Don’t Adopt a Weight-Centric Approach to Fitness
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By Sal | April 29, 2009
Using weight, or appearance, as a measure of a client's progress is counter-productive and can actually hinder your ability to retain clients. A performance-based approach to fitness and progress is the only kind of program that responsible personal trainers and strength coaches should use.
Preaching the weight-centric/appearance-centric approach to fitness sends the wrong message to clients and sets up an unhealthy relationship between weight/appearance and health. The old saying, "You can't tell a book by its cover," pertains to fitness, as subjective observations that someone is either "skinny" or "fat" doesn't mean that they are fit or unhealthy.
Fitness consumers - our clients - are given, via the mainstream media like the television show "The Biggest Loser," the message that weight loss is all that matters. However, there is plenty of scientific data that disproves the weight-centric approach to health, and there is awareness that people can be healthy at any size. Be a fitness professional who doesn't push the appearance/weight-based approach, and avoid is the major reasons people get frustrated with exercise.
The problems that come from the weight-based/appearance-based approach:
- Clients equate weight loss to improved health
- Clients think eating less and losing weight improves health and thinner means healthier
- This approach ignores evidence that tells us performance is more important than body weight
- Using weight and appearance to evaluate and measure progress makes it difficult to retain clients
Personal trainers and strength coaches who chose to emphasize appearance and weight, instead of trying to measure and improve performance, are making the job of retaining clients more difficult than it should be. Telling a prospect or client that their appearance will change as a result of training is overstating your ability, engaging in pure speculation and sending the message that weight loss and appearance are indicators of health and fitness.
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