In the caveman days, man had to work to survive. If he was hungry, he had to go out and hunt for his food. If he was cold, he had to cut down a tree and build a fire. If he wanted shelter, he had to build his house. Unfortunately, with the modern advances in technology, man is incapable of doing these three essential tasks. We eat too much processed food and create automated systems to do our work for us. As a result, nearly 26 percent of Americans are considered obese. Unfortunately, the fitness industry isn’t doing anything to help matters. In my previous two articles, I’ve given you six reasons why I hate fitness. Now I’m going to give you three more. Let the toe stomping begin.
Too many chiefs, not enough Indians
Let me spell this out for everyone. It costs about $100 to get a website up and running. After that, you can get on all of the social media sites and internet forums you want for pretty cheap and advertise the website you just put up. The next thing you’ll need is a program to rip off. No problem. Just go rip off some other program, put your own little twist on it, and presto! You have your own e-book program to market and sell on your website. Isn’t life wonderful?
Hey, I may not train anyone, but I’ll sell you my book!
Obviously, you can see where problems can arise here. Due to the internet, anyone can portray himself as an expert in a given field, especially one like fitness, which doesn’t have any regulations. All someone has to do is start up a website and people will believe almost anything written on it. We all know that if it’s written in print, it must be true. Don’t believe me? Just go look at how many issues Muscle and Fiction sold last month. These online and print media sources put out things like “Get six pack abs in two hours!” and people eat it up. The worst part about the people who write these programs is they don’t actually train anyone!
In the book Outliers,the author talks about having 10,000 hours in a profession to be an expert. Many of these internet fitness gurus are putting the cart before the horse. They’re writing programs without actually having the experience of training other people. Sure, they probably work out, but there is a huge difference between training yourself and other people. If I see a “trainer” with 200 YouTube videos up, posts on social media sites every two hours, and daily blogs, that automatically tells me that they aren’t training people. If they were as great of a trainer as they say they are, they wouldn’t have time to be all over the internet telling you how great they are. Instead, they would be training all the clients they’ve gotten from being such a bad ass.
“Meathead” gyms
I have some bad news for some of you. Getting physical results isn’t flashy. It doesn’t look cute and sometimes it requires that you get dirty. Unfortunately, most fitness is marketed as the opposite of this. They all have pretty machines. They don’t allow chalk and God forbid if you deadlift. This just isn’t fitness and it sure isn’t getting results. Getting results from your training program requires chalk, sweat, and sometimes yelling and blood.
Flashy fitness
Not so flashy fitness
The problem is that people want fitness to be presented to them in a nice and neat package with a little bow on top. These gyms look nice, but they don’t do a very good job of getting results from their members. Currently, about 30 percent of people drop out of their memberships within the first three weeks. According to the International Health, Racquet and Sportsclub Association (IHRSA), the number one reason for this is they didn’t get the service they were promised. The number two reason was that they weren’t getting the results they wanted. Now, we all know that most people won’t make huge changes in just three weeks, but I think this goes back to them not getting the service they needed. Basically, clipboard cowboy trainer took them on a tour of the machine circuits, wrote the circuits for three sets of ten on their workout card, and said, “Have fun!” Of course they dropped out.
Beware of clipboard cowboy
Unfortunately, gyms that allow chalk and have dumbbells heavier than 80 pounds are considered “meathead” gyms by the general public and are usually frowned upon. Little do they know, they’re more likely to get results at places like this than they will with the ones with ‘free pizza’ Tuesdays.
Gadgets
All one has to do is watch some late night television and you’ll get all the information you need on things like ‘getting swole,’ ‘getting toned,’ and ‘being awesome.’ Why should someone spend all that time in the gym when they can just buy a certain weight that vibrates and a silly pair of shoes? That’ll get them fit, right? Wrong.
People are always searching for the quick fix. Beverly Sills said, “There are no shortcuts to any places worth going.” Getting results in the fitness world isn’t pretty. It isn’t cute. It requires a lot of sweat, hard work, and proper education. Without these three things, you end up with an industry that offers fake promises and false hopes.
