Tats on legs, cigarette in hand, sweat dripping from hair to neck to chest. You'd think you just stumbled into a mosh pit at a rock concert, or a rave at GAYE. But no, you're at the finish line of a marathon.
Among the runners dowsing their tired bodies with water and all-natural electrolytes, a subculture is emerging. Some call them "wellness anarchists". Others call them "hybrid athletes". I call them a much-needed antidote to the suffocating perfection of online fitness culture.
The rebellion against performative wellness
Online wellness culture has become unbearably fake. And I know you know exactly what I'm talking about. As a fitness girly myself who actively consumes this content, I have to say it: it’s turned into some bullsh*t.
Influencers selling 30-day programmes while conveniently forgetting to mention the steroids they’re pumped full of. Fitness gurus pushing "one-on-one training" after getting a BBL and pretending their body came from squats alone. The 5am club, the green smoothies, the pristine gym selfies with perfect lighting and zero visible pores.
Bullsh*t.
It's exhausting. And more importantly, it's completely disconnected from reality. Nobody actually lives like that. Nobody wakes up looking like a dewy goddess ready to crush a HIIT workout before photosynthesizing their breakfast to remain in a deficit.
So, when someone crushes a marathon and then immediately lights up a cigarette? It's almost... refreshing. Not because smoking is good (it's objectively terrible for you), but because it's real, and it’s humanising in a way that feels radical right now.
The hybrid identity we didn't know we needed
These wellness anarchists are carving out space for a new kind of fitness identity. One that says: I can be strong AND chaotic. Disciplined AND messy. Fit AND flawed.
They're not pretending to be perfect robots who live in the gym and survive on air-fried vegetables. They're showing up tattooed, hungover, smoking, drinking beer after their run, and still absolutely crushing it physically. It's a middle finger to the idea that fitness requires complete lifestyle purity.
And honestly? It's wildly entertaining. Watching someone do pull-ups with a cigarette in their mouth is objectively funny. It shouldn't work, but it does, and that contradiction is kind of the whole point.
Why this resonates right now
People are tired. Tired of impossible standards. Tired of the relentless optimisation culture. Tired of being sold the idea that health requires aesthetic perfection and moral purity.
The wellness industry has spent years telling us that to be fit, you must also be: up at 5am, eating clean, drinking green juice, practicing gratitude, meditating, journaling, tracking macros, optimizing sleep, using only natural products, and documenting all of it beautifully on Instagram.
It's a lot. And for most people, it's completely unsustainable. So, when someone shows up and proves you can be strong without being sanctimonious about it, and that you can care about fitness without making it your entire personality, or that you can run marathons and also have vices? I see it as permission to be human.
The pendulum swings back
What we're watching is the pendulum swinging back from peak wellness culture. We've been soooo deep in the optimisation obsession and “clean-living" performance, that anything remotely outside of that feels like rebellion.
And in a culture drowning in fake wellness influencers selling impossible standards, I can’t say I’m mad about it. Plus it’s very entertaining to watch someone do 20 pullups with a lit cig in their mouth – but maybe that’s just me.
-Sophie Randell, Writer
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