The reason why men are lifting weights more than ever

Ben Bryant, The Independent

Paul Faulder is an enemy of cardio. “It’s a hangover from the Eighties,” he says. “Cardio is dull as anything. I get bored out of my mind. For me, strength training feels like I’m building something that’s going to last — whereas doing cardio just feels like burning fuel.” Some might find running appealingly meditative but for Faulder, there is nothing more mindful than perfecting the art of the incline dumbbell press. “It is a real mindfulness-focused activity,” he explains. “You pinch your shoulder blades back together. You point your elbows at 45 degrees. You start with the dumbbell over your wrists. Drive your heels through the floor. And now do your set. And by the end of it, you’re adding the tempo of a one-second or three-second pause.”

I am taking notes because Faulder is a gains guru. Only a few years ago, he was an 18-stone “depressed Teletubby” with chronic pain. At the end of Covid-19, he decided to sign up with a personal trainer and fulfil a decades-old dream of becoming as jacked as Arnold Schwarzenegger in Conan the Barbarian. His pictures show that he has achieved his desire: four years on, he stands at six foot four with eight per cent body fat, and a body like a giant baggie of gleaming bronze conkers. “The benefits it’s brought me in business are just phenomenal,” he says. “It’s brought me a new level of mental clarity and focus. I’ve got loads of energy and people respond to that.” As the CEO of a tech company — Elixir software, which provides software to global pharmaceutical/biotech firms — Faulder has a demanding schedule. He has shaped his company in the image of his sculpted body: “a lean, potent team that outperforms bloated, sluggish organisations.” And that includes requesting an unusual level of accountability for his board of directors. “I’ve now got all my board having full blood panels,” he says.

Wealthy businessmen used to be called fat cats for a reason: there was a time when men at the top of the status tree had a bulging waistline to match their wallets. These days, finance bros deadlift, wear slim-fit quarter-zips, idolise Patrick Bateman and post topless TikToks. Everywhere you look, male role models from neuroscientist Andrew Huberman and fitness influencer Chris Williamson to esteemed statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb are extolling the benefits of lifting weights, and Gen Z is taking note. Record numbers of Britons are going to the gym, with a “notable rise in the popularity of strength training”, according to trade body UKActive. PureGym’s annual statistical report found that a remarkable 89 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds do some form of strengthening exercise every week. In 2022, ClassPass reported a 94 per cent increase in strength training class reservations compared to the previous year.

“Lately, there’s a noticeable shift,” says Daniel Herman, a National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM) fitness coach and founder of Finchley sports nutrition company Bio-Synergy. “More men are asking for muscle-building programmes, even those who used to be all about running or cycling. There’s a broader cultural interest in strength and a desire to look like they train. ‘Leaner but more muscular’ is a phrase I hear a lot. They’re also often interested in optimising energy, mood, and longevity, not just aesthetics.” Most of Herman’s clients are aged between 25 and 45, and in white-collar industries like finance, tech, law and startups. He sees different patterns in the people he coaches. “Finance guys tend to want visible results fast. Think lean, defined, ‘cover model’ look,” he says. “They like numbers and benchmarks: how much they lift, how much they weigh, their body fat percentage. Tech guys often come from a more sedentary baseline and want to undo the desk job.” He goes on to explain that many of these tech guys start with posture correction and general strength, then transition into hypertrophy — the growth of muscle — once they see initial progress.

This represents a challenge to the brainless jock stereotype, which has deep roots. As far back as medieval Britain, men with muscles who toiled in the fields carried the signals of inferior class status on their bodies; physical frailty was a luxury of the effete aristocracy. Today, London’s affluent elite are still shy when it comes to strength training. You can find them running or cycling, or perhaps doing high-intensity workouts like F45 and Barry’s Bootcamp. Getting shredded is often framed as brutish, tragic or cringe – think Andrew Tate, Zac Efron, or Patrick Schwarzenegger in The White Lotus, whose twinky brother, tellingly, is almost killed by a protein shake.

However, muscles remain an ambiguous symbol of male status. Nowhere is that clearer than in the minds of the most assiduous judges of men: women. A recent X/Twitter poll showed women two pictures of Olly Murs, who has recently undergone a bodily transformation. They were asked whether he was more attractive in his pudgy “before” photo or his sculpted “after” shot. The women overwhelmingly picked the former. Too much muscle, my female friends assure me, suggests someone who is vain, a try-hard lacking in spontaneity. The most popular heartthrobs of the current era are often built less like gladiators and more like Roman towel boys — see Timothée Chalamet, Harry Styles or Kit Connor. This is an outcome that confounds the kind of men who prefer the sureties of hard data to the mysterious and capricious desires of women. For them, the mounting evidence that the jocks were right all along is becoming harder to ignore – and now data-driven nerds from Bezos to Zuckerberg are defecting to meathead territory.