The universe has finally called last rep on Les Mills, the New Zealand fitness colossus who spent 91 years convincing humanity that pain was a lifestyle choice. The man who turned masochism into a multinational empire, whose name is now synonymous with the grim grimace of a thousand middle-managers attempting lunges in fluorescent-lit studios, has shuffled off this mortal coil. Or more accurately, he’s dropped it after a final, gruelling set of deadlifts.
Les Mills was not merely a man. He was a metaphor. He was the living embodiment of that particular form of Anglo-Saxon stoicism that believes if it’s not hurting, you’re not improving. Born in 1930s New Zealand, a land of sheep and stiff upper lips, he competed in the 1958 British Empire and Commonwealth Games, a title so perfectly imperial it could only produce someone who would go on to invent a fitness class called ‘BodyPump’. Because nothing says ‘Empire’ like lifting a plastic bar while a bass drop tells you to ‘feel the burn’.
His empire, Les Mills International, now a behemoth that has sold more choreographed suffering than a West End production of ‘Les Misérables’, will continue without its founder. But let us not mourn. Let us instead celebrate the glorious absurdity of a man who built a fortune on the premise that adults, having escaped the tyranny of school sports, would voluntarily pay to be yelled at by a 23-year-old in neon leggings.
The funeral, one imagines, will be a circuit of twelve stations, each designed to target a different emotional muscle group. The eulogy will be a HIIT session. The pallbearers will be required to maintain a 120 bpm cadence. And the headstone? A simple plaque reading: “Les Mills. He made you sweat. And he was right to.”
Yet behind the sweat and the Lycra was a genuine pioneer. Mills took the dull, masculine grunt of the weight room and re-packaged it as a choreographed, communal experience. He understood, perhaps better than any philosopher, that modern humans need their existential dread drowned out by a kick-drum. He gave the world permission to be utterly ridiculous for an hour, and then drink a protein shake.
So raise a protein shake, or a double gin if you’re feeling rebellious, to the man who taught us that the only bad workout is the one you haven’t paid for. Les Mills is dead. Long live the burn.
(BodyBalance optional).
