Les Mills, the man who turned physical jerks into a global religion, has died at 91. For a generation of middle-managers and their aspirational spouses, his name was synonymous with a particular kind of pain: the controlled, communal agony of a BODYCOMBAT class, the rhythmic humiliation of RPM. But beyond the branded leotards and the choreographed grunts, Mills’ death marks the end of a peculiar chapter in British-Commonwealth cultural history.
Mills was a New Zealander, born in 1933, who represented his country in weightlifting at the 1950 British Empire Games. He became a physical education teacher, then a TV fitness star, then a franchising pioneer. His genius was to take the old-school, empire-era ideal of physical discipline – the cold shower, the early morning run, the moral superiority of a straight back – and package it for the age of aerobicised narcissism. The Les Mills brand, run today by his children, is a multi-million dollar machine that exports classes to over 100 countries. It is, in its way, as British as the AA or the Premier League.
But what does his passing tell us about how we live now? The fitness industry has changed. It is no longer about obedience to a charismatic leader. The cult of the instructor has given way to the cult of the self. People don't go to classes to be told what to do; they go to record themselves doing it. They curate their workouts for Instagram, not for the approval of a man in a microphone. Mills represented a more deferential era, when a New Zealander with a stern jaw and a pair of white shorts could command a room full of office workers to squat until they wept.
There is a social class dimension here. Les Mills classes, with their expensive memberships and branded merchandise, are the preserve of the professional classes. They are a form of conspicuous discipline, a way of signalling that you have the time and money to invest in your body. The working class, by contrast, have long since abandoned the gym for cheaper, more private forms of exercise: jogging, home workouts, or simply not bothering. Mills’ death is a reminder that the fitness revolution, like so many revolutions, was really a rebranding of old hierarchies.
And yet, there is something to mourn. The end of Les Mills’ life is also the end of a certain idea of collective effort. In his classes, strangers sweated together, following the same moves, sharing a communal groan. Today, we work out alone, staring at our phones, chasing personal records. We have gained autonomy but lost solidarity. The human cost of our digital fitness obsession is a deeper loneliness, a body perfected in isolation.
Les Mills built an empire on the promise of transformation. He gave millions of people the tools to change their bodies. But he could not change what we have become: anxious, atomised, forever scrolling. His legacy is not just in the biceps and triceps of the professional class. It is in the hole where community used to be.
