Which Fitness Professional Do You Want to Be?

Last week I posted about how I thought some of the best minds in the fitness industry are also the most negative. I fumbled the article up by taking a cheap shot at Bryan Krahn’s tweet and not going to him for context. Bryan was cool and we reached out to each other (and some friends offered help too). All is good.

While I feel good about how things ended up after the first follow up, I am still disappointed because I believe in that core message. I think so many fitness professionals are alienating people that they could be potentially helping, and I need to assume they would want to reach and help as many as possible. That’s why we are in this industry right? I don’t know anyone that got in it to be the next big celebrity trainer. We just want to make enough money to continue to do what we love doing.

For the rest of this post I am going to try doing a better job discussing the original topic and finish my thoughts…

You know that friend you have (that we all have) that is constantly complaining to you about stuff in their life or things their disagree with in the world?

“I never have enough time to get enough sleep”

“Riley is the worst, I can’t stand working with him anymore”

“Crossfit is a burning car crash”

“This new Ghostbusters movie is going to ruin the franchise” (This is the worst kind of argument/statement ever. Nothing can erase your favorite movies or tv shows from existence. Stop making ridiculous statements like that)

“John was so lucky to get that new job, I know 10x as much/I am 10x the coach as him”

“Kevin just gave some terrible examples and he isn’t even making his point”

No one likes to hang out with people that complain all of the time or are constantly bringing down the conversation. Actually, I take that back, misery loves company, and that company is usually other negative people who spend their time complaining together instead of doing what it takes to generate change.

Now I want to bring up a commercial that got a ton of people talking on social media this past Sunday. I didn’t watch the ad live, but I watched it before writing this post.

People were seriously PISSED because of a 1.6 second shot of a bad kettlebell swing? Some were literally calling for FitBit to answer for this atrocity.

Yes, the KB swing was bad (if you haven’t seen it it was more squat than swing). Maybe instead of calling the FitBit ad creators idiots and criminals for spreading poor KB swing mechanics (like I am sure all 100 million people watching went into the gym the next day and recreated that 1.6 second clip as they learned to do swings) we took a different angle with this?

Maybe instead of getting all worked about about this and showing how cool we are because we coach and demo KB swings perfectly, we posted something like:

“Those swings in the Fitbit add were pretty rough, check out this video from Strong First with Senior SFGs Lance Coffel and Andrea U-Shi Chang all about the KB Swing:”

Now we have provided a solution to the problem and maybe helped a few people who didn’t realize they were performing KB swings improperly.

Let’s provide solutions to the problems, not just stand there and look at a roaring house fire and say “Hey! Hey! Look! That is one hellacious fire burning, sucks to be the idiots that live there.”

And WHAT IF that ad inspired someone to go train the next morning, join a gym, ask a friend for fitness advice, or got a few personal training sessions? Then it is positive right? So many of us learned the wrong way to do things before heading down the path that lead us to the right way. The important part is that the first step was taken.

The same goes with the spread of information or when clearing up misinformation. Keep the condescending tones out of it and don’t act like a king or queen of fitness and nutrition knowledge sitting up on your thrown as you save the beggars of knowledge.

We all started with zero knowledge in this field. We thought running and a low-fat diet was the best fat-loss protocol. Or that training on expensive machines was the path to massive hypertrophy and strength gains. Or maybe you spent tons of money on bogus supplements like CLA, tribulus, green tea extract, no-xplode, etc? Go back in time and remember that younger version of yourself, how would you want the tone of the information and learning process? What is the best learning environment?

I believe that if you are a professional in this industry or a someone that prides themselves on debugging myths while in the pursuit of truth you have a responsibility to present the information without a arrogant attitude.

Maybe I am wrong? And I am sure there will be plenty of people that read this and think I have a unicorn that shoots rainbows out it’s horn shoved up my butt. All I know for sure is that I want to be part of the industry that cultivates positive learning environments and has an eagerness to help all that want to learn and get better. That is how I want to live and those are the kind of people I want to collaborate and learn from.

I will finish with a quote with a quote from President Theodore Roosevelt, it may or may not be applicable, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” You can be the smartest person on Facebook or at the seminar, but who is going to listen if they don’t want to be around you?