Deconstructing the Fitness Industrial Complex: How to Resist, Disrupt, and Reclaim What It Means to Be Fit in American Culture

Perspectives from QTBIPOC, fat, and disabled trainers, bodyworkers, and coaches on reimagining fitness for all bodies.

For readers of Belly of the Beast, Care Work, and The Body is Not an Apology

Fit is subjective. Who our society designates as fit–and who gets to be fit in our society–is predefined by the coaches, gyms, and systems at large that uphold and reproduce the Fitness Industrial Complex for their own structural and material gain.

The Fitness Industrial Complex uplifts some bodies while denigrating others. Bodies that are Black, Brown, queer, trans, poor, fat, and disabled–bodies that don’t conform, that resist and disrupt–are excluded from being fit. Through the stories and experiences of activist trainers, coaches, and bodyworkers of diverse identities and experiences, this anthology interrogates:

The ideas and beliefs we’ve internalized about health, fitness, and our own and others’ bodies

How to deconstruct and re-envision fitness as a practice for all bodies

The fitness industry’s role in upholding and reinforcing oppression

Exclusivity, unsafety, and harm in mainstream fitness spaces

How to empower ourselves and our communities to push back against the FIC

Speaking directly to sick, queer, trans, disabled, and BIPOC readers, Deconstructing the Fitness Industrial Complex is part urgent inquiry, part radical deconstruction, and part call to action: to build spaces that welcome and work for all; to reclaim movement as a vital and liberatory practice; and to embody a model of joy and community care outside the mainstream fitness culture.