Episode 53: How to Avoid Fitness Scams
Hey there! 👋 I'm Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains), personal trainer and host of the Coaching Corner podcast. In this episode, I'm diving into the world of fitness influencers—and why you shouldn't believe everything you see (or hear) on your feed. From over-the-top transformation claims to misleading “quick fixes,” the fitness space on social media is full of content that looks good but lacks real substance.
I break down the red flags to watch for, like shady supplement pushes, unrealistic body standards, and advice that’s more viral than valid. Plus, I'll share tips on how to spot credible fitness professionals and get the trustworthy, science-backed information you actually need to reach your goals.
Whether you're new to fitness or just tired of the noise online, this episode will help you filter out the fluff and stay focused on what really works.
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Jayd (00:00):
If you are looking for content that is to make you feel better about yourself in whatever respect, wellness, fitness, spirituality. So anywhere where people are seeking answers or seeking to feel better about themselves or to understand their place in the grand scheme of life, there are people out there who are going to take advantage and so it's something you want to be on the lookout for. Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I've been a personal trainer for about 10 years and I've created this podcast to share with you the tips and lessons that I share with my personal training clients. In today's episode, I'm going to share with you a conversation that I had with my Twitch chat when I was live on my Twitch channel, Twitch tv slash Jaydigains. We were discussing the topic of how to spot bad fitness and wellness influencers.
(01:04)
If you've spent any amount of time on the internet and social media, you've probably seen some pretty wacky influencers out there promoting misinformation or trying to sell you on some kind of a scam. So in this conversation I'm sharing some tips to recognize red flags for when you are watching content from an influencer that may be trying to scam you or give you bad information. I'm also going to share some green flags to look for and fitness influencers that actually are worth listening to. And before we get into the episode, make sure to like this video and subscribe to my channel. If you're watching this on YouTube, if you are listening to the podcast, make sure that you have followed the channel so that you always get the latest episodes delivered right to your device. If you're interested in learning more about me and if you want to work with me as your personal trainer, you can check out my website, Jaydigains.com. That's J-A-Y-D-I-G s.com. You can also join my membership where I post monthly workout plans, meal plans, recipes, training tips, fat loss tips and nutrition tips, all that can be found on my website. Without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(02:19)
So I want to talk about this topic and I do want to say I go back and forth about calling myself an influencer, like a fitness influencer. I do think that in terms of what an influencer is, is a person on social media who influences other people by definition, the actual job, how they make money, what their whole thing is. What they're supposed to do is make content that gives a lot of views, gets a lot of engagement. The goal is to go viral as often as possible. So when you're an influencer, typically you pick some kind of a theme or you've got some kind of a brand, some kind of a vibe, some kind of a catch phrase or something that's recognizable. And the goal is to go viral as often as possible, to get as many views as possible, to get as much engagement as possible.
(03:27)
That's how influencers get paid. We and I do say we, because I am a partnered creator on multiple platforms and I do get paid for certain amounts of views on TikTok, I get paid for the certain amounts of views at one minute, and there's other tiers of pay where you get paid for a certain amount of comments. So as you can probably put together when it comes to being an influencer in the fitness space, if the goal is views, virality, comments, engagement, then it's a kind of slippery slope to where you can find yourself creating content for engagement that maybe isn't necessarily good information or good guidance or possibly has a negative impact on somebody's fitness journey or their mental health or their idea of themselves. So on the other hand, what I actually do see myself as is what I am professionally. I'm a coach, I coach people.
(04:40)
I'm a personal trainer. I have one-on-one personal training clients that I serve in person and online and through my podcast. My podcast is all about teaching people how to build a healthy lifestyle, how to make progress on their fitness journey. So my priority is to educate and help people. That's what I see my job as. And so what I put out there is not always going to be the most viral. It's not always going to be the most the type of content that's going to necessarily get a lot of engagement and a lot of views because what a lot of influencers will do is put controversial information out there. They'll put controversial, takes a video of them saying something controversial because they're banking on people going to the comments and correcting them and having arguments because you can have arguments in the chat or in the comments that drives engagement.
(05:42)
Whereas for me, what I'm trying to do is put together content that I can share with my clients and followers and subscribers to help them move along in their fitness journey. So the drive of success is different for someone who's a coach, who's trying to help people versus an influencer who is trying to get views, trying to get engagement. And sometimes it can be really difficult to tell what kind of a person you're dealing with when you're scrolling on social media. Sometimes it can be very difficult to tell whether the person who is presenting information in front of you is giving you good information or if they're just an influencer trying to drive engagement. So that makes it very tricky and difficult. And the problem is not just that these people are sharing bad information and it's going viral and a lot of people are learning things that could potentially hurt them.
(06:46)
It goes even further than that in that the rabbit hole goes pretty deep. But there's also a pretty significant, what we might call the fitness to alt-right pipeline, which is prominent and exists all over the internet everywhere where people are seeking information on how to live or how to make themselves feel better. There is an alt-right pipeline that goes with that thing. You see it in the spirituality community. There's the spirituality to alt-right pipeline where you have people who are getting into magic and people who are reading tarot cards and they get lured in with these things that will make them feel better or help them to make sense of their life, and it can be very easy to pull them over into just little bit by little bit. They get kind of conditioned into more and more like white supremacy. You also see this with the wellness community as well.
(07:53)
There's the clean eating trad wife content that kind of is a funnel can become a funnel toward the alt-right where conversations start to devolve into women's place is in the kitchen and that's what they should be doing and women should be making babies and that's all they should be doing. So there's a lot of these pipelines on the internet and wherever you're hanging out on the internet, whether it's here on Twitch, whether it's on YouTube, if you're watching this on YouTube or if you're on social media, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, wherever it is that you're hanging out, if you are looking for content that is to make you feel better about yourself in whatever respect, wellness, fitness, spirituality, Christianity, I think we are all just look at our government and you can see that the very clear Christian to alt-right pipeline that exists in this country in particular, but it's always existed.
(08:53)
So anywhere where people are seeking answers or seeking to feel better about themselves or to understand their place in the grand scheme of life, there are people out there who are going to take advantage. And so it's something you want to be on the lookout for. They'll either try to take advantage of you by selling you crap that doesn't work. They might take advantage of you by teaching you information that's just plain wrong and following it could at the best lead to you wasting your time and money. At worst. It could end up getting you sick or even dying or unloving. And also there's people who might try to sell you on some kind of a belief system, which might be political or religious. So you want to be super careful about that when you're navigating these spaces online. These pipelines have always existed and they probably always will, but you need to be on the lookout for these kinds of things.
(09:56)
Scammers of all types, whether they're trying to sell you a product that doesn't work, fucked up ideology, et cetera. They kind of all have very similar things in common. And if you dive into cults and how cults behave, there's a lot of similarities in how scammers operate in the same way that the wellness or fitness or health or crunchy, granola, clean eating to alt-right pipeline works. They all kind of do the same kind of stuff. So once you kind of start to understand what the red flags are to look out for, then you'll be a lot more protected against these bad actors in the space, which will for you, allow you to sift through bad information so that you don't end up hurting yourself, wasting your money, wasting your time, or potentially getting sucked into fucked up ideology and political movement. That's what I wanted to share today.
(11:02)
Have you guys noticed, what have you seen? What kind of shitty stuff have you seen on the internet? What are the trademark things that these scammers and these just these bad actors, what are the things that they do that maybe gives you the ick or tells you, I think this might be, there's something suspicious here. What are things that set off the alarms for you guys referencing a vague them? Oh yeah, a reference and other reference in group versus outgroup we're not like other people. We're not like those shady people over there, but it's vague. It has to be vague, A vague other brain rock content, anything that expresses an idea in some kind of absolute manner without explaining any nuance, IE literally everything short form. Yeah, I think there's room for a debate there, but yeah, short form a lot of times if it's like 15 seconds or less, how can you fit any kind of nuance into that?
(12:05)
Because the truth is when it comes to fitness and wellness and health in general, most of the time the answer to any question that you could come up with is it depends that you're dealing with someone who fucking knows their shit if that's what they respond with most of the time. Someone who knows what they're talking about and someone who isn't just trying to sell you on some bullshit is more often than not going to say it depends. That's a trademark thing. That's a green flag to look for when it comes to fitness influencers and health influencers. Science influencers positions anyone other than themselves as trying to trick you or feed you lies, right? So if they're like, oh yeah, the fitness industry doesn't want you to know this one, secret coaches don't want you to know this secret, but I've got it all figured out.
(13:02)
I'm going to tell you what they don't want you to know. Exactly. Yeah. That's a lot of times a really good sign that you're dealing with something that's a little slimy. And the thing is, I think that a lot of us intuitively can tell when we're being bullshitted. I do think that our guts often can tell when we're dealing with someone who's bullshitting. But the problem is that in order to function in this society so often we turn our alarms off, we go along like, okay, I'll hear this out. You know what I mean? Or maybe you've been conditioned by toxic relationships in your life to just tune your alarms out. And that is when you're particularly susceptible to these kinds of scams and dangerous pipelines, if you have existed in or do currently exist in a toxic relationship that where you have been kind of conditioned to not trust your intuition and to not trust yourself and trust your body and what your body's telling you, if you have been gaslit a lot, it is very easy for you to get taken advantage of by fitness influencers and people who don't really have your best interest in mind.
(14:27)
So ultimately that's going to be an ongoing issue in your life no matter what, and it's not just going to affect your health, it's not going to just affect how you interact with social media. So that's something to work on with a good therapist. Oh, they could be talking about mainstream health info resources, what we think we know about food in a way that's like conspiracy, that kind of get you to doubt what accredited institutions say when they get you to start to not trust in science and scientists don't listen to what the NIH says, don't listen to what the CDC says. Don't listen to what the World Health Organization says and they get you to basically doubt scientists and experts. Yeah, I'm the only one who will tell you the truth. They give you that kind of a vibe. Exactly. So the common red flags that I came up with when I was researching and preparing this discussion, one is over the top claims, which I understand that if you are completely new to fitness and health and new, this is your very first time even thinking about fitness and health.
(15:47)
This is going to be a little bit harder for you to spot, but there are a lot of bad influencers out there who will make over the top claims. For example, things like lose 10 pounds in a week, lose 50 pounds in a month, or this exercise will give you abs in 30 days. Be very, very careful about any program that says it's going to give you abs in a certain amount of time, or this exercise will give you abs in this amount of time. That a really good, that's a very bright red flag because the truth is the uncomfortable truth that many people do not want to accept is that sustainable fitness takes time. Getting to the point where you have a low body fat percentage and you have enough muscle to have muscle definition, it takes time for many people, the fitness transformation going from the place where you're overweight to the place where you have washboard abs, that is a process that for most people takes minimum two years at minimum, and that's quick.
(16:59)
So in reality, building muscle burning fat, getting the dream physique that you want, settle in, buckle up because this is a long process. Anybody who wants to tell you that they have a short fix for you or a quick fix for you is lying to you, is trying to hook you, is trying to get you to engage with their content so that they can make money or they are trying to sell you something that likely doesn't work in the most harmless way, doesn't work, but at the worst could actually hurt you, make you sick or even kill you, right? Right. Use this one trick to instantly lose 20 pounds or something like that. These are outrageous claims, so anybody who's trying to give you a really fast, you're going to reach this specific goal in a very short amount of time. That is a good sign that you're dealing with a bullshitter or you end up in a cult or an MLM.
(18:05)
Exactly. Because they use these same strategies as well. Good point, pa. Also, another thing that's a good red flag is does this person have any kind of credentials or science-based advice we were talking about earlier? If they try to get you to doubt a accredited scientific communities and peer reviewed scientifically based concepts, especially things that are pretty well accepted, if they are trying to get you to doubt that and doubt science, you're likely dealing with a scammer or a bullshitter or someone who's trying to get you on some kind of a pipeline. I mean, anyone can go onto the internet and call themselves a fitness expert, myself included. So even though I've been working as a personal trainer for 10 years and I've been certified through different organizations and different specializations, so I got my first personal training certification through NASA and afa, and then I've gotten multiple certifications since then.
(19:14)
I was a group fitness certified group fitness instructor for a while. I've gotten across MAGA teaching certification, I have accredited certifications and I'm always being educated trying to keep up with continuing education units. So if someone doesn't have any kind of credentials, at least a bachelor's, if you're going education-wise, they at least have a bachelor's in exercise physiology or kinesiology science like that, or they have some kind of certification through a certifying agency that's accredited like nasa, ace, a certified strength and conditioning coach. They need to have some kind of a connection or at least are science-based and using actual science in their advice and it should be stuff that you can verify, right? It's important that when they're talking about if they're making claims, especially claims that are sort of going against the grain that they are referencing, actually peer reviewed scientific papers and journals because there are a lot of shit flus out there who are being like, the health scientists don't want you to know this, and then they basically give you garbage.
(20:40)
So there needs to be some kind of a link if they are themselves not accredited with a university or accrediting organization, at the very least when they're talking about something they should be referencing, the science and the science should be something that you yourself can verify. You should be able to go and look and read, look at and read articles and papers on the topic, and a really good fitness influencer, if they have a blog, they will often link directly to the research that will tell you more about the thing that they're talking about. There are a lot of really good fitness influencers who do this, who do link directly to the studies.
(21:33)
How do I say his name? Menno, right? Just wait, no. Is it Menno? I don't know how to actually say his name. He's a good example of someone who's always talking about the science. He himself also is a researcher. Sometimes he will talk about some pretty controversial stuff because it'll be like this study that just came out kind of makes us think differently about this thing, but he's going into the science and also making it something that you can kind of digest as a normal person. Lane Norton also does a lot of focus on the science, and he also has a journal that kind of summarizes the latest research and exercise physiology and kinesiology into real people language. So that's another pretty good one. Well, Dr. Mike. Yeah, Dr. Mike also a really good one, literally a researcher, really jacked, amazing dude who's the short blonde guy.
(22:36)
He didn't actually go to school for it, but he actually now participates in studies. Jeff Nipper, there we go. Jeff Nipper. Jeff Nipper is another really good one. So these are influencers who are talking about science and who are linking to the science and breaking down the science into easy to understand terms and also how to apply it in your own training, but people who get you to doubt science and scientists don't want you to know this kind of stuff. That's a big red flag. If they want to position themselves as the one true connection to the truth, whatever the truth is that they are claiming they that is a red flag. And in general, the more anecdotal and opinion-based the content is, the more skeptical you should be. Okay, so other red flags that you should be on the lookout for when you come across a fitness influencer, health influencer, if they are demonizing or on the other hand, overhyping some food or supplements if they are all about some kind of one ingredient that's going to change your life.
(23:59)
Perfect example of this is apple cider vinegar. That is a good kind of segue towards a wellness influencer that recently Netflix actually made a dramatized, sort of like a life story type of thing, what would you call it? There's a drama on Netflix about the rise and fall of Belle Gibson, who is an Australian wellness influencer who rose to prominence in the early 2000 tens and she gained a huge following and she also got promoted by major companies like Apple, and I think it was Penguin Publishing published her cookbook, the whole pantry. She wrote her prominence in the 2000 tens, early 2000 tens with her app that was in the Apple app store and was promoted by Apple. And what she basically claimed was that she had had cancer multiple times and that she had cured her own cancer. And so all you had to do was follow along with her recommendations, buy her cookbook and use the app and you could basically cure your own cancer.
(25:30)
That was the claim. That was the claim, which is a really kind of, you get a couple of red flags there already. She's already making pretty outrageous claims, which was like red flag number one. But one of the things that's about that whole period of time was this rise in popularity of apple cider vinegar, which everybody was kind promoting on social media. I saw all over social media, it was kind of like a juice diet type of cleanse thing that drinking apple cider vinegar and basically reducing your food intake would cure you of all kinds of ailments. And it turned out that she was a complete fake. Not only did she lie about having cancer multiple times, she lied about her age. She was incredibly young when she rose to prominence. I think she was 18, but she lied and said that she was in her mid twenties and journalists began to expose the inconsistencies in her cancer narrative.
(26:36)
So then she admitted in a 2015 interview that she never actually had been diagnosed with cancer and then she was fined 400,000 Australian dollars for breaching consumer loss, but she actually never paid that money. So it's wild, and it was actually one of my personal training clients who recommended watching apple cider vinegar. But this is a great example of someone who basically was a shitty influencer who got lots of money, lots of recognition, was even promoted by Apple, got this big published cookbook that was recommended and she was everywhere, but what she was basically promoting was complete bullshit. She never even had cancer to begin with and people who were trying to follow her recommendations were not getting better. They were actually getting sick. So that's a good example of somebody who is trying to take advantage, and that's one of the best examples. She's making these outrageous claims and other influencers too.
(27:53)
I saw a lot of influencers in that time period being like, drink apple cider vinegar in the morning every day and it will cure everything right now there's benefits to vinegar and there's a lot of benefits to apple cider vinegar in particular, but it is not this super food that's going to save your life. It's not this messiah of a food if they are trying to promote anything, it's like the Messiah thing that's going to save your life and fix you, whether that's a food, an exercise program, a diet, a meditation, if they present anything as your fix, your cure, all that is a big red flag that you're dealing with a shit flu, right? And again, what we were talking about with influencers, if someone is trying to be an influencer and that's their job, their primary goal is to get something to go viral, right?
(28:47)
They're trying to get engagement, and so you can tell a lot of times if you're dealing with this person, they have a sense of they're trying to get virality or engagement over accuracy When you watch their videos, when you read their blogs or whatever, if their main focus is driving engagement versus actually sharing information, you're likely dealing with a bullshit if that's the majority of their content. Now, that's not to say a lot of really good fitness influencers, coaches, people who are giving good information, they will often make posts with the goal of going viral with the goal of reaching a lot of people in order to grow their audience. So that is a thing that a lot of good actors will do in order to drive eyeballs to their platform, but most of what they put out there is going to be good information backed in science, and most of it is not going to give you that icky used car salesman type of vibe.
(29:54)
Here's a red flag that you see I think a lot on the TikTok and Instagram side of the fitness influencer spectrum, which is that there's a priority of aesthetic over expertise. Just because somebody looks aesthetic does not mean that they know what they're talking about. So someone who posts a lot of videos where they look really jacked or they look really toned and they're posting how to type of content or they're posting their workouts just because they look really aesthetic does not mean that their advice is necessarily sound. Especially a lot of these younger influencers, these younger fitness influencers who are in their early twenties, some of them are even teenagers, a lot of those dudes, they look really aesthetic because one, they're fucking young, their bodies are still growing and they have a lot more testosterone in their bodies than older men. Two, a lot of these young bros are on gear, a lot of them are on steroids, so doing their workout is not necessarily going to make your body look the way that their body looks.
(31:00)
Your body is going to look the way that your body looks when you work out, which you don't know until you work out and you've done it for a long time. So just because somebody has an impressive physique doesn't mean that the science behind what they're doing is sound, and it doesn't mean that you should necessarily take their advice or that you should necessarily even copy what they're doing. A lot of fitness influencers have recently been called out and exposed for having what they recommend that you do, what their recommended diet is and their recommended. They say this is what their workout is, but that's not actually what their workout is. They're posting content in order to get viral, in order to get views, but their actual workout is probably a lot more boring. You see a lot of fitness influencers posting themselves doing these wild routines that nobody is actually really doing every day.
(31:53)
You know what I mean? So that's something also that you should be really suspicious of or skeptical of is especially when they're posting themselves doing really crazy stuff that looks like crazy, crazy hard and likely, a lot of times that's not their actual workout. They're just creating content, and that's what I mean by when they're, that's something that fitness influencers will often do, focusing on virality and engagement over accuracy. This isn't what they're actually doing and following what their advice is not necessarily going to yield the body that you're after. Also, another thing that's a red flag is conflicts of interest via monetization. So the way that most influencers actually make most of their money is through sponsorships. So fitness influencers will make content in order to get a lot of views, and then companies who want to sell a product to the audience that interacts with that person will approach the influencer and say, Hey, promote our product and we will pay you X, Y, Z, or you'll get a cut of every sale that uses your code.
(33:10)
This is something that you have to do in order to make money, and this is something that good influencers and bad influencers get involved with as well. There are good podcasts and good YouTube channels that have sponsors that they use, and then there's also shitty influencers. But what you want to be on the lookout for is when the product that they're promoting makes some kind of promise that's like a red flag that what we talked about before, it was like, this is a super food. This is going to solve all of your problems. This is going to change your life. Supplements are a really good example of this. There are a lot of fitness influencers who make a lot of their money off of selling supplements, and I also, I have an agreement with Legion Legion who sells supplements, but you have to keep in mind a lot of the supplement industry is not terribly well regulated, and there are a lot of supplements that claim to do things that they haven't really scientifically been verified to do.
(34:15)
There's nothing wrong with monetizing your content. That is how we often get paid. But are the companies that they are working with, are they themselves scams? They is the product promising? All of these things that we talked about before that are signs of bullshitting, a lot of bullshit supplements out there. So how do they interact with this product and also do they even use it themselves? A lot of fitness influencers get sponsored by products that they don't even use, and that's kind of a red flag to me as well. I try to only accept sponsorship from products that I actually use. So when I was sponsored by HelloFresh, I was using HelloFresh. I still use HelloFresh recipes to this day, really love them, not sponsored right now, and I'm also sponsored by Legion. I do recommend their supplements because everything that they sell basically is science backed and they discuss the science on their website.
(35:12)
They actually make the opposite of that claim that you might hear from a shit flu. This product is going to solve all of your problems. The first thing that the tagline you say you see is you don't need supplements to build muscle, loose fat and get healthy, but the right ones can help. And that's what a good responsible influencer would say. And also a good responsible product. Does the products that this person promotes, do they kind of give you that sort of scam feel, right? So those are kind of signs that you can kind of watch out for what kind of products is this person promoting and are they promoting products that kind of undermine what they say they want to do, which is help you be healthy and help you be fit. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is exactly.
(36:04)
Now, unfortunately, a lot of influencers do not actually provide full transparency, unlike whether they're sponsored or not. And technically, if you are sponsored by any brand and you're plugging a brand, you should say, Hey, I'm sponsored by them. Hey, I have a deal with them, legal and ethical. But a lot of influencers don't. A lot of influencers don't actually, they're not transparent about, Hey, I actually get a kickback when you sign up for this thing, which is like, that's really bad practices and it's not legal either. In fact, when I'm doing a sponsored stream here on Twitch, I have to check, there's a little box that says this is a sponsored stream or this contains promoted content. A lot of influencers don't actually say that. That's why you'll notice that when I'm talking about a product that I really like and someone else too, like Chris for example, if Chris is streaming or she's talking on her vlogs, if she's talking about a product that she really likes, we're pretty fast to say, not sponsored by the way, I'm not sponsored by them.
(37:10)
I just really like this. That's what you should do. And so someone who is credible or credible, someone's credible, someone who is ethical and moral is likely going to give a caveat like that. There's going to be transparency around their monetization fake natty culture. That is another thing. I mentioned it before, especially these young kids, there is a growing number of influencers who claim that they're natural, meaning that they're not on steroids, that they never have used steroids while secretly they are using steroids or performance enhancing drugs. So these influencers will set an unrealistic body standard, and that can lead to some pretty significant disappointment. If you are looking to them, you're trying to follow their workout program, you're trying to eat the way that they suggest, and they're telling you do this thing so you can look like me, but they're actually, they're on steroids.
(38:11)
That is a huge red flag. So if someone is super, super jacked and super, super lean all the time, that's that's not a surefire like this person's not natty, but it is something to think about. It is something to be suspicious of because most people who are in a healthy fitness journey go through cycles of periods where they may have a higher body fat percentage and they may have a lower body fat percentage depending on whether they are prioritizing building muscle or burning fat, because if you are actually naty in order to build muscle, a lot of times you do need to be eating a calorie surplus, which leads to a loss of muscle definition. So someone who's super, super lean and defined all the time but is still getting bigger. It's not to say that it can't happen. There are definitely people who are genetically blessed who can stay really, really lean and put on a lot of muscle at the same time, but it is something that you should be like that's a little suspicious, and especially if they say that they're, A lot of people that you see who are super, super jacked are not actually naty.
(39:29)
So if they promote this idea that you have to follow what I do and you'll look like me, that's a red flag to me, that's a red flag. Any kind of person who's like, do this this and you'll look like me if you want to have, or they'll imply it. If you want to have my type of physique or if you want to have a good butt and they show their butt, you just need to do this one thing. That's a big red flag. Also, going back to the whole idea of demonizing or over-hyping foods and supplements. At the same time, a lot of fitness influencers or shitty influencers will hype up one food as the food that's going to solve all your problems, or this food is going to make you burn fat. This food is going to make you burn 20 pounds of fat. At the same time, if they're demonizing one food where they're like, you should never eat this, five foods you should never eat, that's a pretty common clickbait title because the foods that are right for your body and that are going to help you to live your best fitness journey are very unique to you. And again, anybody who's worth their salt as a coach or as a guide or as someone to give advice is going to say in every situation, it depends. So what foods are right for you? It depends.
(40:56)
So be cautious that they're also demonizing foods and saying, you should never eat this or you should never drink this, that kind of a thing. And then finally, another one, another red flag, last red flag that we'll talk about is promoting extreme workouts or extreme diets. There's a common catchphrase among shitty influencers, shitty gym influencers who will be like no days off workout plans, and they're really hard workouts too that are doing lots of high intensity interval training, really heavy lifting or high volume lifting with very little rest and recovery. That's a red flag for me. A lot of fitness influencers on YouTube, you'll see they'll be follow along with this workout to build X, y, Z to get washboard apps, and it will just be an hour of high intensity interval training. It's unrealistic, really, really hard. Really extreme workouts or extreme diets eat like this for a month, and it's basically a juice cleanse where you don't get to eat solid food for a month or any kind of juice cleanse.
(42:11)
We've talked about cleanses and detoxes before on the podcast, but promoting any kind of extreme diet or extreme workout that gives you this feeling of like, oh, I'm doing something. It must be working in the short term, like a quick fix type of thing. That is a red flag because again, real progress, real sustainable fitness progress takes time. It takes time. If you are overweight and you want to look toned, like you want to get lean and you want to have muscle definition, really you need to be thinking in terms of years. You need to be thinking in terms of a year from now, two years from now, because it really does take that long to reach those goals in a sustainable way, in a way that's likely not going to hurt you or get you sick, and that you'll actually be able to sustain in the long run.
(43:08)
So those are red flags to look out for when it comes to shitty influencers, fitness influencers or bad actors, people who don't have your best interest in mind. And I think that we can tell when someone, someone is actually giving us good information and they actually do have our best interests in mind. The markers of a good fitness influencer is someone who's qualified, who cites their sources, and it's legitimate sources. Someone who seeks the scientific facts and they prioritize science-based information over social clout, but also check their content history, check someone's content history, what kind of content are they putting out there? Is the majority of it click clickbait stuff to go viral, or is the majority of it actually like, Hey, this is actually good information.
(44:10)
Are they actually putting something out there that's helpful? Is the majority of what they put out there helpful and also pay attention to how they handle criticism? I think that that's a really big, either it could be a green flag or a red flag if someone calls them out, how do they respond is a really good way to tell whether you're dealing with a shit flu or someone who actually knows their stuff or is a worthwhile good actor who's trying to actually do good. So we all make mistakes. We all say the wrong thing sometimes. We all also sometimes need to update our knowledge as a coach taking continuing education unit classes all the time to update my knowledge. There are some things that I in the past have taught that I've even talked about on stream that are no longer really backed by the science things that I've had to update in how I coach people.
(45:10)
Good example of this is the rice versus meat protocol for injury, right? Because for many, many years when I was coming up as an athlete, when you got injured, if you sprained your ankle or if you pulled a muscle, the protocol was rice, rest, ice compression, elevation. But nowadays, more and more physical therapists and exercise physiologists, doctors are recommending meat, MEAT, which is to actually promote and speed up healing for a minor injury like that. What you actually need to do is keep it moving. M moving exercise. Once you're able to exercise, you should stay exercising. Even if you have to exercise around the affected joint, you should still get exercise activity. No, I'm sorry, analgesic. Analgesic. So if you need to reduce the swelling, you can eat foods that are anti-inflammatory like turmeric, lots of garlic, onion, that kind of thing. And if you have it's unbearable, then you can take an over the counter.
(46:19)
If your doctor says that it's right for you, EAM, then T is treatment. So a lot of minor injuries and sprains that happen during training or just in everyday life, they get better on their own, but sometimes you need extra treatment. Go to physical therapy. A lot of chiropractors are also now doing physical therapy, which is a cool development. So that's what's actually recommended now, and I was actually corrected and called out by somebody in the community here on Twitch about recommending rice, and instead he recommended offering or recommending meat, and also followed up with some sources that I could read to update my knowledge. So that's a perfect example of something that I've had to update. Another thing more recently is I've stopped teaching the Pilates imprint as a way to brace the core and practicing that at the beginning of resistance training. That has come as a result of having taught the imprint, and it has in some ways helped people to learn where their abs are and how brace their core.
(47:30)
On the other hand though, a lot of people who are imprinting when they hold that position while they're doing abdominal exercises like dead bugs or leg drops, it actually causes strain in their backs. And so I've gone through, I've researched it and from multiple sources, chiropractors, physical therapists, and other experts, going back and doing the research and talking to these people and reading what they've written about the topic, decided to stop teaching the imprint instead and teaching people how to brace in different ways. So that's a very recent update to what I offer, and that's always going to be the case. There will probably be things 10 years from now that I will have to teach differently.
(48:26)
All that to say, if you're dealing with somebody who's not a shit influencer, who actually is worth listening to, they're somebody who can handle criticism and who also is willing to have a growth mindset and grow beyond what they maybe currently teach or what they used to teach and what they used to say. If they can engage in good faith debate, if they can engage in good faith knowledge exchange, if they're willing to be wrong, if they're willing to be seen as wrong, and then change and update what they think, that's a sign that the person that you're following may actually be somebody worth listening to. But a shitty influencer, a shit influencer is probably going to respond a lot more like a narcissist, right? Narcissists hate to be seen as wrong. They want to be seen as an expert, and that is more important to them than actually giving good information.
(49:28)
So if you get this sense that their whole focus is being seen in a certain way versus actually giving good information, that's a good sign that this is somebody that you probably shouldn't be listening to. So I wanted to talk about that with you guys because I think I've been in this space, I've been streaming on Twitch for five years or more now, and my other platforms have grown. My YouTube channel is growing, and there have been a lot of shifts in the fitness influencing space, and there will be more changes that come along. Social media is just like fashion. There are cycles where certain things come into fashion and certain things that we said back in the eighties, and then we're like, oh, we learned like, oh, that's not a good idea. And then maybe five years from now, new young influencers will probably start saying that kind of thing again, and we'll have to do a bunch of myth busting around it.
(50:30)
That is kind of the nature of the beast. Whenever there is a free exchange of information, there's always going to be bad actors who are going to be, they're going to have their own ulterior motives. They want to be seen and they want clout, and they want money from sponsorships and engagement, and that's more important to them than actually giving good information and helping you along your fitness journey. I will say the type of people when I'm just interacting with someone's content and I'm trying to get a sense of the type of person that I'm dealing with is, and I have a pretty good strong pattern recognition in certain ways of people behaving, in my sense, I get a general sense of someone being a good influence versus influencer. A good influence someone to actually listen to is do they have a teacher vibe to them? Do they have a nerd vibe about them? Are they passionate about the thing that they're talking about? Do they have a passion for sharing knowledge about that thing, talking about that thing, someone who has a passion for the thing versus is more interested in attention. I look for people who have a good vibe of being a teacher. They want to share information. They love what they're sharing. They love to talk about the thing that they're talking about, and they also have the resources to back it up.
(52:06)
And they also refer to authorities. They respect the authority of other researchers, like peer reviewed studies of scientific organizations. Someone who's more on the narcissistic side is going to be, they don't want the spotlight on anybody else but themselves. They want to be seen as the expert, the center of attention. So just be careful if you get that kind of vibe from people. And it is hard sometimes to tell. I mean, there've been people who've come out to be really horrible people that you hear these terrible stories about that you're like, oh, wow, I didn't see that coming. It's human nature, and it's part of the experience of being human to kind of be tricked by people who don't actually have good or have your interests at heart. But these are hopefully some tips that will help you to kind of sift through the bad actors that are out there and prevent yourself from getting into a scam or some kind of a pipeline that ends up hurting you or someone else. So yeah, I hope that you found that helpful.
(53:20)
Thank you so much for watching this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. Again, I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA Jaydigains. I hope that you found this conversation to be helpful in sifting through good and bad fitness influencers in the online world. I'm curious to know if you have your own criteria for knowing whether you're dealing with a scam artist or someone who's just giving bad information. Leave that in the comments below this video if you're watching on YouTube, and make sure that you have subscribed to the channel if you're here on YouTube or that you have followed the channel if you're listening to the podcast. I look forward to hanging out with you in the next episode. In the meantime, take care.
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