The following excerpt was sent out from The Washington Post’s wellness editor Tara Parker-Pope:
I’m delighted to announce that Gretchen Reynolds will be joining The Washington Post as a columnist covering exercise science for our expanded wellness desk.
Gretchen comes to The Post after 16 years writing for the New York Times, where she redefined fitness coverage by looking beyond traditional exercise advice and focusing on the science of movement, the perils of inactivity, and the research behind short, intense workouts.
Her popular column “Phys Ed” began as a magazine feature at the Times in 2006 and later moved to the newspaper’s Well section, where it gained millions of followers and regularly topped the Times’s most popular lists. One of Gretchen’s best-known stories was about a hotel-room workout created by two exercise scientists.
Gretchen is the author of “The First 20 Minutes: Surprising Science Reveals How We Can Exercise Better, Train Smarter, Live Longer,” which became a New York Times nonfiction best seller and was translated into almost a dozen languages. In addition to the Times Sunday Magazine, Gretchen’s work has appeared in O: The Oprah Magazine, National Geographic Adventure, Popular Science, and numerous other publications.
Prior to writing for The Times, Gretchen was a senior editor at Outside Magazine, where she oversaw the magazine’s health and fitness service sections. She also served as a senior editor and writer for Chicago Magazine, where she covered crime, politics and travel as well as research into cancer, genomics and longevity.
Gretchen is a three-time National Magazine Award finalist and in 2001 shared the National Magazine Award for service journalism for a National Geographic package on how to survive in the wilderness.
Gretchen graduated summa cum laude from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she majored in English and political science.”
