You don’t have to scroll far, turn many pages of a magazine or change TV channel very often before you will come across a guy or girl in minimal training attire with bulging biceps and chiselled/flat stomachs. There for it is no wonder why people set themselves these largely, wildly unrealistic goals to try to mimic this. Many people believe this is relatively easy with little change to their lifestyle. It is doable but these people are in the magazines etc because they are that good at it!
The ‘health and fitness’ industry forces the image of a healthy 5% body fat human down our throats more than we care to think about in any avenue it can, promising these results if you start doing a HIIT workout for 20mins 5 days a week while having an extra avocado in our diets. If you look at a picture and think ‘WOW, how could I ever … ?!’ then their is more likely than not some form of performance enhancing drug involved. If you look at a picture and think ‘yeah, they are in good shape, it would be nice to look like that’ then it’s more likely to be natural. As I have mentioned before, this apples to both men and women! Now, the problem with using the people with performance enhancing benefits is that they don’t tend to come with an advert in the corner of the screen saying the list of drugs to help them get the way they do. This gives false hope to individuals training in the hope to one day achieve this naturally. Use them, don’t use them I don’t care but be open and honest about it so people aren’t being deceived.
Another issue with having the world at our finger tips is being able to see the entire evolutionary spectrum in super high doses. It is no secret that some people are just genetically gifted when it comes to responding to exercises, how quickly they can recover and learn new movements etc. Before the internet was around and communication was more difficult, the people that we would be exposed to would include the village we grew up in and maybe a few neighbouring villages with the the odd visit to the big city (and even if we lived in city, we wouldn’t know everybody). So, with the evolution of technology comes a wider net, cast over more individuals to compare ourselves to. The fitter and more genetically gifted individuals tend to stand out from the crowd and become the ‘influencers’. Now we have a pool of all the gifted individuals in which we draw our inspiration. This level of performance becomes the considered norm’ at which the ‘average Joe’ pits himself against. Average Joe now loses heart and wonders why he is unable to achieve such fantastic results within 6 weeks from just the 20 mins of HIIT he feebly attempts before tea every evening as he loses his motivation due to not seeing the body he feels he deserves from such hard work.
Personal trainers and coaches should make it abundantly clear from first meeting a new client what is realistic and what is not. Reign in any overzealous ideas such as dropping 20% body fat overnight. Ensure crazy fads like starvation diets etc are NOT seen as the way forward but slow and steady progress made around subtle but sustainable changes to the clients lifestyle is.
Work hard but work on you! If your relationship with social media etc gets toxic then just turn it off
