There’s Money to be Made in Complexity

Waiting until you’ve solved it all

I hear really complex issues about the development of health and fitness from prospective trainees as well as friends and acquaintances: advanced and detailed thinking about training loads and frequencies, dietary extremes. And these are people yet to embark on any kind of health and fitness programme. In fact, I am usually left with the impression that they feel they can’t get started until they’ve solved these complexities.

Where is this coming from? I can only guess that it’s social media and influencers – I make the active choice to avoid that world as far as possible.

Anyway, it’s all just an extension of the well-worn process of making things seem complicated so that people feel they must pay for special products, and do complex things, to gain benefit.

I would link this to the belief that every workout should be different, because we must confuse the muscles to stimulate them. And that means you have to have advanced levels of exercise knowledge, so that you can inject endless variety into your training schedule. You don’t have that level of knowledge? Shame: you’ll have to pay me to train you, for years!

My real gripe is that this money-motivated complexity stops people getting on and doing exercise!

It’s like the trend for optimising and tracking sleep, which has been shown to make many people sleep less well. I guess the next thing will be teeth-brushing – let’s see how complex that becomes in the next few years (I’ve already seen the toothbrush with a camera that synchs to your phone…).

The simple version

Here’s the simple version to get started with exercise:

If you are mostly sedentary, go for a walk. As it starts to feel easier, go a bit faster, and maybe further. It really is that small a start.

If you want to gain some strength, you’ll need a workout that balances pulls with pushes, squats with folds, plus a bit of twisting. You’ll need to learn about nine movements, but then you can stick with them.

Why sticking with it is the point

The idea that every workout should be different might sound right, but think about this: how will you see progress? When you stick with the same movements, you master them, and then you find that you can do more reps and increase the resistance. This can sound boring when compared to complicated workouts that always change – but wait until you experience the progress: nothing is more motivating than success!

Trouble is, you can achieve this with very little guidance; a few lessons, and the occasional check-in. There’s next-to-no money to be made in simplicity.

(BTW I have zero nutritional qualifications, so, regarding the incredible dietary complexities out there, my advice is read Michael Pollan: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Not as well-known as it should be, because there’s nothing to be sold.)