Everything You Know about fitness is a lie

Longish article from Men's Journal. http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/everything-you-know-about-fitness-is-a-lie-20120504

 

My favourite part: 

 

Commercial health clubs need about 10 times as many members as their facilities can handle, so designing them for athletes, or even aspiring athletes, makes no sense. Fitness fanatics work out too much, making every potential new member think, Nah, this place looks too crowded for me. The winning marketing strategy, according toRecreation Management Magazine, a health club–industry trade rag, focuses strictly on luring in the "out-of-shape public," meaning all of those people whose doctors have told them, "About 20 minutes three times a week," who won't come often if ever, and who definitely won't join unless everything looks easy, available, and safe. The entire gym, from soup to nuts, has been designed around getting suckers to sign up, and then getting them mildly, vaguely exercised every once in a long while, and then getting them out the door.

 

Kevin Brown.  Thank you.

 

A little while ago I was telling the story of a physio who could simply look at you and tell what sport you competed in, as well as your injury history, both past and future.  Couldn't remember his name.

 

Thanks for getting me to re-read this article.

I used to work at an investment firm that at one point purchased a number of gyms. During our research phase, we came to the conclusion that the "winning marketing strategy" wasn't to appeal to "out of shape" or not out of shape people, but rather that the different types of clubs out there were categorized and sold largely as experiential things at a certain level. Planet fitness' for example are more something that a person might sign up for and not even think twice about as an expense because it was only $10/month, so it may just keep sliding on for years without a person making an issue of it. More fancy places would be things that were relegated to business class customers who may appreciate the convenience of having a premium type gym to go to once in a while as an escape.

 

I can attest to the large numbers of people that the lower end places try to sign up. Some PF's for example aren't considered "mature" in their community (the point when growth slows to around 0%) until they've hit ~10k members. But its obvious that most PF's couldn't handle even a fraction of those people at any given time, but I never heard any talk of limiting the number of members so everyone could get a chance to use the equipment. It was more like just focusing on signing as many people up and if things were ideal they'd all just never come in and it'd be an ongoing source of revenue with minimal upkeep, with the memberships being an unused convenience. Unfortunately, people kept coming in.

 

Overall, I'd say that most gyms don't care about people getting fit so much as getting the maximum number of people and equipment in to a box and making it the most efficient piece of real estate that's possible. 

To be honest I'm just really glad to be out of the "gym scene". Stuffy air, blaring crap music, aggressive sales, place is always a mess, meatheads constantly sizing you up, picking up weights just to drop them to make as much noise as possible, everyone lifting with terrible form because its all about lifting as heavy as you can, strangers who go just to interrupt you and talk to you (because you're someone). I find gyms vulgar, exhausting places.

/rant

Getting into peaceful, fresh air with open space was a big reason I dropped the weights altogether and do GST.

Old school gyms with barbells I can understand, but mainstream machine equipped gyms perplex me. I don't know what to do with myself in those places. At least there's always a floor...

The whole article came off as a little condescending to me. Especially the author's supposition that all trainers, save the one or two that he most recently used, are useless and clueless. The basics of getting strong, mobile, and conditioned haven't changed much over the years. The average person's unwillingness to work hard, need for entertainment, and susceptibility to fads hasn't changed much over the years. So we always end up in the same place; a few people who reap the benefits of hard work, a minority who try but are mislead, and a majority who think this whole "exercise" nonsense is a little silly and pointless. I'm happy that the author found the answer in a round-about way, but to admonish the journey while rejoicing at the destination is off-putting. Everything you know is a lie...but this article won't change a thing.