Is your Fitness Guru Helping…or Hurting your Journey?

Fitness gurus certainly aren’t in shortage nowadays. And it can be hard to weed through all the crap to get to the “stuff” that really matters. After all, picking the right person to listen to and get advice from is a big part of your journey. So you want to make sure you pick the right person.

This can be even more difficult if you’re new to the whole fitness industry. Why? Because you’ve got a ton of so-called gurus flying at you from left and right, shoving info down your throat about getting you ripped through all their mysterious secrets.

Don’t believe us? Look to some of the most popular sites regarding fitness and wellness. There is all kinds of advice that totally contradicts itself. You hear it all day every day.

Some of these experts fully believe in eating bland, boring food, which they have lovingly dubbed ‘clean’ food. But it’s the best way to get ripped! Other gurus are going to tell you that eating junk food will get you there. It’s the best way to get ripped!

In terms of training, some of them are going to have you dedicate your focus on doing a higher rep “pump” session. It’s the best way to get ripped!

Others are going to spend their time focusing on lifting heavy weights and that’s it. It’s the best way to get ripped!

Some have their say on meal frequency. You have to get every couple of hours – it’s the best way to get ripped! But wait – this “guru” says it doesn’t actually matter how often you eat.  

Someone will say high protein diets are the best way to get ripped. But then you turn around and someone else says it doesn’t matter. This expert says genetics are going to have a huge hand in your fitness goals. But another will say it doesn’t matter, and it shouldn’t factor in at all.

See a pattern? How can people in the same industry say complete opposite things? Who is in the right here? How about the wrong? And the million-dollar question – how should we know who we can trust and listen to?

There are certain criteria that a fitness guru should meet. And we’re going to give it to you so you know if someone is doing a good job…or if they’re totally full of it.

First and foremost, if you’re listening to a fitness guru, and he or she starts going off about some revolutionary diet plan or exercise, two words:

WALK AWAY.

The best fitness guru will know there isn’t any kind of shortcut to getting fit and healthy. If they start talking about a special method or technique, it’s probably a bunch of crap. Whatever their so-called discovery is, is not going to help you. And it certainly isn’t going to shape or change the fitness world. So back out of it now.

But it’s all about the contrarian marketing aspect. It sells, because we fall for it. When someone starts going off about these “things” that every person should know, obviously people are going to break their necks to make sure they hear it.

So the more contrarian the fitness guru makes the pitch, the more it is headed right toward false. It’s going against everything we know in terms of fitness – we need to control the food we eat and exercise on a regular basis. Anything besides this just simply isn’t true. And you don’t want to waste your time or money figuring it out.

We do have some good news, though.

First of all, he or she is going to start off by telling you that any “traditional” methods of getting lean and/or building up muscle doesn’t work or doesn’t do the job fully. So they’re going to talk trash on bulking and cutting, counting calories, hypertrophy training, etc.

Then they’re going to dive headfirst into the crap. They are going to start bringing up some strange tips or techniques that they claim help you build muscle but cut down on fat. The results? Oh, easy and fast, of course!

And here’s where it gets tricky. They’ll start talking about their own transformations or their friends transformations in order to sell you on their special method. And each one of these stories is going to have the same baseline: a method they tried, trying and then failing, they have a breakthrough with this guru’s “special” method, they’re seeing results constant, others are getting results from it and now you can, too.

And yes of course they have scientific research to back it up. No sources to cite for this, but still, they have evidence, right? Then they come up with some clever little name to go along with it and poof! Their very own method comes alive.

So which Fitness Guru do you listen to?

But here’s the basic truth – sometimes, people are training and eating incorrectly, so they aren’t going to make progress. Unfortunately, there isn’t any kind of special secret or method that’s going to give you instant results fast.

As for your diet, what it comes down to is this – the way you balance macronutrients and energy. Tweaking your intake of carbs, the timing and sizes of your meal, and all of your food choices isn’t really that important.

As for weightlifting, what matters here is the level of intensity and how often, as well as progressive overload and the exercise you decide to do. Doing the right kind of training is actually easier than you might think – and a heck of a lot easier than these fitness gurus want you to think. All you really need to focus on is lifting heavy weights, as you want to train every muscle group in your body on a 5 to 7 day timeframe, as well as doing compound exercising and adding weight to that bar.

So if your fitness guru isn’t showing a clear knowledge of this stuff…..stay away.

Things like “bad carbs” that’ll lead you right to obesity and how you can only achieve weight loss by eating clean and cutting back on all types of food. Or the fact that you have to eat insane levels of protein in order to build muscle, because you’re going to lose it if you don’t. Oh and let’s not forget that eating at night is going to make you fat, but not eating enough during the day is going to slow your metabolism way down.

Have you heard a few of these? We thought so. The sources of these myths probably range from television commercials to trainers to friends and magazines.

But here’s the shocking news – none of these are true. All you really need to do to see these are wrong is do some research. Some cold hard facts with scientific evidence research. If you’re listening to people who don’t do this (and base their opinions off of other people’s opinions) you aren’t going to get very far.

We know it can be a bit of a time crunch to look things up and research them, but isn’t everything that’s worth it time-consuming – like your fitness goals?

Case in point – you don’t want to trust a fitness guru who doesn’t make any kind of reference back to research or scientific studies. If they don’t do this, they’re going to be wrong. Very very wrong about a lot of things.

Now if it’s a casual reference to something, and there isn’t a citation, this isn’t the worst news in the world – just be smart. You want to see the studies and their success all for yourself, because it’s extremely (and scarily) easy how misconstrued these facts can become. One person’s perception on the topic might be completely different than what it truly says.

Does your Fitness Guru have Facts to Back Up their Claims?

If your guru is able to show you these scientific citations, this is a great step. You will likely want to see it yourself, again, just in case they misunderstood something, but just the knowledge that the guru took the time to do some solid research is pretty promising.

Not sure where to look? Check out places like PubMed or even DeepDyve. Just about every single study is on one of these sites, so you can get the facts for yourself.

Our next tip – if this so-called guru doesn’t have any kind of good, positive, successful, etc client stories guess what – there’s a reason for it. It’s hard to remember that this immortal-like person standing in front of you can’t deliver awesome results. After all, look at him/her! Their physique is amazing.

But that doesn’t mean the person knows the best outlet for you and your goals. Generally, non-experts tend to complicate things. A lot.

But a good coach isn’t that hard to come by. Rather, he or she just needs to focus on getting you to eating filling yet healthy foods and exercising between 4-6 hours on a weekly basis.

There are tons of coaches out there – but that doesn’t mean they’re good. You want to listen for good client stories to feel them out. Odds are, they will have some kind of write-up from a client (or more than one client) based off of how the entire process went. It’ll be a lot more than just a few pictures. This matters because you can’t just go off of pictures. There are tons of manipulations you can do for “before” and “after” pictures. Sometimes, it isn’t even the same person! So ask for the words and the facts from the clients themselves.

If you want to see the integrity behind these images, you can always try a reserve image search online to see if the pictures pop up anywhere else. They might pop up in various kinds of message boards, social media spots and sales pages which is a sure sign they aren’t genuine.

You also want to listen to your gut (no pun intended here). If it doesn’t walk and talk like a duck, odds are, it’s not a duck.

Is your Fitness Guru in Shape?

So if the person doesn’t seem like a fitness guru, there’s a change he or she isn’t. First clue – if the person isn’t in shape. If you’re looking at him/her and not seeing any results, how are you supposed to get results from them?

There is a small chance that they know what they’re doing, but they’re just too unmotivated or lazy to do it. Or, sometimes they just don’t care. They don’t practice what they preach. However, this is a very very small category of people so keep an eye out.

On the flipside, there’s a chance if the person looks too good, it can cause some problems. Why? Because of steroids. Not sure how to decide if someone is on steroids?

Here’s a question to ask yourself – does the person look like the hulk? Yes, they’re on steroids. Crazy, totally unbelievable muscles are a sure sign of drugs. If the person has an awesome body, yet is talking nonstop about how natural they are, that’s a dead ringer. Or their workouts are based on 2 hours of just high-rep work, that’s a sign too.

Now we don’t care who uses steroids and who doesn’t. But here’s why it’s worth bringing up – you aren’t doing drugs. So what’s working for this person (who does take steroids) probably won’t work for you. They’re going to be training and eating a lot more than what you’re used to – so that isn’t the kind of advice you want to take.

Conclusion

Our last point is a home run – do certifications really make a difference?

Surprisingly…….. no. Being a personal trainer and having your certification isn’t really that big of a deal. Much like you just need to know how to drive to get your license, this is pretty similar. Yet this is the stuff that we fall for. What you want is someone who has a formal education in the fitness or health field – but this shouldn’t decide everything. Just keep an eye out for those bragging about the crazy methods and techniques.

-Terry Asher