Exploring the False Equivalent of the Fitness-Fashion Paradox

Fitness definitely isn’t fashion. There’s a good analogy there, though, for sure.

Think about if you are massively into fashion. To stay on trend would mean having a closet full of wide bottom, high waisted pants, for example. Not to be confused with the straight cut, low rise pants that you would have had in your closet in the 1990s and early 2000s. Back then, your closet would have needed to replace the bellbottoms that you would have needed twenty years prior to that. 

Catch my drift?

The utility of fashion, you might say, is to “look good.” Part of looking good, though, is subjective in the context of the time you’re living. In some respects, “looking good” requires following the trends in a way that somehow works with your “style,” whatever that is. 

Fitness is different. 

The utility of fitness is to do things that result in the fitness outcomes you want. Want to look different? Want to be able to do certain things? Your training should give you those things. 

The problem is that fitness has trends. I find it odd, though, to follow these eras of popularity in fitness if the fitness outcomes aren’t trending in different ways. All of the trends in fitness are selling the idea that they deliver a fixed set of desired outcomes. They are just arguing that they are doing the best job of making people look, feel, and perform better. 

But, we already know how to do that. We knew that when bellbottoms were in your closet. We knew that when low rise jeans were in your closet. And, frankly, it’s the same things that work with whatever fashion is in your closet now. 

It hasn’t changed. 

So, when it comes to training, it doesn’t make sense to be on trend with your training style of choice. Dare I say that being on trend would guarantee that you’re training in a way that won’t deliver what it says it will? After all, that’s all history has shown.