that such exercise soon becomes boring for many people. By contrast, he exhorted people
to rediscover the joy of “purposeful” physical activity such as walking one’s dog or
commuting actively (e.g., cycling) to work. Interestingly, some of these ideas are echoed
in Solnit’s (2001) analysis of the significance of modern gymnasia, drawn from her
remarkable book Wanderlust: A History of Walking (see Box 8.1).
Box 8.1 On treadmills, gymnasia and the myth of Sisyphus.,. thinking
about the modern meaning of exerciseIn Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit (2001) meditated on the question of
what it means to go for a walk. As this is no longer possible in many urban areas due to
road design and traffic congestion, gymnasia have arisen as places of exercise. But what
happens symbolically in such places? In a chapter entitled “Aerobic Sisyphus”, Solnit
draws an analogy between people’s exercise behaviour in gymnasia (especially their use
of treadmills) and the psychological experience of repetitive labour captured in the
ancient Greek myth of Sisyphus, Briefly, according to this myth, the Gods punished
Sisyphus, who had robbed and murdered people, by condemning him to push a boulder
up a hill for eternity. Extending this analogy, Solnit (2001) argued that just as the suntan
became fashionable when poor people moved from outdoor work to the factories,
muscular development has now become a status symbol simply because most jobs no
longer require bodily strength. In other words, muscles, like tans, are “an aesthetic of the
obsolete” (p, 261), Based on this assumption, the gymnasium becomes something more
than a convenient location in which to engage in exercise behaviour. Instead, it is a
“factory for the production ofmuscles, or of fitness” (p. 262). Viewed from this
perspective, the treadmill becomes “a Sisyphean contraption” that prevents people from
walking anywhere—a device which celebrates people’s alienation because it allows them
“to go nowhere in places where there is now nowhere to go” (p. 264). In summary, the
treadmill has replaced the outdoor environment that people used to walk in naturally:
“space—as landscape, terrain, spectacle, experience—has vanished” (p. 266).
Questions
Do you agree with Solnif’s controversial conclusions about the gymnasia as shrines to
narcissism or “factories” concerned with the production of fashionable body shapes? Is
she correct when she attacks the mindless glorification of exercise in gyms? What are the
advantages and disadvantages of exercising indoors? Do you think that the myth of
Sisyphus is a valid analogy for certain kinds of exercise? After all, in the original version
of the myth, Sisyphus varied the absurd and repetitious task of pushing the boulder up the
hill by changing the pace of the activity. In other words, he trained himself to change the
way in which he tackled the task so that it would never be boring (Ravizza, 2002).
An important theme emerging from the criticisms of Morgan (2001) and Solnit (2001) is
that in order to yield optimal benefits, physical activity requires both a sense of purpose
and a natural context. It is not surprising, therefore, that the potential advantages of
exercising outdoors are attracting increasing interest from the scientific community. For
Does a healthy body always lead to a healthy mind? Exploring exercise psychology 217