When Fitness Becomes Content

The modern fitness landscape of today is almost unrecognisable to from the industry I entered in 2015. The explosion of content creation on social platforms, increased accessibility to training literature and the emergence of artificial intelligence has created an environment where knowledge that was largely confined to academia or educational resources is now available to anyone who seeks it.

A coach starting in the industry today has access to unprecedented amounts of knowledge. For practitioners motivated to improving their craft, continued professional development has never been easier. Likewise, a member of the public can now follow numerous experts online, access free training programmes or even use AI as their own online coach.

This should signify a huge step forward in the fitness industry, greater access to quality information should improve coaching standards, more effective training practices and proportionally greater outcomes for the general population. Despite the unprecedented access to training knowledge, coaching outcomes don’t appear to have improved to the same degree.

This raises the question, has the modern industry become more informed or just more saturated with information? Commercial fitness has done exceptional work at increasing training accessibility; however, the environment and incentives that drive commercial facilities don’t always align with fundamental evidence-based practice that underpin strength and conditioning practice.

What Constitutes Evidence-Based Coaching?

Evidence-based coaching is simply decision making influenced by fundamental training principles to optimise training results. The term evidence-based has recently come under fire online where it’s been distorted to the point it’s viewed as a unique approach to training, rather than a set of guiding principles to help inform daily coaching decisions.

This interpretation of what evidence-based is has led to an air of mistrust on the discussion of how current research can improve or change the current standards of the fitness industry. A healthier interpretation of evidence-based practice is understanding how the body adapts to training stimuli and considering what adaptations a given training style is likely to create.

The Commercial Fitness Model

The commercial fitness model is designed for the masses; its large-scale fitness designed to make exercise accessible to as many as possible. For the business model to work they need it to be highly scalable and develop great retention strategies, otherwise the large-scale works to their detriment. To appeal to the masses, it naturally encourages simplified messaging and entertainment-driven training such as large group fitness sessions.

The benefits of this are widespread involvement in exercise, especially within groups that may struggle with the confidence to step into the gym and train independently. This can act as an excellent gateway into more of an evidence-based approach to training. It is important to note that effective coaching and commercially scalable fitness models are not always the same thing.

Training Difference: Commercial vs Evidence Based

As discussed above, commercial fitness and evidence-based coaching models often differ in both philosophical and practical application. These differences influence how training is programmed and delivered. The following sections explore several key areas in which these contrasts are most apparent.

Progression vs Variety

A fundamental principle underpinning S&C practice is overload, where training stimuli progressively increase over time to continue driving desired adaptations. Evidence-based coaching typically applies this principle through structured overload strategies, often organised through forms of periodisation where volume and intensity are manipulated and monitored to ensure appropriate workload is achieved.

Conversely, commercial training environments often prioritise novelty and variation as a means of maintaining engagement from members. This frequently results in randomised exercise selection and constant change of session structures, limiting the ability to monitor progression or apply consistent overload. Consequently, training may become centred around engagement and perceived exertion rather than long term development of meaningful physical adaptations.

Intensity vs Adaptation

Intensity is a widely misunderstood concept within the fitness industry. In S&C contexts intensity refers to load relative to the individuals 1 repetition maximum (1RM). However, in many commercial training environments intensity is commonly interpreted as how physically demanding or fatiguing a session feels. This is often judged by acute physiological responses such as sweating, breathlessness or post-session fatigue.

While high levels of perceived exertion can contribute to effective training stimulus it does not guarantee that training has been structured to create the desired adaptation. As a result of this commercial training models lean into the sweat-metric or discomfort factor even though they offer unreliable insight into whether progression, overload or adaptation are being effectively managed.

Generalisation vs Individualisation

Large-scale commercial fitness facilities are limited in their ability to individualise training to the same extent as small-scale coaching services. To stay accessible and scalable many commercial programmes rely on a one size fits all approach to programme structure and group delivery methods to include a wide range of individuals simultaneously. While this model does increase accessibility and participation, it limits the ability to manage progression, fatigue and exercise selection.

In contrast evidence-based coaching typically is built around individualised approaches, incorporating factors such as training history, movement competency and goal specific programme design. In return this allows the training variables to be adjusted according to the needs and wants of the individual rather than being dictated by the group training environment.

Complexity vs Simplicity

While it seems intuitive to assume that evidence-based training is inherently more complex than commercial fitness, the opposite is often true. Commercial training trends are heavily dictated by social media where visually impressive exercises and novelty driven training methods attract attention and encourage imitation. As a result, complexity is often mistaken for effective training.

In contrast, evidence-based training typically emphasises the mastery of fundamental movement patterns through consistent and progressively overloaded repetition, performed for extended periods of time. Rather than perusing variation, effective coaching often relies on technical development of basic patterns and allowing time for meaningful adaptations to occur.

Consequences of the Disconnect

In consequence of these different priorities, confusion has emerged around what efficient coaching practice looks like. For a client it can lead to a poor understanding of what triggers adaptation, where fatigue, complexity and frequent variation can be mistaken for effective training.

For coaches these expectations from commercial settings can create pressure to prioritise entertainment via novelty rather than delivering appropriately developed training plans. Over time this can lead to diluted coaching standards as the sessions are tailored towards entertainment and retention over maximised adaptation.

Commercial fitness can condition the general population to distrust effective training due to it often being less stimulating than entertainment-based fitness. This is not to say that commercial fitness cannot play an integral part of exercise in the general population, it should however be noted that it is not always the same as effective training methods.

Why This Model Persists

Social media, monetisation and marketability all play a significant role in the persistence on commercially driven fitness trends. Novel content helps drive engagement on social media, increasing views, followers and ultimately financial opportunity. Visually complex exercises and unconventional approaches are often likely to attract more attention, incentivising the prioritisation of content that is entertaining and marketable.

This contributes towards the cyclical nature of fitness trends, where the “new” methods are constantly promoted as the “next best” approach to training. However, in many cases these trends tend to align more closely with entertainment-driven fitness than the repetitive nature of evidence-based coaching.

In comparison effective training is often built through mastery of the fundamental movement patterns through progressive repetition. This approach creates meaningful adaptations over time however is far less visually appealing and therefore less marketable. This forms the conclusion that the marketability of the training method is often inversely related to how effective the method is.

Reframing What Good Training Looks Like

Evidence-based practice and commercial scalability are not inherently incompatible. As educational standards continue to improve among both fitness professionals and the general population, commercially successful training environments may become increasingly capable of integrating evidence-based principles into both their programming and coaching models.

Through incorporating prevalent principles found in S&C such as overload, specificity and fatigue management programme design can become more structured. This structure can lead to both greater effectiveness and sustainability of the training outcomes they provide to their members.

It’s clear that commercial training is successful at increasing exercise participation, however the accessibility does not always guarantee effective training. Through re-aligning general population training with evidence-based principles found in S&C it can re-educate the public’s understanding of what effective and sustainable training can look like.