Calisthenics Crews Are the New Run Clubs
Brands from Nike to Brooks are getting in on the act. Plus, WhatsApp and OffBall had fun in a F1 group chat with Daniel Ricciardo and friends.
Hi everyone, and welcome back to SportsVerse, my twice-weekly newsletter that tells stories you can’t find anywhere else about the intersection of sports, fashion, business, and culture.
It’s good to be back! Thanks for bearing with me last week while I was out sick.
Highlights from today’s newsletter:
Calisthenics crews are attracting unprecedented mainstream attention and driving a new wave of fashion, streetwear and sportswear marketing.
Major brands like Brooks and Nike getting in on the act, partnering with influential calisthenics gyms, trainers and crews from London to New York.
WhatsApp and OffBall hosted a group chat with none other Daniel Ricciardo during the US Grand Prix last weekend, and it popped off.
It was a very long time ago that we hit peak post-pandemic run club mania. What began decades ago with inner city running crews morphed into a mass market explosion of running culture. Savvy running brands new and old were able to capitalise on the sport’s newfound mainstream popularity and cool factor. It turbocharged growth for companies like On and revived interest in more established but previously nicher names such as Saucony.
But like everything fun, the run club boom became oversaturated. Every single brand “activation” soon began to include some kind of run club; it’s now the norm for corporate marketing conferences to kick off the day’s programming with a run club; brand-sponsored run clubs are a regular off-calendar fixture of fashion weeks from Paris to London. I’m not saying this is a bad thing. I’m in favor of anything that gets people moving. I’m just saying that running and run club culture — something that was once somewhat organic — invetibaly became less fun because it all of a sudden was viewed as a marketing funnel by major corporate organisations, brands and LinkedIn guru-warriors.
The commodification of running turned it mainstream — no longer cool anymore.
Now, the cool kids (many of whom still go to run clubs because the good ones are actually really fun) are shifting their focus onto an adjacent activity: calisthenics. Smart brands are not far behind them.
Calisthenics crews are the new run clubs, it’s the truth. And if you disagree you can (politely) fight me in the comments.
What’s a calisthenics crew? It’s the groups of ripped dudes you see on your IG stories working out at your local park’s outdoor gym, for some reason almost always topless and doing crazy pull ups, push ups and handstands. It’s not hard to see why it’s so appealing and captivating to watch (muscles aside): calisthenics requires a combination of skill, strength, poise and balance that makes it almost an art form when performed by experts.
The gritty, male-dominated aesthetic of calisthenics crews has lent itself to the marketing of several fashion and sportswear-related brands of late, which have increasingly looked to the more hardcore end of the fitness spectrum of late. Founders like Clint, the man behind London streetwear juggernaut Corteiz, has used fitness and sharing his calisthenics progress and subsequent body transformation as a way to bolster the aspirational feel of the tight knit crew that surrounds him and forms the leadership of his brand.
Founders of other UK brands like those of Manchester-based Represent are avid adherents of activities like calisthenics and ultra-intensity sporting competitions like Hyrox — again, part of a wider shift to a male-dominated hyper-fitness culture that seems to be an undercurrent in a lot of fashion and sportswear brand marketing over the past few years. Other figures in the culture, like UK rapper Central Cee, for example, have leaned way into calisthenics as a way of showing off their fitness and benefitting from positive associations with the activity.
These examples (and several others) clearly point to a fresh cultural revival of a practice that has been present since the days of Ancient Greece, where simple but effective bodyweight exercises were developed for the training of soldiers for battle conditions. Much like run club culture for many years, calisthenics has very much been a popular activity but one confined to very specific groups around the globe — and often, those very far away from the worlds of fashion and sportswear. Again, much like running, it was often an activity which people would take part in, wearing any old beat up clothing.
Now, with this fresh wave of cultural interest, brands are flooding in, changing the look and the aesthetic of calisthenics training forever.
Clint has long trained with PNP (short for Push N Pull Fitness), a London-based calisthenics focused gym and collective run by Theo Caldwell. It’s no surprise that Nike — always swift to identify fresh cultural headwinds (and already a collaborative partner of Clint’s Corteiz — chose PNP (the ultimate aspirational cool kid calisthenics squad) to feature in a beautifully shot campaign to promote its Nike Ava Rover and Nike Tech products. The video racked up over one million views in 24 hours after its release on Sunday.
The exploding popularity these calisthenics groups are having — both with actual participants and online followers — lends itself to the creation of merch and a new fashion identity around the practice. PNP has long had crew-like merch drops, which no doubt sell like crazy the second they go online.
This phenomenon is taking shape far beyond just the UK. There are countless example, and no doubt I will be flooded with countless more once this article goes live, but across the pond (where I reside these days) brands of all kinds are scrambling to align themselves with the cool kid calisthenics crews in cities like New York and LA.
Homerun, a Brooklyn-based clothing brand and store (with its very own run club that I was introduced to by my guy Lei in my second week living here), has been at the epicenter of this new wave of calisthenics. The crew is currently in Australia taking some part in some wild calisthenics link ups at Bondi beach.
One of the group’s core members is a lovely guy called Christian, who is the brains behind Energy, an emerging apparel brand designed specifically for calisthenics. A recent Energy event in NYC drew a major crowd and was supported by American running sneaker giant Brooks.
Just in the same way that the running boom spawned a bunch of savvy, culture-and-community-focused localised start-up labels (Satisfy, Soar, UVU, etc), we are about to see the same phenomenon sweep across calisthenics.
Stay tuned for more insight into this blossoming market in the near future.
OffBall, WhatsApp & Daniel Ricciardo Had Fun During the US Grand Prix in Austin
As OffBall’s incredible Ashtyn Butuso (aka the voice of the newsletter) put it: “Thousands of fans joined OffBall’s parabolic paddock [during the US Grand Prix], aka a WhatsApp group chat with Daniel Ricciardo and Jett and Hunter Lawrence, and it was better than we could have imagined.
Daniel offered all kinds of insider insights on the bumpiness of the track, tire maintenance, and so much more, while diehards documented the exchanges on social.”
Toni Cowan-Brown, aka the guru of all things F1, tech, politics, sports culture and everything else, was reliably on hand to break down the antics of the group chat during the race in Austin over the weekend:
Be sure to be on the lookout for upcoming group chats around major sporting events with names like Tyrese Haliburton, Tyrese Maxey, Kylie Kelce, and Caleb Hearon.
That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
See you next time,
DYM
Remember when jogging was rebranded to running? I feel like calisthenics needs the same thing. For the sheer fact it’s hard to spell.
I understand the desire to identify the new black, but this Central Parkour is a mild shade of gray.
The vibe is encapsulated by Chief Bro making an apparel brand to sell to his Mini Bros who famously don't wear apparel to work out.