Shift: The System, And My Place In It.
The fitness industry is a joke. It is teaming with bad incentives, seedy, desperate gatekeepers, and self-serving opinion leaders marketing their products as self-improvement. I would say “fuck them” but I’ve participated in most of the concepts that I will criticize because—like others—I haven’t known what to do about it. Instead of ranting—which is too easy—I want to take a close look at the fitness industry and my place in it. I want to understand what parts we have unwittingly accepted as truth. To describe accurately what it is we want to achieve and what parts are making that goal harder. Much of what we do is trying to understand the structure that is responsible for our environment and in consequence, liable for who we are. Whether we like it or not, we are influenced by these unconscious structures of industry, and recognizing this might be the only way to transform it.
It’s a grandiose idea to change a system with which millions of people interact, yet I can’t help but think it is possible. I also realize that we may be a part of something and be apart from it, to separate our practice and accept the ignorance of others unless or until they enter our orbit. We have tried to do this but it is difficult to remain separate when we must spend much of our time correcting the damage done by others who actively perpetuate a bad system.
Fitness is a good idea, but seeking it puts one in relationship with a putrid authoritarian system where greed is more important than doing good and this must change. If the well is poisoned do you destroy the structure or do you avoid the water? Do you dig a new well in a different location or do you slowly accommodate to the poison? The “perpetuation of problems” — a collective noun for any bureaucracy, but specifically the fitness industry leaders — has become accustomed to tainted water and so will never move or change on its own. The real question is: who has the power to make changes?
I have never taken kindly to what this system calls me — a trainer — because, for the most part, I have been a pawn in it. I learned to act so I could be the exact thing that I thought I was against. I jumped up and down and repeated the rhetoric, and demanded attention because I confused that for respect. I once imagined that I would have great influence if I let the greats influence me but — when faced with competition — most of the “greats” shriek at the idea of losing their precious influence. Still, I indiscriminately soaked up everything I could from those who appeared to be “leading.” I learned later that some of these ideas were corrupt. By welcoming someone else’s ideas as my own — without proper critique — my voice became theirs. I copied and pasted until I realized that much of my time as a mimic was wasted. After all of the work and pageantry, I was rewarded with the title of “trainer”. I jumped and begged on command well enough to be rewarded with a position where I could make others do the same for me. Oh, the irony.
I didn't intend to be a trainer, and I don’t call myself one because I don’t condition behavior in a repetitive way to modify my subjects. Nor do I have subjects. I’m not a coach either because the term implies coercion; telling someone what to think, when to eat, how to act, and how to feel, which is leadership in name only. A coach is often someone who has done but can no longer do, an athlete on their walk down from the podium or in the shadow of it.
Often, a coach’s position is that “elsewhere” is better, and that Coach knows how to get there but can’t do so him/herself anymore. This is an unfair over-simplification to those who have done and want to share, who have walked the path and know the way, but I was too stubborn to simply follow another’s path. And now, I’m not naive enough to believe that the breadcrumbs I strew behind me will lead another to the same experience that I had.
The fitness industry offers different positions too, and some are a combination of others or all. Influencers are the singing and dancing billboards of self-improvement. Their digital space, likeness, voice, and authority may be rented to sell, pitch, or guzzle on camera any weight loss tea, CBD suppository, or imaginary fitness method to an audience of equally unconscious consumers who are desperate to buy their way into a meaningful experience. There are countless entrepreneurs acting as brokers, siphoning their cut from the exchange of value between experts and clients. Of course, no system would be complete without the overlords. These are — in most cases — self-appointed “authorities” who regulate, systematize, and exploit the industry under the guise of promoting “community” or safety without disclosing their relationship to special interest groups or corporations that directly profit from such regulation but are diametrically opposed to actual fitness, health, or wellbeing.
I have been hesitant to self-describe as a teacher because it feels arrogant to presume I have earned useful, unique knowledge while simultaneously relating to the condition of not-knowing. My sense of not-knowing keeps me seeking, and also pushes me to share. I teach because I want to learn, to focus on the details of what I know, how I know it, and to find ways to transfer what I know. Teaching is a reliable examination of whether or not I am improving, and this is what I—and what others—are concerned with. People look into fitness for ways to improve their life and their experience. I am what I am with or without a title. I do what I do in order to constantly explore how I may improve, and because applying the lessons I've learned to others is itself another lesson, I have found a trusted method of perpetual improvement. I know what better means to me, but many don’t, and that opens them up to any and every kind of sales pitch that this system has to offer.
I don’t want to trick you or persuade you. It is not my responsibility to convince you that you need to get better. I don’t want to hold your hand through a perpetual process or pretend to care about your outcome or evolution. Motivating is not teaching. If I’ve done my job correctly — which (to me) is to make myself better at what I deem important — then you will also get better. One cannot teach someone who doesn’t want to learn, which is why I define my job as "exploring what is important to me" and not what I am to others. But this does not mean what you are to others is unimportant.
If you are a teacher but people are unaware that they need to learn, practice, and implement those ideas on their own, then you can become increasingly frustrated with this process because the results you seek are not aligned with what people are willing to do. That is because most people don’t want an education, they want a service. They don’t want to understand how to take care of themselves, they want a list of exercises and special rules that make thinking for one’s self obsolete. They don’t want a teacher, they want a preacher. They want to be told on a weekly or daily basis what the lessons are. They want you to infer, deduct, and translate the bigger themes so they don’t have to. They want reminders, reassurance, and a way to “pay for their sins.” And for doing so, they will elevate you to an almost divine power, a power that runs the industry. Followers will give you a platform and plenty of “donations” for fitting the “service” mold, but they won’t learn. They won’t implement. And they won’t practice. They won’t need to, because you are there every step of the way with an answer or whatever the fitness equivalent of a Hail Mary is.
Realizing your position within a system is a start, it can illuminate your possible future and the future of an industry that has been more about profit than about improving people's lives. If like many, you depend on others' dependence then it is likely that this perpetual system of greed without valuable outcomes will remain a co-dependent, stagnant, and sufferable practice. On the other hand, if you recognize that the value of your practice is what you add to others by how you can improve yourself, then you can strike a balance, learning to teach others so they don't need you. This is the concept that increases the likelihood of a sustainable future. I'm under no delusion that what I am talking about is not for mass adoption—especially with an uneducated population—but I am convinced that we can do good work, that the results of our practice and the value we provide to those that seek it can overcome the avidity of industrialized health and fitness. By admitting that fitness and health are a byproduct of education, we can start to understand what needs to happen to improve the industry. We recognize that we need more teachers and fewer industrialists, more learners, and less leeches. If we want results from this practice, we need more students and to be better students ourselves.
