Why it isn’t easy being a fitness trainer trying to give middle-class Indians the bodies they want

The profession of fitness or personal trainer, much like that of coffee barista and shop attendant in high-end malls, has emerged out of economic growth itself. These professions are characterised by new ways of working, often requiring direct contact with clients and customers.

At Starbucks, for instance, this revolves around the idea of creating a “third space” for customers – an alternative to the home or office space. Baristas are specifically encouraged to make customers feel at home by engaging in chitchat, inquiring about their day and learning their names and preferences, something unheard of in the fast-food outlets and eateries they may have otherwise found employment at.

In the case of providing fitness training, this contact tends to go much deeper. Besides, trainers are the physical manifestation of something their clients desire, something that money cannot necessarily buy: a muscular body characterised by bulging biceps, clearly pronounced pecs and rock-hard abs.

However, those successful in the field of fitness training are rarely able to rely on their bodies alone. They must be able to successfully interact with clients as well as translate the customer’s vision into training routines and dietary regimes. A certain middle-class comportment is deemed crucial to this, something that could even be understood as being sufficiently able to perform middle-class belonging.

These professions are relatively new, and the trainers are self-made men, not just in terms of having fashioned and precision engineered their bodies, but also having developed a career or business trajectory out of this involvement.

Parents and other family members are generally far from supportive of these trajectories, and their personal histories are revealing for how so many have taken considerable financial risks. Largely educated in a “vernacular” language, instead of the “English medium” that characterises their clients’ upper-middle-class upbringing, these men are up against another hurdle to overcome. Bodily capital, as such, is rarely enough to compensate for a lack of social and cultural capital, and can even complicate matters.

The trainers whose ambition it is to rise in bodybuilding ranks through locally, regionally and (inter)nationally held competitions have to work towards a muscular body that might deviate from the ideal type that their upper-middle-class clients are after. It might even render them “too large” for mainstream gyms who are keen to avoid the (older) association of such bodies with underworld or goonda characters.

So, trainers must find a balance where their body might still appeal even if it is not something the client ambitions for himself. And this is crucial: the muscular ideal is never quite stable and not every muscular body appeals to the middle-class imagination. Trainers interviewed who worked with Bollywood (Hindi), Kollywood (Tamil) and Sandalwood (Kannadiga) stars all confirmed that, increasingly, actors start with the question of what type of muscular body they want to display in their next movie. An actor will be able to capitalise on the body he presents through the narrative of transformation, even if the end result is not necessarily one that fitness enthusiasts might want to emulate.

Besides an important new way of generating an income, the fitness training industry also represents an opportunity to “do things differently”.

Not following in their father’s footsteps, nor joining the family business, or opting for a “respectable” salaried job, such as engineering, medicine or accounting, the trainers that this book focuses on are part of a growing group of young Indians who attempt to carve out a non-traditional career trajectory. Part of the industry’s attraction is that it is seen as an opportunity to learn, which ranges from improving one’s English language to learning new business and networking skills.

Working in high-end gyms allows trainers to develop a deeper understanding of the lives and lifestyles of their upper-middle-class clients, something they hope will be handy in “upgrading” their own lives. The term “upgrading” – frequently employed to describe the work on their own bodies – was also used to define their ambitions beyond the gym.

I hung out regularly in a small neighbourhood gym in South Delhi, which was deeply informative for how trainers give shape and direction to such ambitions. It was equally revealing for how their upper-middle-class clients perceived and engaged with these attempts at upward mobility.

Supriya, one of the female clients at this gym, well aware of my research, would often probe me for updates about my progress. Most mornings she was trained by Amit, a floor trainer who took a selection of regulars under his wing and provided them with on-the-spot instructions on what exercises to do next. Amit was originally from Chirag Dilli, another South Delhi neighbourhood, though of a decidedly different standing from CR Park or GK-1, where most of the gym’s clients hailed from.

In fact, Chirag Dilli is officially designated as an “urban village”. Each day early morning, Amit made his way from this “village” to GK in order to provide the gym’s clients with personal guidance. Although he had received almost all of his education in Hindi, he was always keen to speak English inside the gym as a way of practising the language, which he considered crucial to his future success as a personal trainer.

For this reason, Supriya had also taken him under her wing and often rather adamantly insisted on speaking English, something she herself was fluent in due to her upper-middle-class upbringing.30 This native Hindi and Punjabi speaker spoke in an English laced with words and sentences in Hindi for purposes of clarification as well as the freedom it provided to mock Amit in a jovial manner.

One morning, Supriya asked, waving her hand casually in Amit’s direction, “What is it precisely that you want to know about them?” I explained that I was mainly approaching the topic from the angle of it representing a new middle-class profession that does not only offer alternative career prospects but also opportunities for upward social mobility. “For instance, because of their almost daily interaction with people like you here in the gym.”

Supriya remained silent for a while and then offered me her opinion: “I see what you are saying, it is indeed remarkable how good these guys are at mimicking middle-class behaviour.”

Her use of the word “mimicking indicated that she certainly did not consider Amit her equal. In fact, she seemed to doubt that such a thing was even possible. She smiled and added: “They try really hard you know.”

She had observed herself how trainers like Amit were “practising middle-classness” through their interactions with her and other clients. Even as she tried to help Amit out with his English, she continued to play the part of gatekeeper, someone who decides what is sufficiently middle class. In a nutshell, this is what most trainers of new middle-class backgrounds struggle with. Understanding the language, codes and norms of middle-class belonging took time and effort. This slow-paced process contrasted with how fast everything else seemed to be developing.

Excerpted with permission from Muscular India: Masculinity, Mobility and the New Middle Class, Michiel Baas, Context.