Once we know that we are fish being baited, we can begin to see some common themes in the approaches being made to us.
Instagram fitness influencers would have us avoid everything that is absolutely “wrong,” in their view. But could adding things actually be a better solution?
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Kevin Don here with a new weekly injection of fitness facts vs fallacies. This week I am going to talk about the ongoing avoidant culture in fitness and wellness and how that might not be the best way to approach things.
It shouldn’t come as a great surprise that most (although not all!) advice that we consume on a daily basis is actually trying to sell you something. Companies need to make money to preserve and expand their existence. Therefore, at some point, revenue has to be generated. So in a lot of cases, the information being shared is biased due to the fact it needs to fit a specific narrative, which leads someone on a journey from cold to warm to hot and finally becoming a sale.
I have seen coaches or personal trainers who have said they want their clients to become completely autonomous and no longer need them. This is false. Think about it for a minute. If a personal trainer made a client totally independent and autonomous, their ability to earn money would disappear and their business would collapse. Once we know that we are fish being baited, we can begin to see some common themes in the approaches being made to us.
I was thinking about this last night when I saw a post from a fitness “influencer” I know. The post was a video of her trying to put a pair of jeans on over her derriere in just her underwear—but the caption was completely unrelated. Looking through a few of her posts, this was a theme, where the videos were all in underwear but the caption was about strength training or aerobic work. This isn’t anything new, and I’m sure you have all heard the phrase “sex sells.” It’s really quite apparent and obvious when we see it.
But there is another sales tactic that might not be so obvious to you, but it’s very prevalent in fitness and really quite damaging, and it’s selling by fear. I recently heard someone else calling it “fear porn.” I can’t say I disagree. You’ve definitely seen it before: “Squats are bad for your knees,” “deadlifts are bad for your back,” “sugar causes cancer.” In the last few years, I have never seen so much information about things we are all doing “wrong.” We are eating the wrong foods, we are eating them at the wrong times, we are chewing them the wrong number of times. Sleeping positions are wrong, sleeping temperature is wrong, shower temperature is wrong, deodorants are bad, toothpaste is evil. You run wrong, lift wrong and recover wrong, you even breathe wrong. And all of these wrongs have a potentially deadly outcome.
I saw a post this week which declared these “facts”:
If you don’t move daily, you WILL decay faster.
If you don't eat “real” food, you WILL get sick.
If you don't sleep well, you WILL experience cognitive decline.
Now, whilst we know that there are some correlations between these things, we simply cannot declare them as fact. Especially not when the solution to all these “problems” is a program or a webinar or an ebook or a certification course that you need to apply for to see if you qualify. The only qualification for these is you have enough money to pay for them. This is called FEAR MONGERING.
Most of the “fear sells” brigade are going to focus on avoidance or subtraction. You need to “reset” your gut by avoiding dairy, spice, seed oils, etc., or you need to “reset” your body by cold water therapy and a water fast. I would actually say that most “problems” aren’t caused by needing to remove things, it’s because you need to add things. The paradigm needs to shift because the fearmongers have been standing on the soap box declaring that there are bad foods, bad movements, and bad ways of doing things. The reality is that you don’t have a dairy digestion issue because dairy is bad. You can't digest the lactose because you lack lactase, the enzyme required to break lactose down. Deadlifts aren’t bad for your back, deadlifting with really bad technique (usually a lack of bracing or intra-abdominal pressure) is bad for your back. In fact, if you have a weak back, adding MORE back work will be beneficial.
On this podcast, I have said that there is a hierarchy of training, that deadlifts should come before cleans and that motor control should come before a maximal contraction. Does this mean trying to learn cleans before deadlifts is dangerous? No. It just means that it's harder to learn because you don't have the motor control and it's going to be hard to express a maximal explosive event because your nervous system hasn’t been conditioned. Is it wrong? No. It's just not optimal.
Anytime we see things being labeled as “wrong” with absolute certainty, it should set our spidey senses tingling because, in the absence of disease or injury, there is no such thing. A more holistic and objective approach is always good but unfortunately, end users often help to fuel this fire of subjective absolutes because humans want answers. You won’t believe the number of eye rolls I have seen when a client or a coach on an education call asks me a question and I answer “well, maybe.” Because no one wants to hear that. People want to hear “do this and you get that.” But the reality is never that simple and the best information is most often going to be the more general answer. Because it really is maybe. Each person is different and each situation is different and the answers are nuanced unless the person giving the recommendation is in possession of enough data to make the claim.
Here is an example: Kevin, I’m training for a powerlifting meet, should I be doing long aerobic work like running, rowing, or swimming 3 times a week? No, you shouldn’t. But that doesn’t mean that 3 times a week aerobic work is bad. It’s just not advisable at this moment in time for you. Someone else might be looking for health (not peaking for a sporting event) and in that case, absolutely, aerobic work alongside strength work is a great idea! If you asked me, Kevin, should I do aerobic work alongside strength, my answer would have to be: I don’t know, maybe. I need more information.
So you see, the “hey guys” YouTube and Reels people aren’t in the position to make these sweeping claims—they don’t have enough data. But it's creating a culture of fear resulting in avoidance of foods, avoidance of movement, and avoidance of entire modalities of training. As always, the best way to train and be fit is to expose yourself to as many different motor patterns as possible, in as many different degrees of freedom as possible, to recover from that as optimally as possible by getting rest and relaxation, and by eating as many different nutrients as possible across a broad spectrum. Avoiding movements, demonizing foods, and removing things like meat, dairy, running, or squatting because an influential figure said so is probably going to result in narrowing your exposure to things that could bring you wellness and joy to such a small sliver of potential. Add more things to your life to broaden your fitness landscape instead!