The Not Yet Fit - Predators Delight

COVID-19 has delivered the strongest message yet about the dire need for not yet fit individuals to exercise more and eat healthier. Our industry has maintained a desire to educate, motivate and lead these folks to a healthier lifestyle, but have barely mad a dent in this at risk population. Our focus clearly needs to be to create healthy, long-term lifestyle choices that will help prevent catastrophic illness, conditions and even premature death.

In addition to COVID-19, there is a continuing global pandemic of ill-health directly related lack of exercise and poor nutritional habits. The fitness industry MUST lead the way.

What is needed for the "not yet fit" is simple. They need realistic behavior modification including exercise and healthier dietary choices. But, what do they get? In far too many instances they get what could be construed through simple logic as a predatory frenzy of supposed successful choices of potential change based on low price. 

"There is hardly anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse and sell a little cheaper, and the people who consider price only are this man's lawful prey." 

John Ruskin

They are the predators delight...

A few examples:

Weight loss

For many not yet fit the simple choice appears to be weight loss. Weight loss can be an effective counter-measure to poor lifestyle related consequences, but is only moderately effective for maximum effect potential when no regular exercise component is added. What's worse is that when one measures the number of people who engage popular weight loss programs in hopes of positive results, against the number of successful outcomes, the numbers are virtually microscopic.

Many people initially lose some weight. Many more lose some weight but return to their previous weight and sometimes more in a generally short time frame. Weight loss programs are advertised extensively and a quantifiably false vision of hope is broadcast over and over and over again. When people engage weight loss and do not attain and/or sustain their goals long-term cycles of failure begin to erode any real hope of success. Instead a daunting expectation of failure ensues. When one has experienced repeated failure, success becomes that much more difficult to attain.

Weight loss industry - Valuable resource or predatory practice? The numbers never lie.

Home exercise equipment

Home exercise equipment is seductively attractive to the not yet fit. Just like weight loss, the potential for success is there, but the real fact is that long-term sedentary behavior and poor nutritional intake are not suddenly cured in a moment of passionate hope that usually soon passes. That moment is the moment when the inactive and not yet fit person makes the next decision in what is usually a progression of decisions that have led to long-term failure and while for the moment the person has real hope it soon fades to their self created reality that consists of discontinuing the lifestyle change attempt du jour.

What are the top outcomes for home exercise equipment for most not yet fit?

1. Clothes horse

2. Dust bunny collector

Just like with weight loss, although a bit more difficult to access hard and fast numbers, the answer to success or failure for the not yet fit lies within how many actually buy home exercise equipment and how many truly attain/sustain the success they sought.

Home exercise equipment industry - Valuable resource or predatory practice? The numbers never lie.

Joining a fitness center or health club

This is another highly advertised option for the not yet fit as the way to enhance their quality of life. A good health club or fitness center is a great option for the already fit. Many offer low prices, the very best in exercise equipment and a comfortable atmosphere for folks who are already fit and simply need a great place to exercise.

But, for the not yet fit person, health clubs and fitness centers are usually result in very high cancellation rates for the not yet fit. In fact, one recent survey found that there are more former members of health and fitness centers than current members, Hmmm...

A few examples of failed health and fitness center new member offerings supposedly designed for new not yet fit members:

1. The "Free Fitness Evaluation"

This is an initial offering for new members that generally includes time spent with a certified fitness professional whereby the new not yet fit member gets an overview of their current level of fitness (or lack thereof) and the fitness professional suggests a work out program for the person.

2. The "Free Fitness Orientation"

This is a similar venue to the "fitness evaluation". Both are designed with an imagining that somehow the new not yet fit member will become so inspired that they suddenly and without warning combust into a motivated regular exerciser!

3. The "Free Equipment Orientation"

This initial new member offering is the most misguided of all. It presumes that by having a certified fitness professional explain how to use the equipment correctly, the new not yet fit member will now be motivated to work out on their own.

4. The "Free Session(s) With A Personal Trainer

This new member program is based on double false assumptions. One is that the session(s) with the personal trainer will inspire the new "not yet fit" member to become an exerciser or client. The second false assumption is that the personal trainers in 90% of the clubs who have no idea how to create a client from this opportunity will nonetheless create a client.

The industry models for assisting the people who make a decision to join is extremely misleading. The "free fitness assessment", the "free fitness evaluation", the "free equipment orientation", the "free session (s) with a personal trainer" DO NOT create a regular exerciser where one did not exist before these weak offerings were engaged.

Fitness center and health club industry - Valuable resource or predatory practice? The numbers never lie.

Joining a medical fitness center

The medical fitness industry creates the appearance of being "the good guys" for the not yet fit. Think about it. For the not yet fit, a hospital represents the cures for what ails them. The medical fitness business is now engaging a slogan, "Fitness is medicine!" It sounds so...well...you know...like real hope for the not yet fit!

There are two factions within the medical fitness industry. One that subscribes to the notion that they are there only to serve the already sick. That's a fine mission. As limited in scope and thinking as it is. However, if at the same time the medical fitness center offers an open membership to any and all who wish to use their center as the source of hope for positive lifestyle change, then that clinical and sterile notion must be tempered with the reality. That reality is that the medical fitness center will be no different than any other fitness center or health club if their astronomical rates of cancellation of not yet fit members continues at its current rate.

See above examples in health club and fitness centers of engagement of false assumptions for point of sale programs that do not work for the not yet fit but are also used by the medical fitness business.

When the not yet fit person walks into (without a doctor's prescription) the medical fitness center they are still simply responding to an impulse that is tempered by the failure cycles that have led to their long-term inactivity and poor nutritional choices. Many medical fitness centers "think" that the not yet fit person will so impressed with the beauty of their facility that even if they don't join on the first visit they will be back to join later. This is utterly false and can easily be disproven through performance quantification, but medical fitness centers think they don't need to quantify efforts.

Many actually create additional roadblocks for the not yet fit person, requiring them to get a doctors authorization BEFORE joining. If anyone wants to know the truth about not yet fit people who need lifestyle change, try doing some research and quit concluding that some long held false assumption created in a cerebral moment of assumed brilliance is actually real when it IS NOT. That which you do not measure is simply an assumption. If we are to make a profound difference for the international crisis of ill-health related to sedentary living and poor nutritional intake, assumptions need to be removed and replaced with quantifiable truths.

Medical fitness industry - Valuable resource or predatory practice? The numbers never lie.

The truth is that everybody knows somebody who needs to exercise more and eat a healthier dietary regimen. For most of those in need, they will either continue their failure cycles or never even begin without somebody who cares enough about them personally reaching out and taking them by the hand to a place or program that is designed for success and not an illusion designed for failure.

It is time to get real. It is time to make the difference we claim to represent. Indeed, IT IS TIME...