ABSTRACT
In order to provide rich corporeal grounding for subsequent discussions into fitness cultures, within this chapter we introduce our gym bodies. We each present brief auto-ethnographic vignettes that ‘confess’ our relationships to gyms and the specific dispositions that we have towards our own bodies. The personal narratives offered further serve to situate ourselves in relation to the contrasting experiences of others which we explore in this book. Subsequently, we contextualise what is meant by ‘going to the gym’ by acknowledging the dizzying array of practices available in contemporary Western society and the stratification of gym spaces that have emerged in order to house these activities. In doing so, we outline how the adoption of an ‘embodied approach’, an enfleshed way of knowing which attunes to carnality and sensuousness of experience, provides the essential guiding concept for our explorations. Finally, an outline of chapters and boundaries of the book is detailed.
