Athleticism Is the New Fitness Flex

WHAT COMES TO mind when you think of someone who’s really fit? For most people, the end goal of their workouts has been one thing: How they look. The most obvious way to prove you’re serious about fitness has traditionally been to look the part.

But in recent years, the social media arms race to produce the most attention-grabbing content has created a different bar: When your feed is already filled with washboard abs and envy-inducing physiques, those admirable (and hard-earned) gains may not be enough to earn serious fitness clout. And in a world where you have more control over how your body (partly because weight loss can now be aided by GLP-1s) looking fit is sometimes decoupled from hours spent grinding in the gym or dialing in your diet.

That’s opened the door for a new fitness status symbol: Athleticism, the ability to combine physical qualities like strength, speed, power, agility, and coordination. Guys are now aiming to sprint faster, jump higher, and move more explosively—and they’re doing this largely for its own sake, not because they’re training for the basketball court or the football field.

In some cases, it seems to be about content: biohacking tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson is attempting to dunk, an athletic feat that marries coordination, serious explosiveness, elite genetics, and years of technical skill development. In other instances, it’s simply about moving better: Since retiring from bodybuilding, six-time Mr. Olympia Classic Physique champion, Chris Bumstead, has shifted his focus to athleticism, posting videos of 60-inch box jumps and treadmill sprints. But no matter what, many fitness feeds are filled with guys who can . . . actually move.

None of this is new, of course. Anyone who played a college sport will be familiar with plyometrics and power development, and strength and conditioning coaches have been training with these principles in mind for decades. What is new is who’s doing it, how they're broadcasting, and, crucially, what's missing—an actual sport that demands these specific physical attributes.

“For a long time, a lot of guys trained with one main goal—to build their body,” says DeVentri Jordan, a performance coach for elite athletes and NFL and NBA prospects and founder of GameFace Training. Now, he says, more guys are asking “what can I actually do with the body that I’ve built?”

The Social Media Effect

DYLAN SHANNON, A fitness content creator and RAW nutrition athlete, started posting on social media about two and a half years ago. His feed is filled with equal parts PR lifts, bounding drills, and max effort sprints. He does all this with that doesn’t look like a stereotypical “athlete”; Shannon is built like a powerlifter. (He says that people often troll his sprinting videos, including one comment with a GIF of the Hulk sprinting.) “I think one of the reasons I've seen some success is 'cause I train this way,” he says. “People see that they can be both jacked and athletic.”

He’s certainly not the only one finding an audience for it. In the last two years, Shannon has noticed a “huge explosion” in athleticism-focused strength coaches or athletes on social media. Jason and Lauren Pak have amassed more than 1.5 million Instagram followers with an approach that emphasizes strength, mobility, and athletic movement, including videos encouraging people to “train mobility like an athlete.” Online coach Brad Becca racks up hundreds of thousands of views on videos demonstrating agility and explosiveness drills, while Bademba Doumbouya puts everyone from suburban moms to 60-year-old men through mind-bendingly complex coordination drills that look like something a pro athlete might struggle with. These posts rack up views, sure—but Jordan is quick to caution that just because something looks athletic on social media doesn’t mean it’ll actually help you become a better athlete.

The dominance of short form video may also be moving the athleticism trend along: If you only have a few seconds to capture someone’s attention, a display of raw power and speed is going to be more eye-catching than watching someone hammer out biceps curls or maintain their goal pace on a run. (We can only watch so many videos of runners putting up another finger for every mile of their marathon.) “Sprinting or dunking and lifting heavy weights—it looks cool on social media,” says Shannon. “It's easy to sell it that way.”

Gyms Are Getting More Athletic, Too

BOUTIQUE AND BUDGET gyms alike are catering to—and often driving—the growing interest: Tone House, which regularly programs agility drills and sprinting, markets their classes to “unleash the inner athlete” in every New Yorker. And no-frills East Coast chain PureGym recently remodeled some locations to allow room for more athletic training, subbing out rows of cardio machines for turf, which gives aspiring athletes room to run and jump, and two tools that are often perceived as athletic training tools (even though they aren’t actually that!), Ski-ergs and weight sleds.

Juan Herrera-Perla, head coach of Hybrix XT classes at Life Time, says that more and more, their members are calling themselves “athletes”, elevating a trend that started back in the CrossFit era. “And they absolutely are (athletes),” he says. “When they go into a competition setting or when they come into a competitive class, they get a real taste of what being an athlete is.”

The rise of Hyrox has also opened the doors for a host of fitness competitions that bill themselves as testing grounds for athletic movements. Competitions like Life Time Games and ATHX ask athletes to merge lifting basics, like a strict press, with conditioning moves like box jump overs or med ball shoulder tosses. Apex Athlete, a new competition blending a 40-yard dash, vertical jump, trap-bar deadlift, and other NFL scouting combine-style tests, lets the most fitness-obsessed compete like football prospects.

For a lot of gym-goers, these competitions have turned the nebulous goal of becoming ‘more athletic’ into a set of skills they have a reason to train. Shannon, who also sells online programs, says he gets a lot of men in their late 20s and 30s who played a high school or college sport and miss training for performance. “They’re getting tired of traditional lifting and not having any larger goals,” he says.

The rise of athleticism training also gives guys a new collection of measurables, many of which can feel more attainable than some classic goals. And some people might be intimidated by the sheer duration of a marathon or half-marathon, but training for a two- to three-second box jump or broad jump can feel far less daunting.

The strict standards of these competitions also force athletes to consider not just how strong they are, but how their movement patterns actually translate, says Shannon. In Apex, male contestants must showcase strength by benching 225 pounds and trap bar deadlift 405 pounds, but power through a 40-yard dash without blowing up a hamstring. Herrera-Perla says many members have gotten serious about mobility after realizing they don’t have the squat depth to get below parallel for their Hyrox wall balls.

What You Might Miss About Training Like an Athlete

WITH ANYTHING THAT garners attention online, there comes the tendency to replicate what you see on viral posts. “One of the biggest misconceptions is if the exercise looks athletic, it must be,” says Jordan. “You see somebody doing, like a ladder drill, jumping on a box, or, combining four or five movements, and it looks impressive.” But he says you’re missing all the boring, behind-the-scenes work that every athlete has to undergo. Much of it—like assessing ankle dorsiflexion or chin posture, or measuring how much force an athlete is applying to the ground—isn’t sexy.

For an athlete who’s training for sport, everything is programmed around the demands of that sport. Football players train acceleration and change of direction so they can evade a tackle; basketball forwards develop power to jump higher; pickleball players practice lateral movement so they can react quickly at the net. So when people train for Instagram athleticism as the end goal, they’re often missing the “why,” Jordan says.

If your goal is to become “more athletic”, Jordan’s first question would be: Well, what do you want to be able to do? While general athleticism includes qualities like speed, strength, power, mobility, coordination, and body control, it also includes “being able to use these different qualities when it matters,” he says.

That “when it matters” will look different when there’s no coach or sport dictating it for you. Maybe you want enough speed to chase after your kid, or balance and coordination to stay on your feet as you get older. That doesn’t mean you need to set wild records in the process. “You may not ever be able to jump on a 60-inch plyo box,” Jordan says. “And you’ve just got to be real—your ceiling may be 25-inch plyo box jump. You’ve just got to be okay with that.”

Smart Ways to Add More Athleticism to Your Training

JUST AS IMPORTANTLY, before you chase that 60-inch box jump (or even the 25-incher), master a few athleticism basics.

The best way to start training like an athlete: Embrace a few types of movement in your workout routine.

Jumping

Almost every athletic competition has at least one movement that forces you to control your body while airborne, like a box jump, vertical leap test, or broad jump test. If you’re a gym veteran, you could certainly add one of these moves to your training. If you’re new to the gym, start by jumping rope, or add pogos to your routine. To do a pogo, simply bend your knees slightly and hop up and down on both feet. Do this for 30 seconds, then rest for 30 seconds. Repeat for 2 to 3 sets at the start or end of your workouts 2 to 3 times a week.

Throwing

Athleticism requires you to push your body to, at least for a moment, deliver its maximum force output. Sometimes, that means deadlifting a heavy load for a single rep. Sometimes, it’s a vertical leap. And one of the simplest ways to train that is with a max-effort medicine ball overhead throw. You can do this with any weight of medball: Simply hold the medball with both arms, and either throw it overhead as far behind you as possible or as high overhead as possible. Do 3 sets of 2 to 3 throws. And, especially if you’re throwing as far behind yourself as possible, keep track of your throws. As you get more comfortable, you’ll be able to throw farther.

Lateral Movement

Whether you love watching football, basketball, or soccer, there’s a good chance you’ve noticed this about athletes: They don’t simply move forwards and backwards on their field of play. Playing sports requires you to twist and move laterally, and too many weight room workouts skip over this. Make sure you don’t by including one lateral component in your training at least twice a week. This can be a classic exercise like a lateral lunge. Or get onto the turf and try lateral shuffles; work for 3 30-second sets back and forth.

Want a full program that can help you train laterally? Check out our Ultimate Athleticism 8-week program, which is a great way to jump (literally!) into athletic training.