Hard Work Isn’t Sexy
The fitness industry, unfortunately, thrives by playing on your emotions. This isn’t always a bad thing – for example, you aren’t going to pay close to $200/month for a powerlifting gym/coach unless you are invested in achieving certain things. This play on emotion and fears of inadequacy goes much deeper than that, however.
Your favourite instagram #influencer posts multiple times a day, with filters / great lighting / sometimes professional photography. Hell, sometimes photoshop. They also promote their online coaching services, or fit tea, or their 12 week glute workout program. The implication being – hire me as your coach and you’ll look like me! Drink this tea and you to can have this body! Do this program and you will have my bum!
Unfortunately, the real world just doesn’t work that way. You don’t often see the hard work that it takes to reach a certain body type (let alone the potential ‘supplementation’). Why? Because it doesn’t sell. Tracking your nutrition for 6months+ is hard. Training to improve your lifts or your body beyond the 1-2 year of training mark is hard. It sucks. It is 1-2 hours of suffering and paying the man, almost every day. People don’t want this thrown at them, despite knowing (deep down) that nothing comes easy.
Why? I don’t know. Well I do know – people are bound by their own inertia. Realising that your goal will take two years instead of two months can be somewhat paralysing, or simply disheartening. But that is the beauty of it, in my mind. What you achieve in the gym is literally down to your effort. If you sandbag it, any of it, then you can only look at yourself in the mirror and say ‘I’ll do better’. No one forces you to eat a whole box of Crispix cereal in a weekend (guilty). No one forces you to sleep in instead of getting up and training (guilty). No forces you to cut your training short because you’re tired, or it’s getting late (guilty).
So what are you going to do? Keep looking for the easy way out? Or pay the man?
It’s up to you.
#byliftersforlifters