It’s year 19 in the industry, and I’m probably entering the 1000 mark for clients I’ve worked with in a face-to-face setting.
Regardless of what “era” of fitness I’ve operated within since 2007 – be it the pre-social media era where long-form content ruled and an actual attention span was required, or the “intensity” era where going hard above all else served as rite of passage for your moisture-wicking dri-fit t-shirt, or today’s influencer era – satisfied with its divorce from context, nuance, and most reality – I’ve noticed that my clients’ primary complaint about fitness education hasn’t changed over time.
There’s so much competing advice and contradictory directives that it makes for maximum confusion.
I used to think most of it was snake oil. And as egregious as some of the content on the internet is, I realized something even more true about the rest:
Most fitness advice isn’t wrong.
It’s just built for people who don’t exist.
Or more accurately: it’s built for people with unlimited time, flexible schedules, high recovery capacity, minimal stress, and an ability to reorganize their lives around training.
That’s not most adults. And it’s definitely not most adults over 35.
Yet the dominant fitness narrative still assumes you can train five to six days a week, sleep eight uninterrupted hours, prep every meal, track everything, recover perfectly, and “lock in” whenever you’re motivated. If you can’t do that, it’s implied the problem is you and your discipline, priorities and mindset.
That framing misses something important.
Most people aren’t failing because they don’t care enough. They’re failing because the advice they’re following was never designed for their lives.
Fake World, False Assumptions
Scroll through social media or open most mainstream programs and you’ll see the same presumptuous conclusions neatly baked in: You can train for 75–90 minutes without rushing. You can move sessions around freely if life interferes. You can afford to feel sore, tired, or mentally drained. You can recover like someone whose literal job is training. These assumptions don’t get stated out loud, but they affect everything, including the volume, intensity, selection, and frequency of the workouts.
For a 20-year-old student or fitness influencer, that might work fine. For a 40-something professional with a demanding job, family responsibilities, hit-and-miss diet, and a nervous system that’s already maxed out before stepping into the gym, it’s a different story.
This is why so many capable, intelligent adults feel like fitness is harder than it “should” be. They’re trying to force a gym routine that doesn’t match their lifestyle, and ultimately leaves them defeated and with less confidence than when they started.
When you’re younger with few battle scars and far less mileage on your connective tissue, you can get away with a lot: More volume, more intensity, and most importantly, more mistakes.
As you get older, the margin for error noticeably shrinks. This is where the advice to simply “push harder” or “be more disciplined” starts to fall apart.
And this is where many people quietly quit (I waited until April to write this article for a reason)—not because they stopped caring, but because the cost of staying consistent became too high.
If I had a Nickel for every New Year’s Fitness Resolution Seen all the way Through, I’d have a dime.
This is why the resolutionists fail so predictably.
Not because people don’t want change badly enough—but because January plans are often bring out the least realistic versions of themselves.
January programs are usually built around optimism, not constraints. And most influencers and cookie cutter programs profit on that very notion.
So people stack aggressive training, restrictive nutrition, and high expectations on top of an already full life. It might work briefly.
Then reality shows up.
Self-blame often disguises the real problem: That plan was never designed to survive February—let alone the rest of the year.
This is especially common among busy professionals who do value fitness but don’t have a plan that adapts to missed sessions, stressful weeks, or reduced recovery. The cycle that is starting strong, falling behind, taking a break, and repeating is one as vicious as it is predictable.
Reality
If fitness advice were truly designed for working adults over 35, it would look different.
It would prioritize repeatability over novelty, and the minimum effective dose over maximum effort. The new fitness trend for the cool kids would be prioritizing recovery, so progress can actually survive the vicissitudes of life.
It isn’t about perfect weeks. It’s about durable ones. And realizing training is supposed to support your life—not compete with it.
The reason fitness content is so confusing and unashamedly competing for attention via screen time, is because every influencer knows the most effective programs for busy adults often look boring.
Boring doesn’t make for good TV. But an intense program that disregards actual adult responsibilities certainly does. And it has awful psychological byproducts.
This is the difference between advice built for visibility and advice built for longevity.
What All of this Does
Good coaching isn’t about yelling louder or demanding more discipline. It’s about designing a system that works with your life instead of against it.
That’s what makes lots of what I’ve written above give coaches – me included – a bad name.
It’s expressing a lack of insight or straight up insensitivity to the working class adult. It makes people lose trust in the prospect of personal training expertise, and it makes them turn to impersonal backup tools like AI software to create their plans.
But they don’t need another plan. They need one that fits. Fitness isn’t failing busy adults. Fitness marketing is.
When advice is built for people with no jobs, it will always feel overwhelming, confusing, or unsustainable to people who actually have lives.
And when training finally fits your life, consistency stops feeling like a battle.
So the real question is, how bad do you want that?
