The workout will be killer. Your body, deadly.
With the new
Hunger Games-inspired exercise trend, we may be witnessing the perfect
marriage between a pop culture phenomenon and the fitness industry’s
love of a good pun.
The popular classes, now launching in Canada,
are based on the best-selling book series and movie in which teenage “tributes” are forced to fight one another to
the death using weaponry, agility, strength and savvy.
It’s survival of the fittest – not unlike a health club.
“Training
like a tribute is a cross between combat training and cross-fit,” says
Brent Bishop, owner of Think Fitness Studios in Toronto, which kicks off
its Hunger Games program April 4. “Competition brings a new element to
the basic self-directed workout and guarantees a higher performance
level and higher display of human potential.”
The eight-week
session incorporates a combination of conventional and non-conventional
exercises, including box-jumps, sprints, rope-climbs, sandbags and, just
as in the fictional Games, the occasional “unexpected twist.” For those
outside Toronto, Bishop will be posting videos to iam-bishop.com that
allow anyone to join the challenge.
Similar classes already are
being offered in various U.S. cities, each leveraging the Hunger Games
in its own way. Among the most realistic is the Train Like a Tribute
program through New York Sports’ Clubs, which so closely replicates the
books’ action that it’s as much role-playing as it is exercise.
The
diverse classes involve archery, sans arrow; climbing, speed and
agility training; racing to a “cornucopia” to retrieve provisions, such
as mats, dumbbells and towels; “sponsor gifts,” the likes of a bottle of
water or energy bar; and even faux disasters and threats, such as
mutant dog attacks.
“People are looking for something that’s
really going to get them in crazy shape,” says master trainer Fawn
Cronin, who plays heroine Katniss Everdeen in the classes. “The Hunger
Games gave us a template for that.”
Amy Gillespie, a hardcore fan
of the book series, says she’s intrigued by the concept but harbours
concerns that it signals a shark-jump. That is, the dubious tipping point
at which something popular begins its inevitable cultural swan-dive.
“There’s
a fine line between capitalizing on hype and becoming parody,” says
Gillespie, a Toronto mother of two. “As a fan, I’m game until things
start feeling lame.”
Indeed, with spinoff products already
spanning everything from Snuggies to cookbooks, marketing expert Lindsay
Meredith says entrepreneurs are “segmenting the hell out of the
market.” But in the fitness industry, which has long thrived on putting a
new face on old concepts, he suspects consumers will respond positively
– at least for a time.
“Does it work? Yeah. The problem is that
it only works for a while,” says Meredith, a professor at Simon Fraser
University in Burnaby, B.C. “The bloom will eventually be off the rose
and the new-and-improved won’t be so new-and-improved any more.”
Tabitha
Grady, owner of River City Fitness in Edmonton, says gimmicks are
indeed effective at getting people in the door but notes there has to be
a payoff for them afterward.
She says the odds are in a
Games-inspired workout’s favour because it leverages people’s love of
the books, uses competition to motivate performance, and leaves ample
room for fantasy.
“I’m a big believer in personal mantras: any
line or thought that inspires you to push further when you’ve hit a
wall. That may mean imagining you’re being chased, tapping into that
fight or flight response,” says Grady. “I tell my participants all the
time, ‘Pretend like you’re running for your life.'”
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