Happy Saturday team!
Coach Will here, to say...
It drives me nuts that in our culture, fitness is pigeon-holed as somehow belonging only to the already fit.
This impossible, circular logic hinges on a sneaky tactic stolen from the diet-industry playbook: by only displaying the shiny/happy (read: high status) parts of the experience, the less-positive and even negative experiences that everyone will have are blamed on the individual. Basically, the "wins" are from adhering to some narrow definition of success, but the "losses" are your fault.
The subtle tinges of morality that run through most fitness marketing, basically the idea that you will be a "better" person if you just... (fill in the blank), belie a total obsession with status and virtue-signaling.
And the falseness of that premise makes me mad as hell.
The reality of each and everyone of us is this: on the inside, there are pockets of light, corners of darkness, and lots of unknown.
There are times when we are at our best, making an impact and feeling fulfilled, and there are moments that we'd rather pretend were the words/actions of someone else. And filling in the gaps are miles of uncharted ground, not yet fully grasped or formed.
Now, in the standard fitness narrative, the one that is "aspirational" and hell-bent on motivating everyone to … (fill in the blank), all the time (Yay!) there is simply no room for feelings of emptiness, or scarcity, or trapped-ness. There's no space for not knowing yet, or struggle, or being in-process.
And then when you get past the initial misgivings that all this ALL POSITIVE ALL THE TIME might not really capture what's going on for you, you are left to think that any time you hit a snag it is wholly your fault.
But that's wrong. It's not your fault.
It's the fault of an industry not willing to see itself (or at least not the not-so-shiny parts).
It's the fault of trainers who impose their internalized fatphobia on their clients, it's the fault of marketers who write headlines just for the clicks, and it's the fault of gym owners and influencers who try to fix your struggles first, rather than acknowledging them, and meeting you where and how you are.
Thankfully, today we have an alternative.
We have the chance to leverage the observed scientific principles that govern our bodies toward our own ends. Until quite recently, we were forced to rely entirely on our own experience or on the suspect opinion of coaches--suspect because they were themselves relying solely on their own experiences.
And while there is surely value in those inputs, there is also a lot of room for fantasy and false-narrative. The fact that there is published, peer-reviewed information that we can put into action makes this science-based path the obvious choice if we are interested in tangibly changing our physical bodies.
We have an opportunity to use these next-level tools to exert some power over our own experience, to direct our lives in the direction we want to go, and to do the things that matter to us.
But if we're forced to buy some shiny/happy crock o' shit to even just get in the door, those tools will go unused! And all of us will keep thinking that our struggles with the process of change represent an individual failure.
Change is hard, jagged and uneven, and happens in fits and starts. And that's no one's fault.
What is change feeling like for you these days?