Don't Exercise Take A Pill

I always remember reading a few papers years ago by John Hawley on the fascinating area of ‘exercise mimetics’

He suggested that creating a pill to mimic the benefits of exercise is a huge task, for one main reason

Current pharmaceutical efforts have typically targeted skeletal muscle to stimulate the same adaptation that we get from endurance exercise. But they fail to have the impact on the vast number of other systems that benefit from exercise - bone, cardiovascular, respiratory etc

It was just ‘let’s target the muscles’, as if they were all that mattered

This monolithic (one block, one dimensional way of seeing things) is where we are with fitness businesses right now

‘Fix this one thing that I, your saviour - view as the sole reason for all businesses in our industry failing… and you’ll be great’

I know why they do it and I get why - because it’s appealing

Especially when the answer is a warm, comfy solution like ‘just invest in being a better coach’

That is MUSIC to the ears of people who love their job and spend loads of money on learning more about it. But it’s also disingenuous to suggest that’s the only solution

Better coaching and retention will give you a better product - crucial, as you can’t market shite for long.

The irony is that the people willing to invest in being better coaches and having better programmes? Are already great coaches, with great programmes

That’s WHY they want to invest in it - because they care.

But if you have a great product and it’s not selling how you want?

Taking it from 90% to 91% is going to less for your business than taking marketing from 10% to 30%

Or comms from 30 to 50%

Or Customer Experience from 50 to 70%

A fitness business isn’t a ‘special kind of business’, and should not be treated as such

It’s like any other business (and the human body) - a living, breathing organism made up of several individual systems and pathways that both need to function within their own roles, but also communicate with all the other systems, tissues and organs

We need to treat it as such