S6:E14 - Why Influencers Are Ruining Your Workout

Welcome to the show that punches you in the face with information. Welcome to the Enterprise Fitness Podcast. My name is Mark Ottobre, and today we are going to be unpacking why the fitness industry is ruining your workout. Yes, why the fitness industry is ruining your workout. I am joined today by Master Coach Jacka and Aldrid. Aldrid. Aldrid. It has a D. Aldrid. But I say Aldrid so the folks won't forget. That's why. Just call him Al. Coach Al.

Yes, call me Al.

So gentlemen, why is the fitness industry ruining all of our workouts?

It's confusing. And I think, look, I think social media, especially now, has pronounced our ability to share information in a good way, but also perhaps in an overwhelming or confusing way. And training is certainly not exempt from that. Whether it's TikTok fitness, Instagram fitness, or I don't know, Facebook fitness, that's a thing. I think for the, I guess, the fitness novice or even like the fitness intermediate, it can very overwhelm— be overwhelming with what to actually start with or what to do and what the actual priorities are that will actually get them the result that they're after. So things that I've seen are the type of content that majors in the minors, right? The things that don't necessarily need as much attention as they do need, and not looking for or not sharing the big rocks of what actually produces good outcomes. Things like, okay, most people know that when you train hard, rather than say a plethora of exercises to achieve, you know, the most optimal bicep contraction, right? Or particular programs or emphasis on particular training styles that again, it's majoring in the minor. So I think how perhaps— anyway, we are part of the fitness industry, of course, we're coaches, but we do our best to make things of course simple but thorough and substantiated, right? Have you observed any of that online?

My main problem is people just confusing like a nice body, a nice athletic body for, oh, this guy's an authority. Yes, at some sense they are an authority, but is what they're doing necessarily steroids? Yeah, that's true. A lot of people are coming out who claimed as natty, they're coming out as, hey, I actually did some performance-enhancing drugs. I'm like, yeah, no shit. But what I was saying is, what they're doing, is it applicable to you and your scenario and your training age, whether that be beginner or intermediate. Maybe not.

I've looked at this from two sides now. It sounds like that song by Joni Mitchell or whatever her name is. Um, classic song. But anyway, I've looked at this from both sides now is what the song's called. Great song.

Too young.

Yeah, it's a bit of an old song. It's from Love, the movie Love Actually. It's like one of the end parts. But anyway, there's a clip of her singing as a 21-year-old and as then as like a 50-year-olds, and it's amazing. But anyway, I've looked at this from both sides now, and what I can tell you from training and spending enormous amounts of hours with general pop clients and then enormous amounts of hours with PT clients who I mentor— these guys have different lenses. And the PT client and the Instagram influencer is just so out of touch with who they're actually making content for a lot of the time. And the there's one guy particularly in the industry who does, he got some bodybuilding stuff that he talks about and then fitness coaches and you know he's a bit, what's the word, not autistic, the other one, what's the other one that starts with A, not autism, I think it's a bit Asperger's in the sense that the way he looks at everything is as a bodybuilding purist and everything has to fit into this and if it doesn't fit into this and the problem is people have learned from this guy and he's fitting everything into a bodybuilding frame which is fine, that's what he does he trains bodybuilders and he wants— he's all about the muscle mass. But then these coaches who are, you know, 1 year in, 2 years in, they do his course and then they try and fit everything into the same frame. And it's, buddy, the 50-year-old female who's never done a lat pulldown before, she really doesn't need to set up the bench on the right angle to ensure that her lat gets the maximal contraction. Because one, she ain't give a fuck about her lat, right? Number one, it's not a problem. I don't walk around going, I have a lat deficiency. Number 2, we need to teach her how to retract first because most of the time and most of her life is spent holding a kid or doing things like this and she's become rounded and it's not the lat that is the deficiency but you have these trainers and it's not the fault of the course creator or the person who's coming up with the content, it's the fault because they're just doing them and they have a market and this is what they do. I teach bodybuilders how to get bigger, I teach about peak contraction, I teach biomechanics and from a technical aspect you go, yeah, what they're saying is correct. From an application perspective, it's fucking wrong. I don't normally swear on this podcast, but I have to swear to make my point because it is fucking wrong. You can't apply those same methods. So one thing that I did early in my career, I was hardcore bodybuilder guy, right? Hardcore. And I had like my protein shakes and my protein shake at night, my casein at night, my hydrolyzed protein straight after my training, like 15 seconds, because if I didn't get my anabolic window, my gains were gone. Shot. I made sure I ate on the hour, every 2 hours, and I got fat as fuck, right? Super fat, 97 kilos fat, and I didn't look very good. But anyway, point being is I did the bodybuilding thing, and then I realized, wait a minute, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And I realized what I needed to do was get out of the bodybuilding world and go into weightlifting and then go into hardcore how to train athletes and then go into the powerlifting and then go into gymnastics training and movement training and expose myself to the modalities that we call physical culture. And when I expose myself to those modalities, because I looked at the gymnasts and go, like a physique like that, when I exposed myself to all these different modalities, what I found was I had all these tools. And then someone would come in and say, I have a bad shoulder. Well, I know the right tool, and it ain't bodybuilding, it's something completely different. Or you know that mobility drill that I used in my weightlifting? If I use that mobility drill here with this client, that's what's gonna unlock their hips. I think the reason why, you know, I think the fitness industry is ruining a lot of people's workout is because number one, I think, this is gonna sound funny, but I'm gonna be honest on this podcast, right? For the most part, most fitness influencers are narcissists, right? Ooh, there's some controversy throwing out, I'm throwing shit on this one, right? Throwing shit at people with this one, but it's true. Most of the time fitness influencers are narcissists in the sense that look at it, all their pages about them. They don't have teams, they have them. It's about their own self-grandized importance. Look at my Instagram, look at my muscles, look at my ass, look at this photo wearing nothing, look at this workout, look at me. That is what the fitness industry is and they're posting their workouts. And some of these folks have great bodies. Some of them are definitely on performance enhancers. but they have great bodies and it's sexy and it sells and people say, I want to look like that, so I'll just do what they're doing. The problem is they're not really telling you what they're doing. They're making content that they know that you like so you stay engaged. And it is to me, I'm a creator that the worst thing, I don't know if you've heard of this concept called audience capture. It's where there's a good case of this with this YouTube. He was this like, started off as this vegan kid, he was like 18, and he would eat things in front of the camera. He just wanted to make these health videos. And then people started requesting that he would eat things and give them challenges. Anyway, now he's like super duper, like 300 pounds overweight and does all these like weird eating like things that aren't supposed to be edible, I think. And does all these challenges, like eats the whole entire menu of McDonald's in one sitting and kind of these type of things. And people pay him. That's a case where this guy started with his initial values but got so caught up in audience capture of, I've lost myself of identity of who I am, and now it's actually about what does the camera want me to be so you don't get your eyes off me. And to me, that would be the worst fate of— and I think the reason why I bring that story up is because I think most of the time that's how influencers are operating in the fitness industry. It's not about the truth of the matter. It's about making sure that you don't take your eyes off me, and I will say and do whatever I need to make sure you don't take my— your eyes off me, including an OnlyFans page, taking more steroids, taking insulin, taking thyroid, whatever drug under the sun. Even though you don't compete, it's going to shave years off your life. As long as your attention doesn't come off me, it's worth it. Thoughts on Am I speaking truth or am I crossing lines here?

You are. Like, let's say Liver King, right? Super controversial topic.

I'm—

I don't know if anyone— everyone knows about it that's not in the fitness world, but essentially this guy who was preaching a— was it Paleolithic diet?

He was preaching the Paleolithic diet. Yeah, just eating wholesome natural foods. Eat your liver, eat your raw meats, eat your organ meats.

Yeah.

And you will look like me. Yeah. And then what was it, More Plates More Dates? I think his name's Darren or whatever his name is.

Yes.

Emails leaked from him and it was— he was consulting with him about his anabolic steroids.

He was taking every drug under the sun pretty much. But then that, that just comes back to my point, right? Yeah, that just comes back to my point, right? Like, you gotta start questioning, is this person really an authority, or is it more of an engagement aspect? Because this guy's new, like, he's doing something that we haven't seen before. But at the end of the day, just keeping things simple and prioritizing what is healthy and building the right habits, that will get you very far.

It was my mentor Charles Poliquin, the late and great Charles Poliquin, said to me, wearing your underpants on the outside of you, wearing your undies, your boxes on the outside of your pants, it's new and it's novel, but it's not better. Yeah, it's just stupid. You're not Superman.

Also, in this gentleman's case, is also a caricature, right? Like, he's a character and I think the issue there is that people look at him and conflate his ability to coach or to preach with how he looks, right? Which is often the case with anyone with a large following, right? There's also the element of remaining relevance, and often in order to do that, you have to subscribe to what's trending at the moment. And a certain variation and novelty is what produces excitement in certain audiences.

And that's the audience capture part, right?

And where it pertains to training is that if people are seeing the same basic things which we know are time and tested, it's probably not going to gain as much engagement as opposed to something that is new, fresh, novel, and unseen. But it's like you said, it might be novel, but it not necessarily might be better.

Yes. And also I think in the fitness industry there's a lot of teardown because there's only two ways to build the tallest building in town. There's only two ways. One, you tear everyone else's building down. 2 is you become good enough to build the fucking biggest building in town. Now most people aren't good enough to build the biggest building in town, flat out, they're just not. So what's the next best thing? Just go around tearing everyone else's down. And that's most of the part, that's what the fitness industry does is they shit on each other. And the problem with it as well is that it actually attracts more attraction to both of the followers. You saw that with Liver King, the amount of people that went after him. And they used him to tear him down and his building to then propel themselves forward because it was trending. And look, he deserved to be torn down. The guy was saying a lot of just nonsense. But at the same time, I looked at it and went, man, if you believe this guy, are you serious? Like, why would you believe anything this guy said? Clearly he's taking anabolics. He's not just eating liver and brains and heart to achieve his physique. And if you think that— I saw it for what it was, which is information, entertainment purposes. But again, the problem is obviously that's me with my trained eye of doing this for 20 years, is the consumer doesn't. At some point I see the need when people do step in and take shots at someone because he doesn't want shots taken at him misleading the consumer for sure.

Well, also it's like I think the most convincing um, lies, the one that's closest to the truth, right? And for him, a lot of what he was preaching was like, it's like the natural way to eat and move and live. And people took that as well. If it's a more natural way to live, like, this is like the ancestral way, as he talked or described it, like, surely there must be some veracity to all of this. And like, people generally thought like, this guy is legit providing good quality advice and education, and he knows what he's doing. So, okay. But again, novelty. Now what does this mean for, okay, the, the fitness novice or intermediate who's navigating all the social media content? Like, how do they find what's true and what's trendy?

How do they find what's true? I think the way to find what's true is look at the depth of results and the years of being around. I remember in the bodybuilding space many years ago, there was this one guy that came in. He was there for about maybe 1, 2 years, he trained a heap of girls, heaps of them. He had a train of them, and then poof, it was gone, never to be heard of again. And here I am with Enterprise. We might have anywhere from 3 to 10 people per show. Some shows are small, some shows are big, but we've been doing this for 20 years. I've been in the industry 20 years, we've been here for 10 years, and I've been at shows for— my first bodybuilding show was in 2004, and I have a lot of ins to the bodybuilding community because I've been doing this for so long. People just will say, yes, we'll give this to you, or we'll do this for you, because they know that I'm not going anywhere. And I think, I think for the consumer is you need to look at the depth of the transformation of those people, like reviews, longevity. I think longevity in the fitness industry is something to be said because the reality is there isn't many that have been around 5+ years. Most will go out of business or go to another industry after 5 years, and that's not— this is the reality as it is. So I think longevity, I think results speak volumes, and just what people generally say. And I think those who've been able to build teams attract— again, because the fitness industry is so narcissistic— those who are actually building teams of people I personally have more appreciation for because I know how hard it is to build a team. But then it becomes less about the individual and more about serving others and helping others. And not to say there aren't people who've done that, of course there are always exceptions to the rule, but I just think in the fitness industry there's fewer. I think the reason why the fitness industry is ruining a lot of people's workout is novelties for sure. And it's this constant demand of content, wanting to be in front of the camera, wanting to be famous And I think most influencers, particularly in the fitness industry, maybe in all industries, they want to be famous more than they want to serve the consumer.

Yeah, I completely agree. Um, it, I mean, it just boils down to the person, right? You got, you have to think of, is that person, what is their purpose? Is their purpose just to influence the masses, or is it more, I want your eyes, I want your eyes only on me, here's some tips that probably won't serve you Specifically. And yes, it's basically it. Are they a coach or are they a— what's that term? Fitfluencer.

Most of the fitfluencers.

Yeah, like how many people have they actually helped? How constant is the transformations? Yeah, those factors, right?

I think you can sniff these things out when you start asking questions. It's almost like a lot of them have their script of what they say. They're good in reels. But then you get them in a Q&A and say, 'Holes.' Yeah, it doesn't—

yeah, I think also if, again, majoring in the minors, I think is a big one. And most people who start training or venture into improving their health need to start with the most fundamental things, right? They need to move towards whole foods, they need to move towards eating more protein, getting a consistent training, and having some structure around how they're training. We know those things work exceedingly well, and the only other factor is time. Now, does someone have the patience to be in it for long enough to get the result without being so tempted by getting something faster by what's being promoted to them online? Right, because that impatience is quite an insidious thing, especially in the interest of long-term progress. And social media is definitely not encouraging patience with your training or the way you eat or this whole process entirely. It's just not as exciting.

It's all geared toward short-term gratification.

Yeah, fundamentally, yes.

So I think other things is there has been a lot of people who have large followings online have attracted— like, there's this one guy that James always sends me memes on him. I don't— like, not even memes, there's actually stuff that he does.

I don't know, is this the kinesiologist?

I don't know who he is, but where does he live? US. He's US-based. The messed up thing about it is he actually trains a few, like, quite high-profile athletes, but the stuff that he does— yeah, I think it's just the one.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm like, man, what the hell is this guy doing?

Is this the one where it's like an athlete is trapped doing a trap bar deadlift and he's just bouncing the medicine ball into his head?

You've got these like videos. James sends me one almost once, twice a week where— and it's just like when you think you can't get any more ridiculous, he sends me something more ridiculous. And it was the guy doing the trap bar deadlift and then got a ball and smashing him in the head with the ball. What are you, what are you trying to do with this? I understand functional training, but that's not functional even for people like— we know, for example, F1 race drivers, right? Their necks are incredibly strong, stupidly strong, probably the strongest necks in a lot of different sports. They'd be up there. And the reason for that is because they have to keep their eyes on the road and withstand G-force. And the G-forces that's created in an F1 vehicle is, you know, when you're going around the corner at full speed, not slowing down, they're quite excessive. So you can imagine the G-forces that are being created. Your neck has to be, by virtue, very strong. And they have to be like F1 racers. Race drivers are incredible athletes, as most people wouldn't give them credit for. And in doing that, like, one of the apparatuses they use is like their helmets, and they've got like hooks on it, and they put weights, and they do like all the different movements.

Underrated neck training.

Yeah, neck training. So we know how to train the neck. That's not how you train the neck. You don't train the neck by doing a trap bar and then smashing something into your head.

But I think also, again, he's— I think a couple hundred thousand followers. Yes, there is a large portion of that following, if excluding everyone that follows him for intentionally comedic purposes, like, who believe in what he's doing. Now, the guy's, I'm pretty sure, a kinesiologist and is well-versed academically, and people use that as a sign of credibility. But going by most of his posts, like, I'm sure the guy is a— he's a clever individual, he knows training principles, but it's probably not what he shares most of the time. What he's doing in practice is probably different to what he's showcasing on social media. If you showcase it on social media, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

I'm not giving— but if that's what you're highlighting on social media, I'm like, man, fuck.

But that's the thing, right? If someone's doing a bench press, let's say a famous athlete's doing a bench press, a regular trap bar, everyone's just gonna scroll up. No one's gonna care that much. But versus someone's doing a trap bar deadlift and then you're just balancing a random Swiss ball on his head, you go, oh, what is this? Maybe I need to do this.

Yeah, I'll bring up this guy's name because this is punching above our weight because the guy's made millions. What's that biohacker's name? You know the one, Bulletproof Coffee, David Asprey. David Asprey, huge.

No, I haven't followed his recent content.

He looks pretty unhealthy to me, right? But he's huge. He's got millions and millions of followers and so many— he's big in the entrepreneurial biohacking space. And I look at some of the stuff that he promotes and scientifically it's His books have been wildly successful, but for example, he's very big in calories and fasting, all this kind of stuff. But the way when you talk about getting to the stuff that he talks about with fasting, it's wait a minute, you are promoting having a Bulletproof coffee, which you sell, amino acids, which you sell, collagen, which you sell, butter, which you sell, and the coffee, which I already mentioned, which you sell, and you have that to wake up and that's your version of fasting. That's not fasting. That's you selling product and pretending it as a diet, a pseudo diet as part of your plan. Look, some of the stuff that he's presented, there is some good stuff to it. So it's not all bad obviously, but he's another one where you look at and you go, I personally shake, I know Layne Norton has taken a few shots at him as well. But there are massive influencers where they have simple things wrong. I heard the other day from another massive influencer who's on Oprah, Oprah. Saw books on Oprah. He was talking about how every cancer, 80% of cancers is linked to diet and specifically sugar. That's not true. It's just not true. Yes, diet plays a role, but when you say 80% of cancers, are you saying children with cancers, 80% of children with cancers are linked to their diet when they've only been around, they've only been alive for 4 years and they haven't really consumed much sugar in their life? The stat is just when people in these positions say outlandishly stuff with no proper evidence, there is reason. I mean, there is, it is very damaging, I think. And for the average person, they're not going to go, hang on, how do you disprove that?

Yeah, I think also as a consumer or as an observer of these things online, as very curious human beings who are trying to troubleshoot our own struggles, we're always pursuing what might be the actual answer, right? Maybe it was that small thing that I overlooked, or maybe it was that other glossy detail that I also overlooked, when really it's just the big things that we're not keeping to, right? So if it's like training, it's, oh, maybe it's because I wasn't doing that particular specific exercise this many times a week with this specific amount of reps and sets, and that's why I haven't progressed in the last year of training. I think sometimes we can look to the minor details and fixate on, okay, maybe is that actually the, the problem at all, right? Are we too zoomed in here and not zooming out a little bit and focusing on the big rocks again? But also as well, like, when it comes to online, it's people will have certain identities even in the username, right? You might be, I don't know, Keto Guy, you might be Biomechanics Guy, and like, your message has to be that because you're that guy. And if you deviate from that message, people start to well, this guy can't— he's changing his opinion. And yeah, okay, granted there's pressure on the content creator to maintain a consistent message, and they don't want to be on the receiving end of, I guess, backlash because they've changed their views. But I think that's also something to be aware of, is what identity or idea are they identifying with and promoting? And perhaps is that the limitation? Is that the scope of their advice? Are they not seeing anything outside of their own message? Can the biomechanics guy not see other factors such as, okay, there are other factors to training, right? Intensity, there's different programming styles, but that's just the biomechanics guy, right? So I think being aware again of fundamentally what is the person, what is their ideology or identity online.

Yep. Al?

Yeah, when you see someone and they're structured a certain way, very athletic, and they have that ideal body composition or body type that you want, you see that person as your— I want to be this person, I'm going to follow what this person does. And most of the time it doesn't work because you're not that person, and you just gotta have to bring it a step back and compare yourself to yourself, have an actual coach to guide you and simplify a few things for a consistent period of time, practicing sustainability. And is this something that you can actually do for long periods of time?

I think a good way to visually maybe even wrap this up is in the '80s you had two very prominent bodybuilders, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mike Mentzer, and they came from two diametrically opposite schools of thought of what they promoted. Arnold Schwarzenegger promoted the volume, lots and lots of training, lots and lots of volume, not really taking everything to failure, but there were sets. Obviously, he trained hard, he trained like a beast. And then you had Mike Mentzer, who took everything to failure, and what he promoted was that one set, peak set, where you, you leave it all in the gym and that's it. And out of this really bore two different approaches to training. One was volume-driven, one was load and intensity-driven. And from that, I think it was, uh, Tudor Bompa who wrote about you have variation, load, volume as your key factors inside of your training. And I think the problem is people usually identify with one of these as being the driving forces, is I'm the volume guy, I'm the intensity guy, I'm the variation guy. And the truth is everything has seasons. What often builds your physique to a certain level is not the thing that's going to build your physique to the next level. And I can say this from experience. I used to do and be able to do an enormous amount of volume at a fairly high load. Now I can't sustain those loads as much, so I need to rely much more on variation and volume rather than load, if that makes sense, because now that I have the capacity and the strength, I have enough strength to really hurt myself. So when I do something for too long, I can really hurt myself with the loads that I'm able to push. Whereas to build that, the loads weren't as heavy, so I could recover much, much faster. And I was just, let's volume this thing out, right? So in saying that, unless you have someone, as you said, a coach in your corner able to guide you on where you are at specifically, and obviously that comes experience You're not gonna get someone like that just anywhere. You, you need someone who has understands the game that they're in and they're not attached. And I think that's probably the key thing that I would say is if you are learning and looking from people to learn from, you wanna learn from people who aren't attached to it has to be this way. Because unless you want to go on a keto diet for the rest of your life, go to the keto guy. That's what the keto guy will teach you is how to go on a keto diet. But if you want to be able to experiment expand those things and someone who understands keto and what the application of it, because there is an application for keto in specific, very specific, like epilepsy, which we've spoken about before, certain gut issues. But you don't want to identify as any of those things. You want to see these as tools for what they are. You want to see the people online for what they are, what they're promoting. Part of it is, and I say all the time to people, that Instagram and social media is people's highlight reels. And often what we do is we compare our backstage shit of all the stuff that happens backstage, the whatever not coming in time, all the problems that you have, the day-to-day running around, being late for appointment, whatever it may be, right? All the crap that happens day to day in your life, we compare that to people's highlight reels of that 15 minutes when they're on stage where they shine. They got that one photo that was airbrushed where they looked at their peak. And then we look at ourselves in the mirror, we're in development and we compare all the crap to that, that's not a fair comparison because people are only curating the experience. And we want to keep that in mind. We want to look for people who, who do produce results. Final thoughts, or where can people find you?

Um, no final thoughts. You can find me at Alder Enriquez on Instagram.

Uh, Instagram too, Coach Jaka.

Well, thank you for joining the conversation. My name is Mark Ottobre. I'm the owner and founder of Enterprise Fitness, and I'm the author of The Enterprise Diet. If you want more about our philosophy, systems, methods, of how we get the results we do at Enterprise Fitness, check out my book at enterprise-diet.com. If you want to train with us here at Enterprise Fitness, go to Melbourne Personal Trainers and, yeah, hit us up. And of course, we love teaching, we love sharing with the information. If you've enjoyed this podcast, send it to a friend, leave us a review, and make sure you subscribe. Till next time, friends, train hard, eat well, and supplement smart.