Fitness has the power to change lives.
At its best, fitness is a transformative force for good.
We’ve seen thousands of Ultimate Performance clients take control of their diet, change their habits and finally get the health, fitness and physique they want.
This is why we maintain our ‘results, not promises mantra’ above all else.
It’s these elements of the fitness that should be lauded and exalted for making the huge impact that so often medicine and science can’t.
But in stark contrast to the true transformational power that fitness can impart, there’s a dark and squalid underbelly.
The fitness industry is one that is also one built on a mire of alluring lies, Machiavellian marketing and fake promises.
Snakeoil salesmen out to make a quick buck prey on desperate people who want easy answers and quick solutions.
So often if it looks too good to be true, it generally is. Real results take hard work, dedication and consistency.
Ultimate Performance stands as a paragon of what the fitness industry could be; genuine, honourable, trustworthy and true.
In this excerpt from an interview, Nick Mitchell explains the biggest lies he has ever heard in the fitness industry and why UP is different from this….
What’s the worst lie you’ve heard in the fitness industry?
Where do I even begin with this one?! “Eat more, move less, lose weight” ranks high up there.
The supplement industry lies are too numerous to mention.
Online “trainers” and their cut-and-paste programs that they claim are “bespoke”.
However, the one that bugs me the most because it is most personal to me are the liars in the Personal Training industry who fake their results.
The general public, rightly in my view, treat all “before and after” results with very heavy scepticism, but of course that means that UP is right in the firing line.
We do things the right way, after all our clients are part of our results so it would be too easy for us to be found out given how visible we are, but other so-called companies are not so scrupulous or honest.
There’s one PT studio that has claimed 18 weeks when it was really three years (I know this because it’s a former PT of UP’s telling the lie), and that same firm had an old client email us recently saying that they had publicised on their website and in a national newspaper an eight-week result that in reality was eight months!
These people embody all that is wrong in the Personal Training industry.
Is the truth about health and fitness too simple to sell?
Does it put more responsibility or onus on people than many want to accept?
I could write a book-length response to this question alone.
There should be a huge amount of responsibility placed on the health and fitness industry. But because it is dominated by short-term thinking (supplement businesses that are literally all about marketing – they produce nothing, private label other people’s products, and add no value; Personal Training that is dominated by an every-man-for-himself attitude where money is so scarce that most will sell their Grandma to make an extra buck) that is never going to happen.
I am really going to toot UP’s own horn here, but what I sincerely believe is needed are more businesses like ours.
We have the stability, the belief, and commitment to not chase after every scrap of money and can afford to take a long term, ethical, and honest view to everything that we do, be it the way that we deal with staff, charge our clients, or market our services.
The problem with the fitness industry is not just that it is dominated by short-term thinking, but by and large, the quality of people in it can be sorely lacking.
At UP in the UK, we hire about one in 100 applicants for Junior positions. When barriers to entry are high then quality increases, but sadly 99.9% of the market is commercial gyms renting space to freelance trainers to “work” the gym floor. Any fool can, and very often does, get that job.
Commercial gyms have literally zero quality filter; they only care about numbers and units, never results or added value.
