Shift: Bad Incentives
The following question is so hard to answer that the entire fitness industry has made billions of dollars from people that are unable to answer it for themselves. Conclusions manifest in the form of laser body sculpting, unproven supplementation, and even aesthetic plastic surgery, but "answers" more commonly appear under the guise of exercise, diet, training, and perpetual self-improvement by way of decoration. If you have ever aspired to be anything more than you are, you have likely been tempted by a plethora of gimmicks and traps because you didn’t know this question should supersede (and precede) any action:
What is better?
If you cannot answer then don’t move. Don’t eat. Don’t sleep. Don’t go to work. Don’t do anything until you can answer that question. Without triggering an existentially-driven anxiety attack on the paradoxical nature of progress, understand that at the level of reality we are in, without a personal understanding of the answer, life is a stalemate.
An accurate answer seemingly clarifies all; how to spend your day schedules itself, what to eat materializes in your brain as if you have a Ph.D. in nutritional sciences. And what doesn’t manifest immediately opens roads that all you need do is follow. How to get better no longer requires that someone dangle a peanut in front of you or clap and scream you across a finish line. It certainly doesn’t require the guidance of a parasitic industry frothing at the mouth while waiting to “help” you. In fact, answering the question for yourself reveals the absolute terror of the real world: most people are not here to help you. They are here to help themselves because what is “better” to them is more often than not, your money in their pocket.
The difficulty of imagining what would be better creates a void easily filled by any fitness industry pitchman eager to paint the perfect image for you, and for an affordable monthly fee. Let’s paint a different picture…
Imagine being lost in a faraway land, you don’t even know what continent you are on, but you identify one person who might be able to tell you where you are. For the sake of this point, we assume “better” is outside, elsewhere. If the individual is a trainer, s/he will ignore your question and start throwing breadcrumbs at your face until you follow the trail to where they want you to go. If the person is a coach, s/he will hold your hand and tell you about all the great places they have been, which are somehow not where either of you are now. But if that person is a teacher, they will find a map, they will make sure the map uses language you understand and they will orient it properly. If they are a good teacher, they will try and understand where you want to go. And if they are an excellent teacher, they will also hand you a mirror.
Answering, "What is better?” and making your way towards it does not require an industry, but it does necessitate learning. Better is always a reflection personal to the viewer. If those promising you "better" try to make themselves indispensable to you instead of teaching the lessons that make your reality better, run. The most common type of relationship in the fitness industry is incessant and codependent. This is not “better”. If I prescribe a series of exercises that you should do, a place for you to do them, and I create an arbitrary goal — which we have agreed to use to measure how valuable I am to you — then I have no incentive to teach you how to do this on your own. If “better” for me is your money alone and not the lessons I learn from watching you learn, then the only thing that is better about me is my bank account, while your condition may or may not have improved.
Better can be additive but often results in subtraction. If you add experiences life will subtract time. Adding knowledge often subtracts money. Subtracting relationships can add energy, or the opposite. Adding stress generally subtracts energy, but subtracting stressors can also remove the impetus for change. To change the industry we must change the scales by which we measure "better". As of now, the money and time put out — subtracted — are disproportionate to the number of positive results added. People are not more fit — on average — despite the explosion of resources in which to become so. Trainers, coaches, and teachers alike are also not more effective at performing their job despite a population interested in becoming more fit. People are not better because the incentives of the industry have largely thwarted progress.
We have created a space and model where we can risk change, and we recognize that not everyone (within the industry) has this freedom. We are willing to look at the balance, and risk changing the scales. We are not apart from the industry, but we can be a part of fixing it.
We are not a gym. We are not trainers or coaches, and we are especially not businessmen or parasites. We are teachers and we run a school. People are allowed to attend once they accept they have something to learn, which may be as simple as figuring out what “better” is to them. If they don’t learn, we can’t. This is the balance. This is what our scales look like. Anything other than balance is falling towards chaos. What comes in needs to go out.
Over the past few months, we have radically shifted our approach to group training, and also personal coaching. We have structured our gym to reflect a school. We have periods of learning and testing, and even more time for play. We cycle through clients learning to program for themselves, learning how to heal injuries, and fixing technical limitations. And we still provide an environment that can allow the individual to make important decisions about what will help make them better; we still give them a group in which to challenge and express the current version of themselves. It is essential that our idea of better is ensuring people realize their idea of better. Perhaps our model is not applicable to others whose incentive is still industrialized and scaled, but I think it would help the general population to understand that the "better" they seek is part of an educational process, not a codependent relationship.
Learning is not merely rote memorization. It isn’t a sequence of moves or techniques, even though learning will undoubtedly require an increase in mental and physical skills. Learning can generally only happen through a desire to. And an understanding of the environment and relationships within it. Better is relative. Becoming is about understanding your position in relation to what you envision for yourself, not a blind trust in a relationship with another human, product, or promise.
The industrial standard for success can be overwhelming. It can overwrite our natural instinct to want to learn by badly incentivizing all parties involved, It can warp our intuitive sense of value and pervert the meaning that first attracted us to a practice and a business. But it can be corrected because what is better for most of us is a better-incentivized industry. One in which successful outcomes are the measure of value, where ecology is put before economy.
