New thesis spotlights Les Mills International and its standardized fitness practices

Frida Austmo Wågan
Nord University, Norway

In tune with a rapid growth of health and fitness concepts, Healthism and Professional Identity by Karin Andersson’s explores and problematizes the way health is constructed by fitness professionals. In particular, Andersson’s doctoral thesis examines Les Mills instructors’ ‘health consciousness’ in terms of their meaning-making and building of professional identities related to the health practices they ‘offer’ to clients through Les Mills Group Fitness classes. As Les Mills International is one of the biggest commercial providers of (standardized) fitness practices, the instructors which this thesis focus on typify a rapidly growing activity and health provider.

The book consists of ten well-structured parts that are – although expanded in their scope and outline – aligned with the structure of standardized research papers. This makes the structure of the book easy to follow – at least for scholars in sport and health sciences which I perceive the book to be targeted towards although this is not mentioned explicitly by Andersson.

The initial section of the book starts with a description of the ‘health paradox’ in modern societies, where the levels of sedentariness and obesity globally (‘globesity’) are increasing despite the rapid growth of the fitness industry as a mainstream culture. This creates a nice frame for the book and the following outline of the aim and research questions examined. Additionally, the case studied (the Les Mills concept) are outlined shortly accompanied by a clarification of the compilations structure.

All four articles illustrate different aspects of the healthism discourse and are cleverly put together to show how healthism has become a normalized way of reasoning about health for instructors.

In the first part of the background section, Andersson outlines the concept of ‘healthism’ and the different ways that healthism has become a normalized ‘way’ of making sense of health practices in modern societies, using several illustrative examples. The ‘part two’ of the background section is further dedicated to describing ‘fitness as a fleeting concept’ and group fitness practices like the Les Mills community. After the two background sections, Andersson gives a rich review of literature on health and fitness cultures with particular attention to the critical studies on the health-discourse within sports and fitness practices, despite acknowledging that the research field is characterized by an ‘oppression vs empowerment nexus’ (p.35). Although some additional examples from the literature focused at the ‘empowering’ aspect of health and fitness would help the literature review appear as more nuanced, I think that – together with the background sections – it provides a good contextualization for the further reading of the dissertation. I especially enjoyed the paragraph where Andersson summarizes ‘the contribution of the literature review’ as it gives a nice rationale for doing a study like Andersson’s.

The theoretical foundations for the dissertation and the articles it encompasses are outlined after the literature review. In addition to a well written outline of Foucault’s notion of power and discourse and the concept of professional identity, there is also a section about ‘Sensitizing analytical process’, showing how Andersson brings some theoretical understandings into her examinations. Although this section provides the reader with a certain understanding of how these theoretical foundations inform the four articles, it is relatively short and only grasps the ‘big concepts’ within each line of theory. Some more details about the smaller concepts that are briefly mentioned at the end of the section (e.g., Hochschild’s ‘Emotional Labor’ and Collins’s ‘Interactional Ritual Chains’) would thus benefit this part of the dissertation – especially if they were accompanied by some reflections on how theories and concepts informing the thesis works together.

In the methodology and methods section, Andersson starts out by situating herself within the field that she researches. This is important, as she has been a part of the Les Mills instructor community for several years, which may in turn have impacted the research process and her findings – something that she reflects nicely on through these two sections. Following her positioning on the field, she shortly elaborates on the methodological design of her dissertation through a few paragraphs on case studies and mixed methods approaches, taking a pragmatist position. This pragmatic position and the choice of methodology may – after my opinion – have been better justified through some additional arguments and more in-depth reflection on the philosophy of science underpinning her methodology. Moving on to the parts that particularly addressing the methods used in the four different studies, the choices here are well outlined and justified – with one exception: a lack of details on the ethnical, social and cultural context of the participants that exist outside the Les Mills Instructor community. Some more attention to national and sociocultural aspects of the sample could thus strengthen the transparency of the dissertation, as well as the results in the first article (‘Being fit or having fun? What it means to be a Les Mills Fitness instructor’).

The articles included in the thesis are shortly outlined in a separate section of the book, while the full manuscripts for each article are included at the end of the compilation. All four articles illustrate different aspects of the healthism discourse and are cleverly put together to show how healthism has become a normalized way of reasoning about health for instructors. For instance, how the instructors ‘understand their professional identity through their bodies while positioning the body both as a threat and as a solution to health’ and how ‘this perspective was fortified during the COVID-19 pandemic, where staying fit became a defense strategy against the virus’ (second article).

After reflecting on the empirical findings which demonstrate how healthism is apparent in the way that LMI fitness instructors construct and practice their professional identities, Andersson delves into a stimulating discussion around ‘how Les Mills is an example of a postfeminist community where healthism fuels a meaningful identity’ (p. 95). This discussion is definitely my favorite part of the book, and I think Andersson illustrate in an excellent way how the instructors have embodied healthism by adapting to the ideals and meanings ascribed to health and exercise in the Les Mills fitness regimes despite their sometimes ambivalent feeling towards these regimes. Furthermore, she uses the example of how the COVID-19 pandemic changed the fitness industry to exemplify how embodied and normalized practices are changeable through continuous renegotiation in accordance with contextual factors. To conclude, parallels are drawn back to concepts introduced earlier in the book (e.g. the health paradox) and research questions are explicitly addressed, demonstrating how the thesis extends the current literature in the field.

In sum, the discussion – and the book as a whole – is easy to follow, well written and illustrates an important topic for health and fitness professionals in a modern and commercialized society. Despite some smaller critiques considering the pragmatic methodology and a shortage of socio-cultural contextualization of the participants and research settings, I think Andersson’s study provides essential insights into the field of health, fitness and physical activity. This makes it an important read for both scholars and practitioners in this field, although I would argue that it is most applicable to students and researchers because of its format and academic structure.

Copyright © Frida Austmo Wågan 2025