Wouldn’t you love to know you could undoubtedly trust the advice you were getting with food and health?

While immersed in my morning routine today, I was searching for some inspiration for my writing. A big shout out goes to one skinny, uninformed, overpaid online “trainer” for setting my mind in motion! Note to self: next time you need inspiration for an article to help educate the public on the truth in fitness, look no further than Instagram!

This gal with approximately 15K followers was delicately bending over at the waist, hanging out in her backyard on a yoga mat showing everyone how to “stretch” their IT band. She had to “stretch” hers because she has been “doing a lot of HIIT” lately! Whew…where to start?

First off, your IT band doesn’t stretch! It doesn’t matter how hard you try or what technique you use, you can’t stretch it. It’s tensile strength is thousands of pounds per square inch which, when you stop and think about it, makes sense. Why would you want your fascia to easily deform with something like stretching or some type of manual treatment when its job is to hold things together?

Secondly, if you do not have the potential for power, you are not doing HIIT! This topic is deserving of it’s own article altogether (of which I am working on) but suffice it enough today to say unless you have a great deal of absolute strength from years of weightlifting, you aren’t strong enough to do high intensity work. What you see in the vast majority of people claiming to be doing HIIT is just aerobic work really, really fast. So if you have minimal visible muscle definition and have never lifted weights as heavy as about your body weight, you aren’t doing HIIT! You are punching the air and it will work initially but it will not make you resilient and fit for longevity.

One of the greatest problems we all face in health and fitness is anyone with a decent looking body and a computer has the ability to fill the world with a bunch of garbage and falsity!

People calling themselves trainers and coaches, spreading flat out lies of how health and ideal body composition is achieved, stealing your money via online videos, DVDs, body wraps, multi-level marketing supplement products and spewing their personal experience of losing weight as a proven method! And others who are well intentioned but just have no idea what they don’t know. As a committed professional coach who takes the health of others extremely serious, this sort of thing makes me crazy! Aside from the fact that this makes my job a heck of a lot harder because I get lumped into their world just by being in the industry, the people who suffer from this nonsense the most are consumers like you! So how do you know what to believe when it comes to nutrition and health?

Look for information over inspiration.

You can be inspired by a lot of people. Heck, I love to inspire people and I personally get daily emails from people thanking me for how I inspire them (for which I am eternally grateful, by the way, because it keeps me inspired to do what I do!). But inspiration only takes you so far if the information is flawed. If you want to create fitness for the rest of your life, so you can live the life you desire without physical limitations, you have to educate yourself. You cannot blindly follow someone based upon their good looks, or the body they have or whatever memes they post on social media. You have to spend the time investing in learning. Do you have to understand all of the science? Heck no! But the person from whom you are taking advice had better!

The task of educating the public often seems overwhelming. There are some loud voices out there who have nothing but desire to make money, drowning out the knowledge of dedicated professionals. Overcoming this takes all of us working together. It is sort of frightening when a 24 year old beach body “coach”on youtube has a million followers on social media and true masters in the world of health, nutrition and fitness are completely unknown to the vast majority of the population. But jumping around in a sports bra or being oiled up and ripped sells and looking at pictures of me, no makeup on and researching at my computer doesn’t. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe even those dedicated to knowledge have a responsibility to look the part. If you want to lead, you have to practice what you preach and being overly fat isn’t part of the deal. But don’t be lured in by appearance alone. Knowledge is the only answer to true fitness.

There are many knowledgeable coaches just like me who truly have your best interest at heart. Follow us. Avoid the temptation to be sold the easy route…there isn’t one! The work is where the self worth stems and being proud of who you are is well worth it! If you want a body you feel confident in, if you want freedom from being a slave to food and to have an active lifestyle into your 80’s and 90’s you need to help stop the noise and follow the masters and those dedicated to becoming a master. THIS is why I created EML.