Climbing monks, wrestling kings and marching nuns: what people in the Middle Ages did to exercise

We have evidence of monks climbing up ropes and jumping over hedges, kings wrestling, and nuns enjoying brisk walks around their gardens, all with the aim of achieving balance in their minds and bodies and improving their health as a result.

Were these exercise regimes beneficial? Professor Carole Rawcliffe has analysed the evidence, and when quizzed, during an interview for the HistoryExtra podcast, about whether medieval or modern people were in better shape, she said:

“From the skeletal evidence, you can see that some people in the Middle Ages were very ill indeed. They had bad teeth and dental problems. And they often died comparatively young. On the other hand, we do have evidence that some members of elite classes in society may have been quite fit and healthy, and they certainly may have been well-muscled. We’ve got evidence, for example, from Dublin that shows that higher-status people would often have been taller and generally fitter than those of the lower orders. We find that across the country. So there is a sense perhaps that richer people may well have been rather fitter than we may imagine”.

Fit people there may well have been, and we do have evidence of people working out by rowing, riding, walking and wrestling, but their aims were not the same as the gym-goers and marathon runners of today. Exercise was an important part of the overall goal of keeping one’s humoral balance under control and maintaining mental and spiritual equilibrium.

Bearing in mind this holistic view of health and wellbeing, according to Professor Rawcliffe, if a medieval monk were to be transported to the 21^st century, to witness our efforts at exercise, “he might have been rather unimpressed and wondered whether people had lost their sense of priority and ought to be spending a little bit more time thinking about the importance of spiritual as well as physical health”.

What wisdom can we glean from the medieval way of keeping fit?

Humour yourself

Medieval people were very keen on the concept of the four humours. Humoral theory, based on the work of Galen and other classical authorities, was a fundamental way of understanding how the body worked in the Middle Ages. It was important to discover whether your dominant humour erred more towards blood (hot and wet), phlegm (cold and wet), black bile (cold and dry) or yellow bile (hot and dry). Doing gentle exercise was a way to manage those different humours and keep them broadly in balance, thereby avoiding illness.

• Read more | Hippocrates and humours: medicine in ancient Greece

Exercise at the right time

It was crucial to exercise at the right time of day. You couldn’t just start stretching and straining whenever you felt like it. You had to identify the points in the day when it was most appropriate for you to get a (light) sweat up. The key thing was to avoid working out after you’d eaten. It was widely acknowledged that humoral matter was made from food, which the oven of the stomach cooked, before it went to the liver and then the rest of the body. It was at that point, when your stomach was almost empty, that it was safest to do exercise. It was then that your body would be best able to get rid of the corrupt humours that might cause disease.

• You might also be interested in | 10 golden rules of fitness for First World War soldiers

Act your age

Advice guides, or regimens, targeted people at different stages of life, because it was recognised that, as people aged, their need for exercise changed. The theory was that, as you got older, the supply of heat, which the great physician Galen described as ‘nature’s primary instrument’, died out and you got colder and drier, and gradually your supply of radical moisture diminished. So, the longer you could keep your body warm, the more likely you were to enjoy a healthy old age. Exercise was part of the process to maintain that heat in the body, and the advice manuals offered those with the time and resources to follow their guidance useful tips on ageing happily and well.

Walk, don’t run

There isn’t much advice about running in the advice guides. Brisk walking was much more the order of the day. That’s because moderation was extremely important in the Middle Ages. People weren’t going for the burn, as we might do today, but rather the idea was that you moderately exercise as many parts of the body as you could. It was actually frowned upon to get too out of breath; physicians didn’t advocate working so hard that you were actually puffing. It was more important to get the digestive fluid moving toward the extremities of the body, so you were stimulated but not exhausted.

It was actually frowned upon to get too out of breath

Enjoy nature

A big part of the medieval exercise process was to be outside. Advice guides regularly prescribed walking in gardens, over hills, or at the seaside. Such time in the outdoors was deemed to be mentally and physically beneficial, not least because it made you less anxious. Some convents expended a great deal of effort and money on building nice walkways and gardens for the nuns to stroll about in. The idea of gardens and gardening as being good for the body and the soul was well-recognised in the Middle Ages, and of course is something that we’re once more coming to realise now.

Don’t play football

If you were of a higher status in society, then you wanted to avoid the rough and tumble of football (which of course was quite a different game in the medieval period to the formalised world of stadia and video assistant referees that we have today). Football was associated with rebellion and had a very low reputation. In fact, in the early 16th century, a chap called Sir Thomas Elliot wrote a guide known as The Book Called the Governor, which is about bringing up youngsters, and was very scathing about football, describing it as beastly and excessively violent. Archery, dancing, tennis, wrestling, and hunting seemed much more appropriate.

Football was associated with rebellion and had a very low reputation

Worry about your soul, not your six-pack

Medieval fitness was not about the body beautiful. It was much more holistic. Not only was the purpose to keep a balance in your humours and maintain your health in the face of dangerous diseases and illnesses, but there was also an important spiritual agenda. Exercise was a way to bring you closer to God, not to get that perfect beach body. With plague lurking around the corner, it was sensible to keep an eye on the next life as well as this one.