Many of us join the fitness industry to help spread the gospel of the active lifestyle and all of its subsequent benefits. We want to help people live better and perform better. Sadly, there are some who may start out this way but then take a hard turn towards insanity, and there are those who never cared about anyone and just want your money. It's easy to get caught up in marketing, offering shiny objects in the form of impossibly fast results, or frankly, in the form of lies. Lately my social media feed has been full of downright stupid fitness ads.
Here we have the couple who wants to teach you to do handstands together, as if 1. handstands are somehow an indication of anything but the ability to do a handstand, and 2. you don't already have to be lean, coordinated, and without upper-body mobility/joint issues to perform one. Selling a product that is really only good for teaching a trick, under the guise of helping people increase fitness is, at best, lying, and at worst, dangerous. By all means, try and handstand, IF you're already in great shape.
Which brings me to the next ad: a man who has clearly spent years developing the ability to perform moves that olympic gymnasts perform, selling a set of blocks and bars to assist you on your fitness journey. Even worse than the handstand show, if you aren't already able to do a weighted Bulgarian split squat, a one-handed pushup, and don't have a bodyfat percentage lower than 18 percent, this set of equipment will likely land you in the orthopedic surgeon's office before you can say "Pistol squats are nothing but a party trick."
Next in the queue of totally misleading fitness ads, we have two separate ads that share the same problem, one selling fitness pants, the other a 10-minute ab workout. What could the problem possible be? Well, glad you asked: the size and shape of the women in these ads has zero to do with pants or 10-minute ab workouts, and everything to do with training for over four hours a day, eating an insanely strict diet, and in all likelihood, being on gear. No, I can't tell you for sure that these women are using performance-enhancing drugs. But, based on the number of women who test positive for gear, and who also happen to look just like this, odds are they ain't au naturale. Women can certainly gain a lot of muscle and cut down bodyfat without gear, but if a woman looks and performs like an NFL running back, she's likely got an interesting supplement regimen. So, wear the pants and do the 10-minute ab workout, and maybe even work on your balance, but don't think either will get you that "25-year-old male, peak-of-his-professional-sports-career" look.
I understand the need for inspirational images. What I don't understand is misleading people into thinking there are shortcuts to pushing the limits of physics and biology. If a person comes to me and tells me they want to train to be in the circus, I'm happy to oblige, just know it won't happen in ten minutes a day.