Welcome to The Planet of Cheap Fitness – Earth.  There are limited signs of intelligent life here, but plenty of signs of a general lack of common sense. 

Without common sense, the masses adopt and follow a “herd mentality”.  This creates an environment where social trends occur, and recur.  These social trends can be good, bad, or neutral.  There is a particularly bad trend, a gruesome trend, that persists in the health and fitness marketplace.  An industry that is promising results is the very same industry preventing the general public from adopting successful methods to achieve their health and fitness goals.  This is a gruesome social trend I have labelled, “$9.99 Fitness“.

There are always trends to follow.

Trends occur in fashion, the stock market, politics, eating habits, and technology. Trends also occur in fitness. Fitness is my profession. I pay special attention to trends in fitness.

Some trends are good, like removing High Fructose Corn Syrups (HFCS) and trans-fats from our foods. Some trends are bad, like the increased polarization of political beliefs leaving little room for effective compromise and an increase in the “us” vs “them” attitude that causes strife between friends, and even family. Some trends are gruesome, like an increase in anti-American sentiment among some Hollywood “elite”, a preachy “good for thee, but not for me” policy among government officials, and the immense fitness scam of “$9.99 Fitness”.

In fitness, as in many things, the public at large seems to be perennially interested in the newest, greatest “thing”.

Consequently, there is ALWAYS a newest, greatest thing in fitness made available for people to purchase.

The next newest, greatest thing in fitness is made available by hordes of clever marketeers, MBAs, shrewd businesspeople, Instagram “models”, con men, and similarly unscrupulous, snake oil salespeople. These abhorrent forces lurking in the health and fitness sector DO NOT CARE about your desire to get fit and healthy.  They are concerned with one thing and one thing only… making maximum profit.  A very similar phenomenon occurs in the financial industry.

YOUR HOPE IS POTENTIALLY HAZARDOUS

If you have any hope, desire, or motivation to make more money for yourself and claim a better life, there is someone right there, day or night, willing to exploit those hopes and dreams.  The difference among the scams of both the fitness and the financial industries lies only in the level of sophistication.  General speaking, the financial industry is the home base of smarter criminals.  And so surfaces one of the chief hazards of capitalism – profits CAN be made by providing products and/or services that are actually BAD for the consumer.  Don’t get me wrong – socialism is definitely not the answer.  Only idiots believe in the “benevolence” of socialism.  I am simply pointing out that you must understand the hazards and risks of the game you are playing to maximize your probability of winning.

Of course, profits CAN and are often are made by providing products and/or services that are GOOD for the consumer.

Fresh, local, responsibly produced vegetables, milk, or eggs, would be examples. Profits can also be made by providing products and/or services that have no discernible negative, or positive, effect on the consumer. Would Private Mortgage Insurance be a good example? A quick, cursory observation of the world around you will tell you that it is much easier to sell a consumer something that is BAD for them, than it is to sell them something that is GOOD for them. It is a strange phenomenon. Think about cigarettes, alcohol, fast food, and consumer credit cards. These things practically sell themselves! Aren’t they all pretty terrible for you? ABSOLUTELY.

Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20.

Meaning it is easy to look back at something that has already passed by  and see it clearly – to accurately see if it was good, bad, or gruesome. Can you think of fitness trends that have come and gone, that now, today, you could easily identify as utterly ridiculous scams? “Wow, how could anyone have ever believed that worked?”. I am sure you can think of a few examples of products and/or services that were sold successively on a mass scale that today you can easily see were bogus and gruesome ways to defraud people out of their money. Do you remember the Thigh Master? How about the Gazelle?

The Planet of Cheap Fitness, featuring “$9.99 Fitness”.

I suspect that this gruesome social trend of $9.99 Fitness has reached its zenith and based on the general public sentiment it seems people are waking up to the lies they have been fed.

But despite being embarrassed to admit it, many still maintain their membership at their local health club where fitness dreams go to die.  For only “10 bucks a month”, it’s too cheap to even worry about.  They would rather “just pay it” than go through the incredible hassle of cancelling the membership.  Or, they foolishly rationalize it away with thoughts like “they have everything I need to get in shape” (no they don’t).  These are examples of the exact mental processes $9.99 Fitness is counting on.

Devaluing the Service

Back in 2005, I probably would have called $9.99 Fitness, “$19.99 Fitness”.  And a few years into the future, I will probably be calling it “$4.99 Fitness”.  After that, probably, “FREE Fitness”.  And that’s when you probably will stop hearing about it, because when something is FREE it is not far behind that it will be viewed as worthless and irrelevant, because, at that point, you have totally devalued the service and the brand.

“$9.99 Fitness” is the fast food of the fitness industry.

It’s cheap. It’s quick. It’s convenient. Everybody’s doing it. It feels good at the moment. And it’s pretty horrible for you. It’s an ugly, gruesome trend.  Classic sales tactic example of over-promising and under delivering.

The promise is, ‘we will help you get fit” while they deliver an environment and philosophy guaranteed to keep you fat and unfit:

• Free pizza, bagels, and even Tootsie Rolls,
• Fit-shaming,
• overcrowded exercise conditions,
• lack of effective exercise tools,
• prohibition of specific, effective exercises,
• an emphasis on ineffective cardio machines,
• and a mass-marketed acceptance of mediocrity.

Another dangerous, and strangely ironic aspect of the $9.99 Fitness model is the conflict between what they are marketing to the public and what they are actually selling.

In addition perpetuating the myth that the fastest path to weight loss is tons of cardio, the $9.99 Fitness facility model EMPHASIZES machine based training. They have continued to reduce the space and money in their facilities that is dedicated to free weight training in favor of weight-assisted, lever, and selectorized machines. These sort of machines are DESIGNED ideally FOR high level BODYBUILDING – isolation and development of specific muscle groups for the sake of making muscles BIGGER with practically no significant increases in FUNCTIONAL strength.  And, here’s the ironic part… their typical marketing is heavily anti-bodybuilder!  You can feel socially accepted at the $10 bucks a month club ONLY if you don’t show any outward signs of actually being in great shape.

PICK ONE

So, $9.99 Fitness either

1. does NOT even understand what their facilities’ equipment is designed for,
2. OR they are just telling you whatever they can to get you to sign up after they have filled their gym with cheap equipment that is totally inappropriate for beginners.

MACHINES ARE NOT FOR BEGINNERS

It typically escapes the grasp of the public at large why exercising primarily on machines is exactly the OPPOSITE of what someone new to the gym should be doing, but a good coach can help you with a comprehensive understanding of the reasons why.  $9.99 Fitness is a shrine of ineffective fitness machines. The machines they have chosen to equip their facilities with are, at best, a very, very inefficient use of your time. At worst, these machines are setting you up for a serious injury.   But either way, whether you get no results, or get injured by exercising at $9.99 Fitness, it is still compatible with THEIR GOAL of everyone paying that 10 bucks a month and nobody showing up.

CONCLUSION

If there is one thing I wish to leave you with for today, it’s this – working out is a sacred activity that can potentially yield you immeasurable benefits.  Exercising in a properly constructed and organized gym environment will set the stage for your personal fitness success.  Learn as much as you can about how exercise properly for your goals. I know there are MANY “experts” out there all trying to get your attention and tell you how to exercise, diet, and which supplements to take. And everybody seems to be saying something different! Try to relax, breathe, and choose one source at a time to explore the ideas of. Sometimes you may pick up something useful, sometimes you may not. Just be your own judge and take a little time to figure it out for yourself. Be wary of trends. And, remember, if “EVERYONE” is doing it, it is probably WRONG.