Whilst hard science is busy learning ever more fascinating things about the human body; about how digestive health, stress, sleep and different dietary and physical approaches can have subtle effects on your body, our industry works ever harder to obfuscate the basic principles of fitness, ensuring many people still struggle to make noticeable and sustainable progress in the gym.
Pseudo-science and obscure buzz words sound convincing, and they sell. So it’s left to the fitness professionals out there with integrity to gently remove the acai berries from their clients’ hands, to ask them to stop ‘pulsing’ for a moment and to fight back against the BS of the health and fitness marketing machine.
With that in mind, here is my contribution to the cause: a health and fitness marketing decoder. It's a terribly serious guide to what health and fitness companies, gyms and bad trainers say, and what they really mean:
What they should say:“We know the only way to change the look of your muscles is to make them bigger, or to lose body fat, but we don’t want to scare you off with the image of 1980s Bulgarian shot-putters”
What they should say:“We know the only way to change the look of your muscles is to make them bigger, or to lose body fat, but we don’t want to scare you off with the image of 1980s Bulgarian shot-putters”
“Your liver and kidneys do a fine job of detoxing your body but we know that if you consume our products, which are probably just fibre and laxatives, you’ll be so impressed with all the green slurry coming out of you, you’ll happily let us cleanse your wallet indefinitely.
“…if you also lift weights 3-4 times a week and enjoy a side order of human growth hormone with your porridge”
“You won’t be able to see your abs until your body fat is reduced to an unrealistic 10pc but at least they’ll be rock hard”
“Remember circuit training from school? Yeah, that”
“Bicep curls are functional if you want bigger biceps. Walking is functional if you want to get from A to B without a horse. When we say functional though we probably mean impressive balancing tricks which won’t make you any stronger but you’ll feel like you’re doing something because you keep falling on your face”
“You know what else is natural? Arsenic, scorpions, and death”
“They ‘may’ have less fat, they ‘may’ help lower cholesterol, they ‘may’ give you the power of puppies … we’ve no idea what this means either but look: there’s a cute picture of a heart playing tennis on the box”
“Cardio”
“If you still believe you can magic fat away from specific parts of your body with particularly exercises you’d be better off using a guillotine to target your problem area”
“This is a delicious box of sugar”
“Up north we call this the Five Second Rule”
“This is a myth. You’re burning fewer calories overall than if you worked a bit harder but you’ll still be fooled by those funky graphs on the CV machine.”
“There’s a legitimate point hiding in here about building a strong, stable torso with a balanced strength training programme – but we know you really just want to feel your abs burn”
“Can you stand up from a chair without collapsing into a gelatinous bag of bones? Yeah? Then your glutes are activating just fine. Your failure to properly utilise your glutes when you squat says more about my failure as your coach but I’d much rather blame some vague neuromuscular cliché”
“…Put a bikini on a body”
Author: Dave Thomas via telegraph.co.uk
