{"id":20522,"date":"2025-01-21T15:42:23","date_gmt":"2025-01-21T16:42:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20522"},"modified":"2025-01-21T17:31:46","modified_gmt":"2025-01-21T17:31:46","slug":"are-americans-doing-fitness-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=20522","title":{"rendered":"Are Americans Doing Fitness Wrong?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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For many people in the United States, staying in shape means getting in your car and driving to the gym. Movement is something on a to-do list, siloed off from the rest of daily life.<\/p>\n

That mentality is quintessentially American, according to Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, a professor of history at the New School and the author of \u201cFit Nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s this crazy paradox where America is, in many ways, the center of the commercial fitness industry, but it\u2019s also a place where by pretty much every measure people are extraordinarily unfit,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Only about a quarter of American adults get the recommended amount of physical activity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a>, and inactivity contributes to 1 in 10 premature deaths<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Part of the problem, Dr. Mehlman Petrzela said, is the \u201cpay-to-play experience\u201d embedded in American fitness culture. There are endless gyms, classes and products that promise to make you fitter, as long as you hand over your credit card.<\/p>\n

But there are other ways of approaching exercise. In many nations, movement is baked into everyday life \u2014 as a way to commute from one place to another, to build community or to connect with nature. Here are some lessons Americans might learn from those cultures, according to fitness experts.<\/p>\n

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For many people in the United States, staying in shape means getting in your car and driving to the gym. Movement is something on a to-do list, siloed off from the rest of daily life.That mentality is quintessentially American, according to Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, a professor of history at the New School and the author of \u201cFit Nation.\u201d\u201cThere\u2019s this crazy paradox where America is, in many ways, the center of the commercial fitness industry, but it\u2019s also a place where by pretty much every measure people are extraordinarily unfit,\u201d she said.Only about a quarter of American adults get the recommended amount of physical activity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and inactivity contributes to 1 in 10 premature deaths.Part of the problem, Dr. Mehlman Petrzela said, is the \u201cpay-to-play experience\u201d embedded in American fitness culture. There are endless gyms, classes and products that promise to make you fitter, as long as you hand over your credit card.But there are other ways of approaching exercise. In many nations, movement is baked into everyday life \u2014 as a way to commute from one place to another, to build community or to connect with nature. Here are some lessons Americans might learn from those cultures, according to fitness experts.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20524,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20522"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20525,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20522\/revisions\/20525"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}