Tatts on legs, ciggies in hand, sweat dripping from hair to neck to chest. You\u2019d be mistaken if you thought this was the mosh pit of a punk festival. Instead, you\u2019re at the finish line of a marathon. Among the throes of runners dowsing their tired bodies with water and all-natural electrolytes, a subculture is growing.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re athletes in their own right, with bio stats and split times that would amaze even the most dedicated Bryan Johnson disciples. But they stand apart with their beers in one hand, Zyn nicotine pouches in the other. From London to Berlin, Milan to New York, they exist beneath the purview of the Alo-wearing and the optimisation-obsessives. United by their rejection of wellness\u2019 puritanical ideals.<\/p>\n
Wellness anarchists, some are calling them. The term was coined this past summer by Tom Garland, a London-based strategist and founder of brand consultancy, edition+partners. In August, he published a\u00a0cultural analysis<\/a> in which he identified a cohort that occupies a \u201cdistinct middle ground\u201d: people who engage in wellness, but reject the traditional binary of the \u201chyper-optimised bro code on one side and dystopian athleisure-fantasy-land on the other.\u201d As Garland tells Dazed, this cohort is \u201cambitious but not obsessive, health-conscious without being joyless.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0Garland first observed this sensibility in British ultra-endurance athlete, William Goodge. During Goodge\u2019s run across Australia, he posted an Instagram<\/a> of him mid-feat: beer in hand, a cigarette alongside it<\/a>. The image was provocative: to drink and smoke during an athletic feat is somewhat of an oxymoron. But for Goodge, this decision was natural: a way to \u201cnormalise the totally bonkers\u201d. \u201cWhen you achieve something, in my world at least, you celebrate with a drink,\u201d Goodge tells Dazed. \u201cIt [was] a release, a vehicle to take my head out of what I was doing, which was running up to 16 hours a day and averaging 111kms for 35 days.\u201d<\/p>\n Athletes like Goodge represent a shift in what\u2019s aspirational today. \u201cThe ultimate flex used to be a graph proving you slept perfectly,\u201d Garland says. \u201cNow, the flex is showing up fresh at 9am after a late night, with no data to explain how you did it. It\u2019s a form of biological arrogance.\u201d This sensibility has long existed at the edges, visible in the feeds of creatives<\/a> and everyday athletes<\/a> who reject optimisation as a moral code. Now it\u2019s become increasingly visible, and more openly embraced.<\/p>\n From post-run cigarettes and beers appearing on socials<\/a>, to brands and products built around this attitude, wellness anarchy is permeating. Challenger running label BANDIT raised $14.2 million in a 2023 Series A raise<\/a>. Search interest in sports-cum-creative magazine Mental Athletic is up 164 per cent year-on-year, per Google Trends data. Nicotine pouches and even psychedelics<\/a> are increasingly used as pre-workout<\/a>. Literary Sport, a year-old athleisure label, was described on Throwing Fits<\/a> in December as \u201ca running brand for people who smoke.\u201d Even Whoop partnered with Goodge on a branded social post<\/a> asking, \u201cwhat\u2019s harder on your body: partying or ultra-marathons?\u201d<\/p>\n Part of its appeal can be explained by a growing disillusionment (and exhaustion) with wellness in its current state. While it remains a multi-trillion-dollar industry (globally valued at $6.8 trillion in 2024, according to the Global Wellness Institute<\/a>), its rigid practices no longer feel aspirational. Early mornings, no drinking, tracking glucose, bed by 9pm. The monastic lifestyle often promoted by the industry has rendered even the most well-intentioned among us anxious<\/a>, lonely<\/a> and wondering whether it\u2019s worth it<\/a>. \u201cWellness hit a saturation point and became uncool. When mass brands bought into wellness as a lifestyle, they poured so many marketing dollars into the system that the discourse around it became overwhelming. People started realising [much of it is] a marketing ploy,\u201d says Viktoriia Vasileva, cultural researcher and marketing strategist. \u201cNow, it\u2019s [just] swagless nerds who count their macros and West Village girls who make Pilates and Matcha their whole personality.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps that\u2019s why these wellness anarchists, with their punk philosophies and defiant attitudes, feel so captivating. They seem to embody a truer, and more forgiving, representation of the human experience, one that gives permission to work, and to play.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n