Opinion: The pressure to be 'fit' didn't come out of nowhere - here's how it started |
IRELAND’S FITNESS ANXIETY did not arrive with Instagram. We have been importing body pressure for more than 160 years. It began when British school inspectors brought Swedish drill into Galway classrooms in the 1860s, teaching children that movement meant discipline, precision and obedience.
From there came Victorian manuals, measurement systems, diet lectures and strongmen who turned the body into something to be measured and judged. The modern obsession with steps, stats and transformation photos did not appear overnight. It was built slowly across generations.
One of the earliest places you see this pattern is in the school system. Inspectorate files from the 1860s and 1870s are filled with references to drill and gymnastics. Children in Galway, Mayo and Roscommon were marched through arm circles, knee bends and toe points in cold classrooms, oftentimes by former military instructors. A school report from 1875 claimed that drill would create orderly habits and moral discipline.
Enjoyment was not part of the discussion. In fact, exercise was often used as punishment. By the 1880s many national schools had compulsory drill following the 1878 Intermediate Education Act. For an entire generation movement meant following orders. Not play. Not exploration. Command and repetition.
Measurement ran alongside this idea of bodily discipline. Ireland’s first recognisable gymnasium was opened by Monsieur Beaujeu on Dawson Street, Dublin, in the 1820s. Beaujeu promised to reform body and mind through exercise and invited doctors, politicians and........