Hi! If you’re new here, I’m Naomi. I’ve been teaching movement for 21 years and writing about all things movement, fitness, wellness, and health for nearly as long.
It is getting harder and harder to make a living as a fitness professional. I actually make less now than I did in my very first year of teaching, in 2005. The same thing is true of writing. I currently have 38 paid subscribers (who I am enormously grateful for) and make around $2k annually to write weekly articles. This piece required research and time, which I squeezed in around working with clients and raising my kids, who are still home on summer break.
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A few days ago, I got an especially rude comment on one of my YouTube videos. A person claiming to be a fitness professional critiqued my form and exercise choice, uninvited and completely unrelated to the actual point of the video.
When I explained why I was doing the exercise in that way, her response was, “I guess my comment is a warning to anyone who sees your video so they don’t copy your form. I just feel people lose motivation when they do a workout that takes too much effort for minimum positive effect.”
I was irritated by her obvious snark and condescension, but the second part of her comment caught my attention for a different reason.
Let me back up and share the video.
It’s a 20 second video of me doing banded kettlebell swings, while my dog watches me through the glass door.
The copy reads, “One of the most reliable ways to encourage consistency in a movement practice is to have an accountability buddy.”
I’m talking about my dog.
It’s silly and sweet, but I also write in the caption about how many of my clients email me or text me because having that point of contact (external accountability) nudges them enough to do their workout most days.
The purpose of the video was to highlight how valuable accountability buddies can be when it comes to staying consistent with your movement practice. Accountability is not a universal consistency problem solver. Pure motivation – the inner drive to just do a thing – is unreliable. Plus, different things work for different people.
However it is a factor that you can address from multiple angles, so I like to remind people of the different ways they can access accountability. Sometimes it’s texting a coach or a friend. Sometimes, it’s exercising with another person (like doing a weekly class together). Sometimes it’s committing to sharing what you do online.
In any case, the video was about accountability, not my form or the exercise I chose.
The person commenting was assuming several things when she commented, but chief among them that I am being irresponsible with what I share online as a fitness professional.
Her belief is that I should be doing every exercise perfectly in every video I share. But she also mentioned the idea that people lose motivation when a workout or exercise is too complex – referring to my banded kettlebell swing. She’s sort of right about that, although it’s certainly not the only reason. And she also made the assumption that what I share online from my personal practice is what I teach as a fitness professional.
I want to address that particular point, because I think there is a misunderstanding about what fitness professionals do and share online vs what they teach. This might not be every fitness pro, but it’s worth considering if you’re watching someone workout online. Is this their personal workout or is this a teaching moment? Sometimes it’s both, but usually people distinguish between the two.
Even more importantly, what I do for my personal workouts is often very different from what I actually program for my clients or what I teach inside my online studio and app.
This is true for many coaches and fitness professionals I know, across modalities.
So I want to share why many coaches and movement professionals often coach or teach people differently than they practice.
There are (a few) reasons.
Reason 1: People have different needs
This is really the biggest and most important reason, so I have a lot to say about it. Buckle up.
Some folks are newer to strength training (or yoga or pilates or boxing – really the modality is irrelevant, but I’m going to zero in on strength training), while others have a little more experience and more practice.
Some folks are working toward a very specific goal while others might simply be focused on general fitness or mobility or strength.
Some folks might be in “good shape” when they begin while others might be “out of shape” (to be clear, those are not judgmental terms – this is simply about physical capacity and ability, which genuinely matters when it comes to movement).
Additionally, people have all sorts of physical issues that might impact their ability to do certain movement practices – some might be recovering from injuries or surgery or dealing with chronic pain, as example.
All of this is to say that what I do in my personal practice is reflective of my current goals, physical ability, and experience.
What I program for clients or teach in my app and online studio is geared toward their needs, which in most cases doesn’t resemble my own.
Many of the folks I work with are newer to strength training and they need the basics in terms of form and more guidance in practice. Some of the people I work with have been strength training for a few years, so they have the basics for some things and are ready to learn more.
Even still, none of the folks I am currently working with are in the same place as I am in terms of experience or goals – which is ok. That’s actually my intention. I prefer to work with people newer to strength.
It’s also one of the reasons why I work with my coach (shout out to the brilliant Alison Heilig of Miles to Go Athletics). She is more experienced than I am and can program for my needs better than I could for myself.
This, my friends, is why you work with professionals and not Chat GPT (but more on that another time).
Reason 2: We have different equipment and different training spaces
Most folks who are newer to strength training have limited access to equipment. They might have a few hand weights, not always in pairs, and sometimes mini bands. Usually they don’t have a dedicated workout space, either, unless they already go to the gym to exercise.
On the other hand, I have lots of equipment. I have a rack and lots of plates. I have dumb bells in pairs up to 35lbs. I also have kettlebells, mini bands, jump stretch bands, and therabands. I don’t have a medicine ball, but I really want one. All of this stuff lives in a dedicated workout space in a decent-sized, unfinished basement which is also my husband’s office.
I am a fitness professional and I love working out, so I am willing to invest a lot in workout equipment. This means when I do my own workouts, they often feature barbells, handweights, kettlebells, and bands. I’d be willing to bet this is true for many other fitness pros, too.
Most folks newer to strength training are going to be a bit reluctant to invest a lot of time or space to workout equipment.
When I program for individual clients or in my studio, I try to keep the equipment simple and minimal (until they tell me otherwise).
Reason 3: Experimentation and complexity go hand in hand with experience
For people new to any type of movement, you always start them with the basics. When I taught yoga in studios, I often taught a beginners series. I started with the basics, focusing on standing poses, because they are the most accessible. Students didn’t hold poses long. We’d do the same poses a few times. The following week, around 80% of the class was the same material, with only a few slight changes. The idea is to build familiarity, consistency, and awareness.
I would slowly increase how long they held poses, including savasana because it turns out that lying on the floor with your eyes closed in a room full of strangers is uncomfortable for most people.
If people liked yoga enough to stick around, eventually they’d go to Level 1 or ½ classes or flow classes, slowly increasing their skills.
Things in yoga tend to get more complex as you advance because you know more and have more skills, as well as more familiarity with increasingly challenging poses. You likely also have more body awareness, as well as more willingness to experiment.
All of it builds on those skills from the beginners series.
That’s sort of the idea.
Hopefully this clears up why someone with more experience and skill might choose exercises or a movement practice that is more complex than what they’d actually teach or program for their clients.
We all need to start with the basics. Where we choose to go from there is personal.
Reason 4: Different situations require specific programming
Your circumstances matter when it comes to how you move your body.
This summer, 2 of my clients who receive personalized monthly programming from me had big travel plans. One was going camping with her family while another had several adventures in a variety of places but she could only bring a thin travel yoga mat.
Both prefer shorter daily movement practices (strength and yoga) over longer practices 2-4 days per week.
This meant I had to adjust what they were doing to suit the needs of the situation. For my camping client, we did bodyweight workouts and yoga, but I tried to avoid exercises that would involve her lying on her back – not ideal at a dusty, outdoor campsite.
For my thin yoga mat client, I went with a lot of simple flows and quick movement practices. Nothing that required props and nothing too complex.
Every summer, I spend a month in a tiny cabin in northern Michigan. I have limited equipment and space, especially compared to what I have access to at home. I asked my coach to create a month of workouts that was tailored to the equipment I had – some kettlebells, 3 sets of hand weights, and bands. So she came up with workouts that focused on power and agility over the heavy lifting I do at home. This is how I ended up doing some banded kettlebell swings.
Thanks to my coach, I didn’t really lose any strength this summer and actually achieved some big strength milestones – which was the goal.
Reason 5: Individual practice vs General Population programming
This returns to the original point, which is that individual needs are often different from a general approach to movement.
They might share some of the same principles or actions. Progressive stimulus is still the thing that builds muscle, no matter what exercises you are doing.
Here’s another example: my personal practice focuses a lot on compound exercises, a strength exercise that targets multiple joints and muscle groups, like deadlifts or squats.
I also happen to program these types of exercises routinely for my clients, both in my online studio and on my app.
Compound exercises are great because they give you more bang for your buck and the same actions show up in other, more complex exercises. So they are time efficient and effective, strength-wise.
However my personal practice also includes very specific programming for chin-ups and pull-ups, which are a big fitness goal I have. And there are some targeted exercises to help keep my joints more capable for running, because I run 2-3 days a week.
I don’t teach most of those things to the members in my online studio or my app. I tend to keep things more basic and accessible because I am aiming to support a broader group of people.
*****
The reason I wrote this is that it’s easy to take things at face value, especially on the internet. We don’t always think critically about what we see because social media isn’t really built for that.
When it comes to fitness online, many influencers and professionals use their body and their practice as their calling card.
They are selling the results they experience but that’s a false promise.
Please do not try to replicate the workout of a fitness professional you follow online. You won’t have the exact same success. Your body won’t look the same as theirs, regardless of the promises they might make.
And for an unpopular opinion, how your body looks is actually the least important and least controllable outcome of exercise.
While the principles of strength training (as an example) are universal, how certain exercises impact your body depends on lots of different factors.
Our bodies are unique and our needs are often specific.
What you see online isn’t necessarily going to work for your body. That’s ok.
If you want to start strength training (or doing yoga or pilates or boxing or salsa dancing) take classes – online and in-person are both great options.
I don’t recommend just trying exercises based on brief videos that are not instructional. I also don’t recommend Chat-GPT.
If you want more personalized guidance, work directly with a skilled professional.
Just remember:
The goal is not to workout like a fitness professional or an influencer. The goal is to workout in the way that works for you.
*****
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I'm sorry you are having to deal with this. I'm a fan of yours.
Worth separating out the two things her comment collapsed. Demonstrating and teaching are different acts, and a viewer usually can’t tell which one she is watching because the caption rarely says. That gap is where copying starts. The complaint was about form. Your answer is about context, which is the larger question and one that reaches well past fitness.