“Just breathe. I’ve got you. Every drop of sweat is cleansing you.”

My eyebrows rise as I listen to Peloton instructor Jess King talk to the camera, to me, as I pedal on the Schwinn stationary bike in my office. I got my bike in 2020, and I’ve used the Peloton app on my phone for just as long. Like all Peloton users, I’ve learned to choose my workouts/instructors based on my moods — Tunde if I want a near-impossible class, Sam if I want calm encouragement, Callie if I want to sing along.

Jess is not in my regular rotation. But today I wanted a good sweat, and I liked her playlist, so I chose her endurance ride. What I didn’t expect was the quasi-spiritual pep talk.

Yet, at this point, the inspirational homily should have been a given. Superstar Peloton instructors like Jess have loyal fan bases built on their motivational speeches that go beyond encouragement to a deeper level of self-worth and ethics. Instructor Ally Love, for instance, often offers sermon-esc messages on topics like accountability and selflessness, particularly during her Sundays with Love series, which she has called “Peloton church — everybody is welcome.”

This combination of physical fitness and spiritual encouragement is one of the main reasons for the massive success of Peloton and other boutique fitness studios like SoulCycle and CorePower Yoga. In fact, the idea that fitness serves as a religion – providing community, rituals and ecstatic experiences – has become a topic in the larger academic conversation of modern religious expression.

“You are a miracle worker. You are a light worker. … How are you serving that call?” Jess pulls me along the final minutes of the ride. “The ability to want love, to want a miracle, to want to be a blessing for people you don’t even know: that’s what we work towards together.”

With sweat sliding down my face, I’m skeptical. Can a workout go beyond fitness?

A brief history of fitness

Throughout history, people have explored bodily discipline as a pathway to transcendence. In ancient India, the Siddhas sought enlightenment, divinity and immortality using unique physical practices like yoga and tantra. In the 12th century, Taoist ascetics thought sleep deprivation would lead to spiritual breakthroughs. Catholic saints would engage in self-mortification, such as wearing itchy fabric, to grow humility and compassion.

Throughout history, people have explored bodily discipline as a pathway to transcendence.

This engagement of body and spirit has continued into modernity. The YMCA opened in 1844 to train physical and moral strength in young men. The 20th century saw movements seeking to purify body and soul like “muscular Christianity,” which blended bodybuilding techniques with Christian piety. Evangelical sports ministries took off in the 1950s along with the explosion of yoga in the U.S.

While there is precedence for people exploring the connection between body and soul, the communities that explored this association were niche for centuries. Fitness did not become mainstream – for bodily or spiritual wellness – until around 1960, largely in response to our increasingly sedentary lifestyle.

In Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism, Amanda Montell notes that the invention of the sports bra, the passage of Title IX, and the women’s liberation movement all aided exercise’s popularity in the ’60s and ’70s. Big-box gyms and health clubs took over the work out market in the ’80s and ’90s. Then, the turn of the 21st century saw the start of the boutique fitness industry with the founding of Bar Method, CrossFit, CorePower Yoga and SoulCycle.

These studios positioned themselves as movements going against and beyond a standard gym. Using language, ritual and space, they aimed to create sacred places with deeply personal experiences. They sought to be venues where you not only burned calories and built muscle, but you met your best friends, found a mentor, manifested your soul mate, and demonstrated your power. However, this community comes at a prohibitive cost: $40 for a SoulCycle class, $33 for a CorePower Yoga class, and $155 for a month of CrossFit.

Peloton enters the chat

As boutique exercise studios grew in the 2000s, so did social media and technology. Peloton, launched on Kickstarter in 2013, aimed to use that developing technology to meet a specific need: the boutique workout experience at home for busy professionals.

For $1,445-$2,445, you can own your own studio-level bike with an attached tablet for streaming classes. Add a $44-per-month subscription fee for the app content (and don’t forget your $125 cycling shoes), and you can log into the Peloton app on your bike to access a variety of classes including dance, yoga, meditation, Pilates, weightlifting and more.

On the app, everyone creates a user-name — the cheekier, the better. When you select a class, you can see how many people are streaming alongside you. If you’re feeling competitive, you can race to the top of the leaderboard. If you’re feeling social, you can “high five” classmates. If you join classes live, instructors may give you a personal shout out. Those live classes often include thousands of people. In 2020, the app streamed a “Live From Home” ride with instructor Robin Arzón where more than 23,000 users attended in unison.

Today, roughly 6.4 million people use the Peloton app, 3 million of whom use Peloton-specific hardware while the rest (like me) use the app and other equipment, paying $12.99 per month. The community also goes beyond the app with many congregating in other corners of the internet, starting Reddit threads or Facebook groups based on their favorite instructors and rides.

Fitness studios are in; churches are out

The explosion of America’s boutique fitness industry in the early 2000s coincided with a larger climate of sociopolitical unrest and mistrust of long-established institutions. Marriage rates were declining. Civic engagement was at a record-breaking low. In 2019, Forbes labeled loneliness as an “epidemic.” That same year, Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life Project found that four-in-ten millennials don’t identify with any religious affiliation; this was up nearly 20 percentage points from seven years prior.

The explosion of America’s boutique fitness industry in the early 2000s coincided with a larger climate of sociopolitical unrest and mistrust of long-established institutions.

In this wasteland of traditional institutions, a 2015 Harvard Divinity School (HDS) study found that many millennials turn to boutique fitness for community and meaning. Authors Casper ter Kuile and Angie Thurston cite both SoulCycle and CrossFit in the 10 case studies they offer. As ter Kuile and Thurston see it, religion is not dying, just changing. They note that both work-out communities use secular language while mirroring many religious community functions including fellowship, reflection, liturgy, confession, ritual and discipline.

SoulCycle enthusiast Keith Washington would likely agree with them. Washington, a gay man who grew up in the Baptist church, described SoulCycle to the HDS interviewers as “more safe and more powerful than even church … I feel like I’m at home.”

Beyond belonging, boutique fitness studios like SoulCycle and Peloton offer exercisers a respite from the crushing weight of decisions we make every minute of every day.

In Cultish, Montell speaks to her friend Chani about her SoulCycle obsession: “I’m an educated, skeptical person, but it just feels so fucking good to let go of all of that for 45 minutes in a dark room where no one can see you cry because someone told you you’re worthy. … SoulCycle is just a place where you can escape … It’s like womb regression in there.”

I would argue that Peloton offers a similar experience. While you’re not in a dark room, you are in the comfort of your home, often alone. It is a moment of your day marked by ritual. You clip on your cycling shoes or lace up your sneakers. Often, Peloton instructors begin classes with belly breathing or neck rolls, movements that connect your mind, body and spirit. They celebrate you taking 20 minutes or an hour “to better yourself.” They tell you when to push, when to lift, when to rest. They make you laugh. They tell you that you’re not alone. That encouragement and entertainment, mixed with the community the app itself facilitates, is what keeps people coming back.

In this wasteland of traditional institutions, a 2015 Harvard Divinity School (HDS) study found that many millennials turn to boutique fitness for community and meaning.

“I don’t ever want to ride. A good-hair day is a good-enough excuse for me not to ride. Now I’m riding five or six times a week because we have built such a supportive community,” a Peloton user told New York Magazine in a 2019 interview. “It goes so beyond the bike.”

“A couple years ago when I was in major depression … my Peloton was my savior. I did Robin’s Lizzo ride … I bawled, literally weeping, sobbing. [I]t was so cathartic for some reason. It’s still, to this day, the only ride I’ve done over 20 times. I just love it,” writes a Peloton user on Reddit.

While interest in traditional religious expression is decreasing, especially among young people, this much is clear: human beings will always need community and spaces that place them into relationship with themselves, others and the world. And it seems many Americans turn to fitness brands for these answers, as demonstrated by the sheer size of the market. In 2022, the fitness, health and gym club industry was worth approximately $30.6 billion.

Can fitness be a religion?

In a 2023 article for The Conversation, Washington University in St. Louis postdoctoral research associate Corey Musselman says this question is impossible to answer because religion can mean many things to many people. “Is religion about belonging? Transcendence? Feeling the divine? Is it scripture, traditions or creeds? Religions can have all of these traits, or none of them,” she writes.

What we’re left with is a list of disparate facts: there is a connection between mind, body and spirit that has long been observed; we live in a culture where people are less interested in organized religion, yet they still seek out spaces that help them to make meaning of the world and their selves; our culture has commodified our desire for meaning. How can Christians hold all of these things together — as individuals, as the church?

One way religions engage this whirlwind is by creating spaces to connect fitness directly with their theology. The Catholic workout SoulCore integrates prayers of the rosary with functional fitness movements to “draw others closer to Christ.” A “Neshama Body & Soul” class offered by a Conservative Jewish synagogue in Saratoga, California, combines prayers with jumping jacks, planks and lunges.

The Well Church NYC, an offshoot from Tim Keller’s Redeemer Presbyterian, describes itself as a “church where wellness meets spirituality in community.” The congregation, which worships on Sunday mornings, also hosts wellness retreats and offers an in-house health coach and a church app with guided meditations.

Utmost Athletes, a PC(USA) 1001 New Worshiping Community in the Presbytery of Cascades, is building a church using a strength training model as outreach in Vancouver, Washington.

It is worth noting the connection between fitness and spirituality can raise some difficult theological questions. If, as I’ve heard many fitness instructors say, it is within my power to get the results I want, what happens if I don’t get a six-pack? What happens if I can’t afford a gym membership? What if I get sick? What if I am physically unable to follow the instructor, even with modifications? A spirituality of wellness is a short, slippery slope to prosperity theology that teaches humans can earn “good” things.

Yet, at the same time, I’ve found boutique fitness classes like Peloton offer many of the things it promises like community and confidence. I am not about to tell the Peloton rider who wept during Robin’s Lizzo ride that their experience was not meaningful.

If we believe that God is everywhere and in everything, why can’t God be in a boutique fitness class? Perhaps Christians should not focus so much on whether individuals disaffiliated with the church are doing the “right” things to connect with God. Perhaps we should focus, instead, on being God’s presence in our own lives, using our words and actions to point to the focuses that may be missing from public theology we consume (intentionally or not). Who isn’t at the table? How can we divorce worth from profit? How can we demonstrate redemption?

What if God is using it all?

After all, God is bigger than we can even fathom, even bigger than our own tradition. What if God is using it all?

What I know is that I frequently catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror before I get on my bike or lift weights. I’m not proud to say that I often don’t like the image. I see a stomach with more padding than it used to have, arms I wish were more toned, legs with cellulite and varicose veins. And then I work out — sometimes just for 20 minutes. When I catch another glimpse of myself in the mirror, it’s the same exact body. But I see strength. I see beauty. And I feel gratitude. The next morning, if I feel sore muscles protest when I get out of bed, I know that my finite body is a living story, moving and changing with time. I know that I am choosing to get stronger. And maybe that’s a little bit of God’s grace on earth.