Ditch the Fads: Why Trendy Workouts Might Be Hurting More Than Helping
Ditch the Fads: Why Trendy Workouts Might Be Hurting More Than Helping
From "75 Hard" to viral TikTok workouts, trendy fitness plans can lead to burnout, injury, or disappointment. Here's how to build a routine that truly works for you.
There’s a viral challenge known as “75 Hard,” which promises to improve your mental toughness if you work out for 45 minutes twice daily - while also sticking to a diet and drinking a gallon of water a day, among other things. Another, known as 12-3-20, claims to transform your body.
There’s no doubt that a vigorous fitness regimen could help improve your stamina, in the same way that eating a healthier diet and committing to more sleep may help you feel more energized and rested. The actual workouts of these plans are often perfectly fine, but the problem is how they make you think about exercise. “Oftentimes the advice of these fitness strategies is misleading at best and dangerous at worst,” said Victoria Sekely, a physical therapist and the founder of Train Smart Run Strong, “leaving you feeling worse than you did before and leading to injury or burnout.”
Social media presents its own dangers with “influencers” pushing workout routines to get you in shape fast. What viewers do not understand is many of these programs are actually designed for people who already have a workout routine and may not be suitable for beginners. Influencers don’t know where you are starting from. Plus, the person on social media giving you advice doesn’t necessarily have any background in it other than their own anecdotal experience.
Each person has individual needs based on genetics, medical history, including injury history and body type - these factors affect our ability to do different exercises and determines how beneficial they will be. If you are able to, work with a professional who can help tailor workouts to your current fitness level.
Viral workout plans often work off a simple equation: Do a certain activity for a certain number of days to achieve a certain result. Experts call these kinds of results - a faster mile time or the ability to do more pull-ups - a performance (or end) goal. To get there, it’s helpful to focus on what they call process goals: smaller, achievable steps, such as improving technique, according to Carla Meijen, a sport and exercise psychologist and assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam.
One such process goal is learning to listen to your body, a skill in itself. Bringing awareness to your workouts is far more important for longevity and resilience than staying on a rigid course in the short term, experts say. If you find yourself having an off day and slogging through a workout, instead of berating yourself, look at it as a chance to build a process goal by working on mental toughness. The same recommendations apply to athletes competing in a race. Instead of focusing solely on a finishing time - the performance goal - experts recommend identifying smaller goals along the way.
Avoid plans with no rest days - this is toxic for your body and mental health. For many programs bound by a number of days, the challenge is a daily commitment, no days off. If you skip a workout in the 75 Hard challenge or do not follow your diet, you’re supposed to start over from day one. You can’t build muscle and get stronger and faster and do all the things without rest and recovery in the picture; it’s physiologically how our bodies work.
Before and after photos can help many plans go viral. But be wary using your appearance as a measure of success. There is no singular “fit” body type and our bodies do not react to exercise in the same way. More sustainable goals are about how you feel - aiming to get stronger, build endurance or gain flexibility. But much of this comes with patience and steady work, which are not usually the emphasis of a fitness fad.
Habits are made by doing really simple, really easy things, and slowly introducing them into your way of living. When we let go of perfection, we can actually make progress.
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Kim Duke is a certified personal trainer and owner of Core Performance Fitness and Training, 55 Bristol Lane, Ellicottville, NY. Kim resides in Ellicottville where she raised her sons, Zach and Nik. For more information about her studio, visit her Facebook page, www.coreperformancefitness.com or call her directly at 716-698-1198.
