Since the beginning of time, humans have enjoyed playing sports and working up a sweat. But it wasn’t until the Victorian Era, in the early 1800s, that people began to take it really seriously.
Places for workouts, called gymnasiums, started popping up around Europe and North America. England during this time was entrenched in a movement called Muscular Christianity, the idea that sports and physical activity could be a way to develop Christian character and masculinity.
Better bodies could help the strong protect the weak, and being better looking meant better exemplifying the ideals of Jesus. As ideals changed and people began to value muscles and strength, some pretty weird workouts began to emerge.
Related: 10 Ways That Tuberculosis Shaped Victorian Society
10 Circus Acts
When you think of strong men, there’s a good chance you think of… well, strongmen. Those bulky, cartoonish people from 19th-century circuses. These men were actually some of the first to popularize the idea of “working out.” Although people have been lifting weights since the times of ancient Greeks, the idea of getting stronger or more agile simply for the sake of it didn’t become desirable to the masses until the Victorian Era.
Circus acts helped bring this into the mainstream, particularly a Prussian man named Eugene Sandow. Sandow, a circus performer, organized the world’s first bodybuilding competition. His impressive feats of strength, which supposedly included wrestling a full-sized lion, inspired other men across Europe to see how big they could get their muscles. With weights not in fashion quite yet, breaking chains, tearing apart large books, and bending iron bars and horseshoes are just some of the quirky ways men built their strength.[1]
9 Get a Massage
As industrialization led to more machinery and less need for physical labor, it became necessary for people to exercise on their own. With this, the stigma pertaining to muscles and the lower class began to fade.
Swedish physician Gustav Zander helped establish what we know today as “the gym,” as he created 27 machines designed for fitness. Some of these machines bear an unmistakable resemblance to what we might see at Planet Fitness today—stationary bicycles, rowing machines, etc. However, some of them simply have no heart rate or strength benefits.
One such example is Zander’s ab-rolling machine, which did exactly what it states—rubbed on your stomach. Nice and relaxing, but not really a stimulating workout.[2]
8 Play Baseball
While playing baseball in and of itself isn’t that weird, some of the particular rules that came along with the original version of the game in the mid-1800s are not what you might expect.
First of all, Victorian baseball had no innings. The winner was simply whichever team made it to 21 first—meaning games could go on for quite a while! Balls and bats were much bigger, pitchers threw underhand, and no gloves were used at all (ouch!). Umpires were randomly chosen from the crowd before the game, and according to a 1916 newspaper, “the umpire always received the choicest bits of food and the largest glass of beer.”
Worst of all, “spitballs” were allowed until the 1920s. Not the kind lobbed in a third-grade classroom, these were balls thrown with mud, grease, soap, and other substances pitchers hoped would make the ball more unpredictable.[3]
7 Use an Electric Belt
From healing hernias to getting rid of fat, the electropathic belt, which consisted of silver-coated zinc, copper coils, and wires that sent electricity through the human body, was used as a one-stop-cure throughout the Victorian Era.
Advertisements claimed that the belt would help people attain “new and better lives” and that it would fix “weak men” (though it never specified how). Pictures of burly men and skinny women adored newspapers throughout the late 1880s and into the 1900s.
Even after it was found that the belt’s currents were nearly undetectable on galvanometers, and almost all testimonies from advertisements were discovered as fakes, the trend continued into the 1950s and ’60s, where they gained a bit of movement and were rebranded as “vibrating belts.”[4]
6 Stretch Your Ribcage
Another one of Dr. Zander’s 27 machines includes one from an 1892 photobook, but this contraption looks particularly frightening.
In the photo, a man lays on a plank of wood, his jaw held in place by a leather belt. At his head is a weight, and two pads are situated under his chest. With hands at his sides, he appears to be waiting for his dentist to arrive and not like he’s ready to work up a sweat. In fact, this device was apparently meant to realign the ribcage, something we now know is better left up to a doctor. Or a corset.[5]
5 Indian Clubs
Also called Persian meels, Indian clubs originated in India and Persia by soldiers as a way to improve strength, agility, and balance. These bottle-shaped clubs are similar to juggling clubs, and after Britain colonized India in the 1700s, this form of exercise followed.
The clubs aren’t juggled, as it would seem, but swung in certain patterns and at varying weights. In some cases, such as in the British military, specific movements would be choreographed so that the men practicing seemed to be doing an early form of zumba or aerobics classes. Physical culturist J. Madison Watson explained that the clubs are “one of the very best and most extended series of exercises for developing the muscular power of the whole body.”
Though it’s fallen out of practice since Victorian times, the Indian club craze of the 1800s led to the inclusion of club swinging in the 1902 and 1934 Olympic Games.[6]
4 Ride the Chamber Horse
Horse riding is still a popular sport throughout the world. But what do you do when it’s too cold or rainy to ride? Luckily, Brits have a lot of experience with weather like that and knew just what to do. In the 19th century, the chamber horse was invented, a chair set on springs so that one could bounce the same way they might on a trotting horse.
Horseriding was a genteel and civilized sport at the time, as only wealthy people were able to partake. Thus, the chamber horse became a feature of mansions and estates for a short period in the 1800s. It’s even mentioned in Jane Austen’s unfinished 1817 novel Sandition and grew in popularity from there.
Perfect for those of us who hate to stand.[7]
3 Bartitsu
A mix between jiu-jitsu, bare-knuckle boxing, and French kickboxing, Bartitsu became popular in Britain throughout the late 1890s. It was a way for the higher classes to defend themselves against “riff-raff,” as London was becoming increasingly dangerous.
This gentlemanly way of defending oneself grew out of European fascination with Asian culture in the 1890s, along with worries about increases in crime. Edward William Barton-Wright, the inventor of Bartitsu, established a school for his new form of self-defense in London’s Soho neighborhood.
Although Bartitsu has fallen out of favor in modern years in lieu of karate and judo, some people still practice the sport. In 2022, a gym in Chicago boasted Bartitsu lessons that were attended by many regulars. An interview revealed that participants loved that it was both historically relevant and great for muscular strength, coordination, and agility.
Even if Bartitsu continues to lessen in popularity, it will never be completely erased from history. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ensured this when he had his timeless main character Sherlock Holmes defend himself against nemesis Moriarty using the Bartitsu style of wrestling in the 1903 story “The Adventure of the Empty House.”[8]
2 Ring Bells
Ever wonder where the term “dumbbell” comes from?
In the late Stuart era in England, people began to notice that the men who rang church bells for a living were considerably stronger and more muscular than those who had sedentary jobs. In the past, being bulkier and strong was an indication that you must do labor for a living and thus were poor. So there wasn’t much demand for more muscles before this time.
But as body image standards started to change, Brits saw that ringing these bells was one way to become more brawny. Contraptions of ropes and bullies with a heavy weight rather than an actual bell were created so that people could work out at home. The bell was called dumbbells not because they were stupid but because the word “dumb” at the time referred to silence, and the machines did not make noise like a normal bell would.[9]
1 Competitive Walking
Anyone who’s seen the “Stock Car Races” episode of Malcolm in the Middle knows that racewalking can get pretty competitive. What you might not know is that it started way back in the 19th century.
Pedestrianism was the art of walking. Sounds easy? How about doing it for 450 miles (725 kilometers)? In 1860, a young man named Edward Payson Weston bet a friend that Abraham Lincoln would lose the upcoming election. As the loser, he was made to walk all the way from New York City to Washington, D.C., to see the inauguration—a distance of over 478 miles (770 kilometers). The world was fascinated with his endurance, and the sport of pedestrianism was born.
Weston continued to gain praise for feats such as walking 1,058 miles (1,702 kilometers) in 30 days and walking backward for 200 miles (322 kilometers) in 41 days. The sport grew quickly, and though Weston wasn’t always the winner of competitions, he certainly was the mascot.
In 1879, the original Madison Square Garden in NYC hosted a six-day-long walking competition, where 13 men had to walk in circles for six days in a row until they had walked 450. They slept, ate, and did everything else right there in the stadium. Though it wasn’t particularly exciting, pedestrianism was popular because pretty much anyone could watch it whenever they wanted. If you got off work late but still wanted to do something, those 13 men would still be putting one foot in front of the other.[10]