Resistance training is one of the safest activities we can participate in with some of the most significant returns on investment. Yet, there is still this stigma around lifting that its dangerous. But, when you look at the research, you see resistance training to be one of the safest activities you can participate in. In the image below, you can see powerlifting is right down there with tennis and other non-contact sports, and this is at an elite level. One could speculate that the injury rate would be even lower among non-competitive strength athletes.

Injury rate per 1000 hours of participation in adult recreational activities (1)

In the next image, you can see regular weight training is even lower, although this data is from adolescence aged 5-14. That's not even getting into the mountain of evidence showing resistance training is one of the best things you can do to DECREASE your risk for injury.

Injury Rates per 100 participation hours (2)

Yet evverrry time I look at a video of someone lifting and look at the comments on the video, the top comments always revolve around getting injured. Go into the comments of any video of a professional athlete or high-level lifter lifting, and you will see a plethora of people telling them how they are going to get hurt for a large variety of reasons.

The first lifting video I saw on Instagram and Facebook and the top comments

We also see this among strength coaches. I can't tell you how many times I have seen someone asking if they were okay to load a particular movement only to be met with 100's of comments picking apart everything "wrong" with them. The other day I came across this video of a lady doing a beautiful bodyweight squat, and their trainer was asking a group of solely other trainers if it was okay to load the squat. The comments were ridiculous; over 100 comments and not a single one was satisfied with the squat, and they all were telling her she shouldn't load the squat for some made-up reason that you had to contact them to fix. The repercussions of this are huge in so many aspects. Today we will look specifically at exercise adherence, but that doesn't even touch on the nocebic effects and social learning that is going on on top of just plain missing the point of our jobs (to drive adaptation).

The Department of Health and Human Services recommends adults get at least two days of resistance training per week(3), yet only 18.6% of Americans meet this recommendation. And what's even crazier is of those that did meet the recommendations saw a 23% decrease in all-cause mortality(4) (your chance of dying from anything). This is INSANE. Just lifting twice a week leads to a 1 in 4 chance to reduce your risk of dying.

So why is there such a disconnect between public perception and science? Well, that falls on us as fitness professionals. The false narratives we produce to create dependency on us and our products. The way we talk to our clients about movement, the constant quest for "perfect" form, and creating arbitrary requirements for movement. The amount of nocebo we create as a profession is astounding, and we are just shooting ourselves in the foot. While you may get one person to buy into your magic fix, you're subsequently scaring 100s into ever even trying in the first place.

Lack of time, confidence, and lack of motivation are three of the most significant barriers to fitness, and fitness professionals tend to raise these barriers instead of lowering them. The words we use and the narratives we create play a significant role in all three areas.

Lack of time

Creating arbitrary movement standards, striving for "perfect" form, and making up problems that people need to fix takes up time; time most people don't have. People think, "If I'm going to have to spend all this time fixing stuff before I can even train why bother" or "I don't have time to do that extensive warmup and workout." This can create a feeling that they need to do endless "corrective" exercises to workout without pain and who has time for that.

Confidence

Because of us, people are scared to work out on their own. Afraid if they do something "wrong," they'll get hurt, so they don't even bother. If you create a narrative that exercise can't be done correctly without your watchful eye, what will people do when you are not there? Nothing... we need to be empowering people to feel confident to move and move in any way possible, not create arbitrary movement standards that only a professional can dissect.

Motivation

When you look into human behavior and motivation, you'll start to dive into the Self-determination theory and our basic physiological needs and how they relate to motivation. You'll see relatedness, competence, and autonomy are three of the most significant factors in motivation and continuing to participate in physical activity as well as the journey from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation. All of these things our words and narratives play a direct roll.

Relatedness is promoted by environments that foster respect and mutual caring. How can we foster respect and mutual caring when we spend all our time picking people apart and telling them everything wrong with them.

Competence is facilitated by environment and optimal challenge. A lot of this is determined by a match between anchor (expectation) and target (activity). Our goal should be to keep the target and anchor as close as possible to facilitate the perception of progress. But creating a standard for "perfect" form that can never be achieved sets an impossible anchor and creates a large gap between anchor and target, thus creating a lack of competence. Proposing arbitrary goals of what movement should look like creates a lack of competence when the client can't meet those arbitrary goals.

And last, but probably the most affected, is autonomy. Autonomy is the opportunity to feel in control of one's actions and is promoted by providing opportunities for choice, acknowledging choice, avoiding judgment, and encouraging personal responsibilities. This is the exact opposite of what most fitness professionals do who strive to pray on people's insecurities and create dependence on their services. We should strive to give people the tools and knowledge to make their own decisions and take personal responsibility for their choice to workout. How are we going to create autonomy when your favorite IG promoters are advocating if an individual is moving wrong they will hurt themselves? How are clients going to become autonomous if every fitness professional they run across tells them something else is wrong with them?

Which leads us right into Self-determination theory and the quest to go from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation. Research has shown people who are intrinsically motivated are much more likely to stick with a workout program long term. When one is intrinsically motivated, they workout to satisfy their own curiosity or desire for mastery, one will internalize working out, and it will become part of who they are. They will workout for enjoyment's sake, not because they feel the need to.

Social values drive extrinsic motivation. They workout because they feel they need to, or it is what they are supposed to do. When we create this idea that you have to do certain movements to avoid pain or you have to workout to avoid lousy health, we are trapping people in this stage of extrinsic motivation. How can one internalize what they are doing when the messaging we use is setting a trap with every activity if not properly evaluated by a professional

So, next time you see a fitness professional picking apart someone and telling them everything wrong with them or making up arbitrary movement requirements or pushing some "ideal" movement standard or "perfect" form, especially if they relate it back to pain or getting hurt (or even worse that you need to buy their product to fix the very problem they made up in the first place) do the whole fitness field a favor and unfollow them. Your follows, and your money give these people a voice. A voice that brings the field down as a whole. We've got a lot of work to do, and it can't be done without all of you.

Below are 5 things you can do right now to help drive the fitness industry away from these harmful narratives.

If you see an Instagram profile (especially one with a lot of followers) nocebo their viewers, especially when trying to sell their product or service, unfollow them.
Give your clients the power and confidence to workout on their own.
Create achievable, realistic, and objective goals with your clients. Not goals based on arbitrary movement standards.
Phrase changes to technique as more or less efficient as opposed to “don’t do this you’ll get hurt.”
Empower people to mess up and learn from their mistakes instead of trying to get your client to avoid making any mistakes at all.

[1] The American Journal of Sports Medicine, vol. 21 (3), pp. 461-467, 1993. Injuries in Recreational Adult Fitness Activities Sports Medicine Australia Sports Fact Sheets

[2] APA , Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research: February 1994 - p 53-57 Relative Safety of Weightlifting and Weight Training Hamill Brian P.

[3] Piercy KL, Troiano RP, Ballard RM, et al. The Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans. JAMA. 2018 Nov 20;320(19):2020-2028.

[4] Dankel SJ, Loenneke JP, Loprinzi PD. Dose-dependent association between muscle-strengthening activities and all-cause mortality: Prospective cohort study among a national sample of adults in the USA. Arch Cardiovasc Dis. 2016 Nov;109(11):626-633.

[5] Rodrigues F, Teixeira DS, Neiva HP, et al. The bright and dark sides of motivation as predictors of enjoyment, intention, and exercise persistence. Scand J Med Sci Sports. 2019 Dec 19.

Motivation, Exercise Adherence, and the Words We Use