Details
- Autor(en) / Beteiligte
- Titel
- The Groove
- Ort / Verlag
- ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
- Erscheinungsjahr
- 2020
- Quelle
- ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I
- Beschreibungen/Notizen
- The growth of physical fitness throughout the 20th and 21st centuries in the United States can be traced back to Theodore Roosevelt’s Strenuous Life speech in 1899. While he was the Governor of New York, Roosevelt made an impassioned speech about the virtue of hard work and tenacious effort-- in one’s career, politics and physical routine.However, the virtues Roosevelt preached differed from the fitness revolution that emerged in the decades that followed. Roosevelt’s fitness regimen of physical labor, nature walks, and recreational boxing transformed into fitness gurus in lycra tights, chirping out inspirational bromides over pulsing music. The masculine toil over an iron axe and logs evolved into oiled up bodybuilding and dance-based calisthenics. Perhaps this is not the lifestyle Roosevelt envisioned, but his influence most certainly planted the seed of physical vitality as a quintessential American virtue.About thirty years after Roosevelt’s famous speech, Jack LaLanne launched the first successful modern fitness campaign, producing and starring in home television fitness shows and later opening a brick-and-mortar gym franchise. LaLanne’s empire was the inspiration for thousands of spinoffs. Now 62.5 million Americans are members of the almost 40,000 gyms across the country.But how did this fitness revolution happen? There is no single explanation, but a combination of factors changed the way Americans understood personal health.