The thing that’s supposed to make us feel better has been making people feel worse.
Fitness is one of the most reliable mood-regulation tools we have. The research is unambiguous: movement lifts mental state, reduces anxiety, generates energy, and creates a sense of agency. Fifteen minutes can shift how your world feels. It should be an easy win for joy.
But somewhere along the way, the fitness category layered on so much expectation—body ideals, metrics, transformation narratives, before-and-after proof, influencer aesthetics—that it turned a natural source of wellbeing into another arena for judgment.
The research on this is equally clear, and it’s damning. Studies on weight bias and self-conscious emotions show that shame and appearance-driven goals actually predict exercise avoidance and lower wellbeing. The very motivational tactics the industry has relied on—aspiration, transformation, “better you” messaging—push people away from the behavior they’re trying to encourage. More on why consumers are opting out on extreme resolutions and opting into rituals – here.
The category has been undermining its own value proposition for years.
Two new campaigns suggest brands are starting to reckon with this.
Virgin Active: Unsubscribe from Expectation
Virgin Active Australia’s new campaign explicitly asks people to “unsubscribe from expectation,” “log into yourself,” and reject algorithm-driven, performative wellness in favor of sweating, breathing, and sharing energy in real community spaces.
The creative is deliberately stripped back. Real bodies. No transformation arcs. The message: movement is about presence and connection, not perfection or hustle.
What’s striking is what they’re positioning against. Not another gym chain. Not home workouts. They’re positioning against comparison culture itself—the endless scroll of optimized bodies and curated routines that makes people feel behind before they’ve even started.
The gym as refuge.
ASICS: Mood First, Performance Second
ASICS is making a similar move from a different angle. Their “Move Your Body, Move Your Mind” work explicitly centers mood: ordinary people using small bursts of movement to shift how their world feels, backed by evidence that 15 minutes of exercise can meaningfully lift mental state.
They’ve softened the “push harder” language that athletic brands default to. They re-scored an iconic feel-good track. They paired the campaign with community activations designed to lower the barrier to entry.
They’re selling the afterglow, not the stopwatch.
This is a meaningful strategic shift. ASICS built its brand on performance—serious runners, marginal gains, personal bests. This campaign says: what if the point isn’t to be faster? What if the point is to feel better?
What Both Brands Understand
These aren’t just creative refreshes. They represent a reframe of what the product actually is.
Both brands are treating emotional outcomes—calm, relief from comparison, playful energy, belonging—as the real product. Movement is the delivery system.
They’re not competing against other gyms or shoe brands. They’re competing against the feeling of being behind.
The Joy Dividend Read
In Joy Dividend terms, what’s happening here is tax removal.
Joy has a tax: the friction, anxiety, judgment, and self-consciousness that can attach to otherwise pleasurable experiences and extract from the emotional payoff. Fitness, for many people, has become heavily taxed. The behavior itself would generate joy—but the expectations surrounding it generate stress that cancels the benefit, or prevents people from starting at all.
What Virgin Active and ASICS are doing is stripping away that tax—the shame, the comparison, the pressure to perform—so the same physical behaviors (joining a gym, going for a run) can finally deliver what people were actually seeking.
They’re returning fitness to its natural function: a reliable, accessible source of mood regulation and joy.
The Bigger Question
Fitness isn’t the only category that has accidentally done this to itself.
Cooking. Travel. Parenting. Personal finance. Creative hobbies. Any domain where social comparison, optimization pressure, or aspirational marketing has turned a natural source of satisfaction into another place to feel inadequate.
The strategic question for any brand: where has your category turned a natural source of joy into another place to feel behind? And what would it look like to give it back?
For the complete Joy Dividend framework, get the book on Amazon.
