Personal Fitness in the Last 20 years

I want to take a chance to go over my opinion of how the fitness industry has been programed to run. Here is the issue that hurts the industry. It is driven like everything else by money. What does this mean to you as someone looking to stay healthy? It means you are at the mercy of advertisers to determine what you need to be your best. Many trainers fall into this same trap. Keep in mind this is not a hunch, this is the reality I personally witnessed for many years.

My First job in the training world happened to be at a Nautilus Plus in Tigard Oregon. I was 19 years old and was hired to do be a maintenance person. I spent my day walking around the gym cleaning strangers sweat and who knows what else off the machines. My favorite was the stair masters. I would see someone get on those things and just go crazy for 45 minutes amassing a lake of sweat and hair underneath them. Needless to say I was very motivated to become a trainer as quickly as possible. Time for me to come clean to my old boss. I was not the best maintenance person ever. I secretly would always be cleaning close to where there would be a personal training session going on and I would eavesdrop. I would take thousands of mental notes on what to do and just as importantly what not to do.

This was in 1994 and the fitness world was enjoying a real boom. Many new gyms were opening all over the country. Long Story short I became a trainer in a just a few months. For the next 5 years I spent every day learning as many exercises as I possibly could. I read every magazine out there. Mens Fitness and Mens Health are both tremendous sources for great information. I also have been a long term subscriber to Shape and Womens Health (i pretend its my wife’s when company comes over). Each subscription was packed full of great moves.

Here is when I really started to understand that personal training and ultimately the fitness industry was driven by exactly that, exercises. What was the latest and greatest move? You could look around the gym and see a trainer use a new move and then bingo, it was then the best thing going and everyone was doing it. Every few months a new type of fitness equipment would be introduced and that to would become all the rage and every fitness instructor would figure out how to incorporate  into every training session.

Here is the biggest thing the fitness industry was missing, they became all about what was selling, not what was best for your body. I will discuss this in the next post in more detail. but I will leave you with this thought. If it takes fancy machines and way overpaid trainers to keep you healthy and in shape, how is it that the best physical years of our lives are when we are small children?