question, starting with the physical form. (continue reading…)