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. Now, he says, more guys are asking “what can I actually do with the body that I’ve built?” 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. In the last two years, Shannon has noticed a “huge explosion” in athleticism-focused strength coaches or athletes on social media.
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