A recent study showed that many young people would rather exercise than go out for a drink. This aligns perfectly with a trend that we’ve been seeing in reality television where tough guy shows like Naked and Afraid and American Ninja Warrior are some of the only programmes to break out in the genre in recent years. Now the networks are doubling down on these exercise-centric shows. This week NBC premieres Strong on Wednesday 13 April, at 9pm EST, and Fox premieres American Grit on Thursday 14 April, at 9pm EST.
While both are riffs on similar reality tropes they’re trying to capitalize on something greater that is running through the culture from Instagram fitness inspiration to the rise of athleisure, CrossFit and bodycon. It’s as if the network suits finally bothered to wander into their local cold-pressed juice bar and realize what is happening around them.
Strong is reminiscent of NBC’s long-running hit The Biggest Loser, where overweight contestants compete in physical competitions. But on Strong, each of the 10 plus-sized women are teamed up with a handsome male fitness professional. Their arms are bulging and the sleeves of their shirts scream out from the strain. The show’s host Gabrielle Reece likes to say: “Strong is the new skinny.” These women aren’t here just to look good in a bikini, but to have the physical and mental toughness of someone who does a lot more in yoga pants than pick up the kids from school and shop at the farmer’s market. At least that’s what the producers would like us to believe.
The 10 teams of two compete together and separately in physical challenges, like when they and their trainers have to simultaneously climb both sides of a wall using only removable pegs they both have to share. The winning duo gets $500,000 at the end and all the women get a brand new body to show off at the end of the episode. They say they’re not here to get thin, but the prominence of the big reveal tells us that a smaller dress size is the real prize.
American Grit, hosted and executive produced by WWE star and professional lug John Cena, feels like it belongs more on Fox News than Fox proper thanks to a strong undercurrent of conservative jingoism. In this competition four military heroes each oversee a team of four who compete in obstacle courses and expeditions informed by real military training exercises.
The one intriguing aspect of American Grit is that the final elimination each week consists of a Tough Mudder-esque course followed by a test of endurance and the loser has to decide that it’s time to quit. (Except in one episode where a competitor faints from exertion.) It’s as much about building that muscle between everyone’s ears as it is building the ones in their body. The winning team eventually will split $1m.
NBC, whose only hits these days seem to be reality fare like The Voice and new ratings bonanza Little Big Shots, is making a smart bet with Strong. It’s seen its American Ninja Warrior franchise, which started on the little-watched, NBC-owned cable channel G4, become a hit. When it was drafted into the big leagues in 2012 it clocked an average of 5m viewers but the 2016 season had risen to 6.5m viewers, which is a very healthy number in the warmer months.
With its reliance on Lycra and space-age body readings, Strong looks like a Lululemon boutique, but American Grit looks like something out of a lumberjack endurance challenge (there is even a lumberjack on the show). While Fox doesn’t have the ratings track record of another fitness-inspired show, this seems like a sure bet.
With Cena and a sense of pervasive patriotic boosterism, American Grit seems like it should be a home-run with a more conservative segment of the population. Based on the number of competitors on Ninja Warrior that have jobs like “youth minister” and run the course with Bible verses painted on their body, there is a strange overlap in the Venn Diagram between toughness and conservative Americans. Maybe it was one of the apostles who invented the burpee?
Both shows are rather enjoyable though Strong is slick where American Grit is, well, gritty. They excel when showing a group of trainers scrambling up a rotating climbing wall or a group of civilians trying to carry a 100-pound log for three miles through the forest. It’s almost enough to make you wake up sore in the morning just by watching it on TV with a bag of kale chips on your lap.
It’s the competition that carries these competition reality shows and where they all slip is in the “reality” aspect. Both Strong and American Grit decide to have all of the competitors live together to maximize the drama of the interactions between rivals. Both also rely on casting the sort of type-A, I’m-not-here-to-make-friends personalities that often flock to programs of this ilk. You would expect this of the trainers on Strong, who have cockiness and testosterone to spare (and often overshadow the women they are training), but the cast of American Grit seems like it’s drawn exclusively from the most detestable humans imaginable.
Chris, one of the competitors, is perhaps one of the most unlikable and annoying people I have ever seen on television and I’ve watched every season of every Real Housewives. He may look like an Abercrombie model, but all through his endurance challenge he displays a calculated cockiness, trying to trash talk his competitors and play mind games. The show also cast Maria Kang, the “No Excuses Mom” who had a cheesecake picture of her posing with her three children go viral. Her claim was that there is no excuse not to be fit, but as soon as she sprains her ankle on a challenge, she whines about how much she doesn’t want to be on the show any more.
The beauty of both Ninja Warrior and Naked and Afraid is that it is men and women facing insurmountable obstacles. While Strong and American Grit get this part right, they feel the need to rely on the old standbys of petty squabbles and rigging the format of the show to accentuate conflict. In this new world where people would rather plank than play beer pong it seems like viewers are going to be more attracted to the physical fireworks than the emotional ones. It’s not about trading in tossing wine glasses for tossing those plastic shakers full of protein shakes. It’s about watching the skills of people who have done countless box jumps – so we don’t have to.
