Why I hate fitness content (as a fitness content creator)

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I hate fitness content, even though I'm a fitness content creator. Here's why...

Short version: I hate (most) fitness content because much of it is entertainment pretending to be education. If you want to actually learn something on social media, you need to find creators who give context to their claims and who aren't hyperbolic about everything.

Long version:

There are two major types of content on social media:

• Education
• Entertainment

Of course, these aren't rigid categories. Educational content can and often does entertain, while pure entertainment can contain elements of education.

When educational content is optimized, though, it's far more informative than entertaining.

You watch educational content to learn new skills or ways to think - not to laugh, scream, or cry (hopefully). Educational content simply needs to be entertaining enough.

Pure entertainment content, however, has no educational value - or at least no necessity for it.

Educational content creators therefore need to investigate how they can make their content engaging enough, while pure entertainers aren't required to teach anyone anything (I don't click on a Mr. Beast video because I'm interested in improving my cognition, rather because I want to shut my brain off for 15 minutes).

Content made for pure entertainment appeals to wider audiences by definition - and this creates a problem for many content creators - like myself - who post on social media to educate.

So here's what I hate about most fitness content: many content creators in the fitness space create entertainment content that is disguised as educational.

How do they get away with this?

Put simply: many people who are trying to learn about a topic don't know much about it. That's why they're watching - to learn more.

Because "the many" don't know much about a topic, it's difficult for them to discern between people providing real education and people who make entertainment disguised as education.

To compete with entertainment channels, real educational creators often feel pressured to degrade their content with gimmicky titles and thumbnails, rapid-fire edits, flashy visuals, and—worst of all—quiet trap music in the background.

While there's nothing inherently wrong with making posts and videos that are both educational and entertaining, many in the fitness industry are deeply confused about the differences between the two and are sacrificing the former for the latter.

This is what I call "edutainment" - entertainment content that pretends to be educational. 

So how do you know the difference between education and entertainment?

Here are some simple ways to identify the differences:

Real education of any kind is always context-defined. "Edutainment" often does not define context.

Context is background information that helps you understand something - it's the word we use to make the broad more specific. Creating context involves more work, because you need to be more precise when you speak.

For example, if you're going to talk about how to perform a "proper squat", you first need to define why you're squatting to begin with (the context). A proper squat for the quads looks different than one for the glutes.

In lifting, every exercise should be performed with a specific goal in mind (a clear context). If you don't have a goal, then what you're doing is random, and random is unlikely to work well.

In real education, specific context is always defined.

In edutainment, broad, generalized statements are the default.

Real education does not isolate concepts. "Edutainment" isolates concepts and fragments them from the bigger picture.

Focussing on single concepts is a necessary part of the learning process, but isolation of a concept is often regurgitation, not education.

Real education is about combining parts to form the whole. Every part of a topic exists in relation to some other part (and all parts together form the "whole").

When you understand "the whole", you understand how to navigate any scenario. You don't need to memorize anything, because you can solve any problem by thinking in principles, not isolated facts.

When concepts become fragmented and isolated from the "whole" that they serve, they lose meaning entirely, and they often don't help you beyond the very specific contexts that weren't identified to begin with.

For example, it's common nowadays for fitness edutainers to talk about how the stretch is the most important part of any lift, often at the neglect of all other important training variables like resistance direction, stability, pain/discomfort, and, most importantly: the other exercises one is doing. 

Edutainment creators have isolated and fragmented "the stretch" as a variable that is more important than every other variable. This is entertaining and appears educational, but it actually distracts the viewer from learning anything.

This keeps the viewer stuck in a cycle of returning to "learn" more isolated, fragmented concepts instead of developing the skills to solve problems independently. This is exactly what the edutainment creator wants.

Isolation and fragmentation puts certain concepts on a pedestal above all others instead of identifying how the concept fits into the broader scope of lifting.

Instead of understanding that everything has a positive and negative side, people see concepts as "good" or "bad" as if those words make sense outside specific contexts (are squats "good"?).

This doesn't mean that you can't focus on single concepts at a time. You have to, to some degree. But it DOES mean that anything truly educational will always make its way back to the bigger picture somehow. Back to some broader concept.

When the concept of "stretched position training" is isolated and fragmented from the whole, instead of understanding the potential utility of training the stretched position and how a stretch-focused exercises fit into a program (which can be hugely beneficial), the viewer's takeaway is "stretch is the most important variable no matter what".

This manifests in bad questions, like "why are you doing x exercise? it doesn't fully stretch the muscle!", as if any exercise that doesn't fully stretch the muscle is inherently "bad".

Real education is contextualized and makes reference to the "whole" and why something matters to begin with. If you don't understand why something is relevant, you're not learning.

Real education does not overstate the importance of single variables or lead people to believe that some aspects of training are far more important than others. 

Real education is not flashy, but it is the only thing that will actually help you problem solve when you bump into hard objects along your quest to make gains.

I hope this article will help you identify when you're consuming education and when you're consuming entertainment.

But please do not misunderstand me: I'm not claiming that edutainment is inherently bad or that it hasn't helped anyone. Rather, I'm trying to make clear the difference between it and real education. 

If you're someone who's actually trying to learn about lifting on a deep level, you must understand the differences between education and edutainment. 

If you just like watching fitness content for entertainment's sake, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Just make sure you're not mistaking entertainment for education.

I hope to do my best to find the right balance between education and making concepts at least entertaining enough to be read and/or watched. 

If you enjoyed this article and have thoughts you'd like me to read, please reply to this email to let me know what they are :) 

And if you want to learn this stuff for real, check these out:

📚 My Beginner Biomechanics Course - learn biomechanics in 30 days with no experience: https://www.modernmeathead.com/beginner 

😎 Work with me in my mentorship - for serious learners only. Dive into the deep end with all the products I've ever made, plus 1-1 access to me. https://www.modernmeathead.com/mentorship 

-Ben