By workout program, I don’t mean any plan you may follow in the gym.
I mean these branded, named-and-claimed workout routines that transform their users into self-identifying devotees and fanatics.
Here’s a few problems I have with workout programs:
They use hype to exploit excitement (aka “motivation”) — with some good reason because people are notorious flakes about working out, so you want to capitalize on it when you’ve got them excited.
They encourage program-hopping. By definition a branded program is not dwelling on the fundamental principles that make it work. The devoted believers fall into orbit around surface-level appearances, often without clear goals or sense of progress. When you don’t care where you go, any road is as good as any other. Loyalty to a goal is impossible.
They’re more marketing than reality. A sale happens when the buyer perceives the purchase as more valuable than their money. Fitness and nutrition come down to finding the basics and doing the work. That’s generic and easy to copy. You stand out by finding and capitalizing on points of difference.
The fitness world is overwhelmed with name-branded workout programs. What is harder to see is that what look like dozens or hundreds or thousands of different workout plans are only minor variations on a small core of principles.
It reminds me of being in academia, where careers are made by making a big deal out of tiny details that are five levels removed from any questions of interest to anyone.
Understand how to handle a few chords on a guitar and you can play a whole lot of songs.
But grasping the upstream principles that create 98% of the downstream effects isn’t a brandable workout that you can own as IP.
All these flaws granted, I’ve had reason to reconsider some of my dislike of workout programs.
Here’s some reasons that I’ve reconsidered.
When they’re done well, they have a specific purpose and a definite goal within a definite time-frame. Having a point in your system is always a positive. A clear, definite aim keeps you centered and moving forward when the monotony of the boring work sets in.
Vague goals like “lose some fat” are not enough. The purpose and goal needs to be a concrete, visible, tangible, sensory outcome that you can point at and feel, and ideally with a deadline to achieve it. Well-made programs do this.
Decision fatigue is real. Making choices is exhausting and that goes even more when you’re dealing with incomplete information in areas you don’t know much about. It’s easy for me to operate from principles. That isn’t true of anyone who isn’t themselves a high-level nerd about physiology and science and training and such. I believe people ought to be interested in their health and how it works, but that isn’t how people really are.
Most people who are interested in workout programs are not in any condition to make good decisions about diet and exercise. If they were, they wouldn’t need the program or a coach. Imagine going to your car’s mechanic and telling him about all the cool things he should do to your car. Or doing that to your lawyer when you get hauled up on criminal charges. You pay specialists for their good judgment so that they can make good decisions for you.
The power of belief and ritual ought to astonish and terrify us. Programs with names channel our deepest and oldest instincts to align with a tribe and identify with a group. I’ve been cynical, with good reason, about this effect as exploited by cynical marketers after a cash grab. I am also fascinated, if not obsessed, with how the unconscious powers of belief and ritual can be made to work for us. When you belong to a group, the name itself can call power into being. Identity has a power that science badly understands, if it is even capable of understanding. (Which I doubt.)
There’s something for you to think about today.
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Matt Perryman