Foreword to the paperback edition

Fitness is fast. Just four years have passed since the first publication of this book and fitness has been mushrooming all around the world in ever new guises. In 2013 the global fitness industry generated more than 75 billion US dollars in revenue according to the annual IHRSA Fitness Report. In the same year, Les Mills Global Consumer Fitness Survey conducted by Nielsen in 13 countries including Australia, Brazil, the United States and several European countries showed that 27% of the total adult population attends a fitness gym, and that 61% of regular exercisers actually do gym-type activities. The success of fitness and the sheer size of the phenomenon, at a time when the growth of the fitness industry is somewhat slacking as a combination of the effects of economic crisis and market saturation, is certainly striking. Yet, more striking is what fitness stands for, how it is finding its place in the fields of leisure and sport and how it contributes to the changes within and between such fields. This requires going beyond sheer numbers, and adopt a critical point of view, attentive to cultural meanings and social changes. From such standpoint, what is relevant indeed is that fitness activities are being increasingly considered as the major sport activity among the physically active population worldwide and, what is more, they are activities of remarkable cultural significance, being often used to indicate social standing, attractiveness, morality or, in some case, excess.