Fitness Musings

There appear to be YouTube channels and pages/groups that are ostensibly about fitness, but they *actually* seem dedicated almost exclusively to discussing the industry's dirty laundry. Back-and-forth trolling, gossiping about relationships, trash talking businesses, and generally being the functional equivalents of social media ambulance chasers and tabloids.

I don't get it. This field is in a sorry state, and it's sad that people think it's more compelling to dedicate their time to rummaging around in the garbage to feed their rabid fan bases (and fan the flames of further trolling that can often ruin people's lives) than to try to elevate the field by actually teaching, embodying higher professional standards, and just generally *not* making the industry out to be the laughingstock that it is to so many other people and professions. There are sometimes people who really deserve negative attention -- particularly in cases of overt abuse, criminal actions, etc. -- but it's important to know how and when to address such people.

I know that my posts aren't the most intriguing to everyone, and I'm not some paragon of virtue. But come on... gossip? As a main focus of your page? You have to be a special kind of weak to cave to the demands of your following to contribute to the mess instead of helping to clean it up. Disappointing... if not entirely surprising.

If someone pressed me on the subject, I'd have to say that one of the biggest mistakes that I see with working out, especially among professionals...
.. is constantly pumping out lists of "mistakes" that feed the misconception that there are such rigid ways that an exercise is "right" or "wrong."

Seriously. Stop giving in to the urge to rank everything and come up with countdowns. You're sharing strong (and often arbitrary) opinions and masking them as wisdom. Give people room to do things differently from how you like. Even if it conflicts with what usually *appears* to be best in your experience as a coach.

It is one thing to give suggestions or preemptive guidance. It's another thing altogether to give sets of hard rules or to categorize something as good or bad before even getting to know the person who might be listening to your rules and taking your word as gospel.

One of the positives about having so much chronic pain (some from injury, some without clear cause) is that it's easy to get people off my back about my training choices. I can just tell them "nah, that hurts too much to do, so I do this other thing."

There's actually a deeper conversation to be had about fit pros' obsession with "the right exercise" (which itself is indicative of rather backwards thinking, in my opinion), but I'm too lazy to write about it right now. I'm sure you're all crushed by that.