20 years of gyms, gadgets and gurus.

By James Fell
Illustration by Dean Stanton

1991: A Canadian fitness magazine is born. And not just any magazine, but a good one. IMPACT started and has stayed strong through the past two decades, surviving and thriving on the Western Canadian desire to learn about fitness as it pertains to us. This is what we want to read; what we’ll continue to read.

As each issue flipped through the months on the calendar, bringing us the latest news and changes in fitness, there were other changes too. If you wanted to listen to this ’90s craze called “grunge” while working out, you either had to bribe the stereo Nazi at the gym to put the radio on a station that didn’t suck, or haul around a cassette player the size of daschund. If you were high-tech and upgraded to a portable CD player to Smell Like Teen Spirit so you could achieve workout Nirvana it was easier to skip past songs, but that sucker also skipped like an epileptic spider monkey if you dared slow jog with it.

Some things in fitness — such as the advent of the iPod and IMPACT Magazine — have changed for the better in the past 20 years. Other things, not so much . . .

Gyms
These have mostly got better, partly because of fitness fashions. Everyone needs a nice butt to look at every once in a while.
In 1991 we fortunately left behind the age of buying lifetime memberships followed by finding padlocks and bankruptcy notices on health club doors. The gym gained real traction and nicer and more ethical people came to town. Hours got longer, equipment got better, trainers (at least in some cases) became better qualified, and hygiene started to be taken seriously. We went from old-school Schwarzenegger contraptions for lifting to high-tech devices. People stopped leaving their ectoplasmic residue reminiscent of Ghostbusters all over the equipment and started wiping things off. Patrons even stopped smelling (mostly) like they could knock a buzzard off a gut pile and just having normal-level B.O. Classes went from Jane Fonda to spinning to Zumba, whatever that is.
And acceptance grew as well. We gym goers transformed from “the Few, the Proud, the Vain,” into just normal folks who like to be healthy.

Gadgets
The Soloflex was heavily marketed as a soon-to-be coat rack, but then was replaced by the Bowflex, which was heavily marketed as a soon-to-be coat rack. Stairmasters slowly got replaced with ellipticals, treadmills became ever more high-tech, with television screens and fat-blasting programs, and infomercials ran wild with outlandish claims of weight loss and ass-toning.
Chuck Norris and Christie Brinkley hit the airwaves in 1997 with the Total Gym, and people bought them and probably lost fingers, and then many years later we got the Ab-Circle Pro which looks like it enabled people to blow out lumbar discs faster than ever. The Bodyblade made users appear as though they were having a seizure, and Tony Little looked like a Gazelle with a mullet. And then, everything was topped by the Shake Weight: The masturbation mimicker which has sold 4.5 million units, I’m sure many for bridal shower gag gifts.

Gurus
The fitness industry lost its guru this year — Jack LaLanne. LaLanne didn’t flog gadgets, he invented real fitness machines, the basic designs of which are still used today. LaLanne even invented the modern health club.

And then there are pretenders. It’s amazing what you can get away with as long as you’ve got a six-pack and a smile.

Oprah brought us our share of these. Bob Greene is well-educated in exercise physiology, which apparently also made him qualified to launch a brand of butter substitutes. Jorge Cruise told us we could lose a lot of weight by exercising just “eight minutes in the morning,” regardless of the first law of thermodynamics, and Dr. Phil’s diet book sold millions of copies despite looking like he’s entering his third trimester.

In 1999, Bill Phillips showed amazing before-and-after pictures of people getting their “Body for Life” in only 12 weeks, and more recently Tim Ferriss upped the ante when he proclaimed he gained 34 pounds of muscle in 28 days via a sum total of four hours of weightlifting. Coincidentally, sightings of male bovine droppings have skyrocketed.

And then there is Jillian Michaels. She committed her hate crimes against the obese for many years on the train wreck spectacle known as The Biggest Loser. Screaming, swearing and bullying her way into reality TV stardom; selling book after book and DVD after DVD. And don’t forget the diet pills and detox cleanses.

Today
And now we are in 2011. Twenty years of a great magazine sharing great advice from the best fitness experts in the West. A lot of things have changed in fitness in the past 20 years, but IMPACT’s message has always stayed true. Like Jack LaLanne, IMPACT is all about exercise and healthy eating, inspiring by example.

IMPACT has helped carry the fitness revolution into this new millennium and with every issue it inspires thousands of readers to pursue an active and healthy lifestyle.
Here’s to another 20 years.

James S. Fell, MBA, is a certified strength and conditioning specialist. He works as a strategic fitness consultant and fitness writer

September/October 2011