Disclaimer: If you are a fan of the Donald, you might not want to read any further. Also, I wrote this before Iowa, so it may not be relevant anymore.
In any event, I took the recent political circus as an opportunity to shine some light on how his strategies reflect human nature in general, and fitness in particular
1. Complete lack of accountability
Ever noticed how Trump, Oprah, and Dr OZ have the same recipe to make people happy? “Oh no, it is not your fault that you are overweight, underperforming, etc.!”
Instead it is someone else’s fault, the usual culprits being society, the government, or in my world, genetics. In the fitness world this relates to statements such as “the only reason I am not in shape is because I don’t have more time time to train or better drugs.”
Well, maybe you just aren’t working hard enough or ice cream just isn’t a great source of protein.
The moment people take accountability for their actions, things usually improve dramatically.
2. Oversimplification
We’ll make America great” is about as specific and helpful as saying “I’ll get you in better shape.” What does this mean? Will you get leaner or stronger? And how exactly will we get there? A road map would not only be nice, but is actually indispensable. But of course, that would require laying out some inconvenient truth such as for better roads we need higher taxes or to get leaner you cannot eat whatever you want, so let’s not do that.
3. Us against them
This is a very popular tactic of sleazy politicians and supplement sales men alike. It usually goes along the lines of: “the government does not want you to know, but this pill works better than steroids. But hurry, better buy today since the FDA will ban it very soon, since it is just too powerful.”
Here is food for thought to all conspiracy theorists: Remember Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon? Yes, governments are bad at hiding secrets. In terms of fitness, it translates as follows: if there really was a way to only workout for 10 minutes or take a pill, do you honestly believe pro athletes would still train fours hours daily? Didn’t think so.
4. Offering easy solutions
“The Mexicans will build the wall and pay for it” pretty much equals “only train 10 minutes per day and be jacked”. Instead of putting the work in, please let me take a pill. Same as voting for the Donald will make all the problems go away over night.
Beer hall statements are easy, but real politics are quite difficult and rarely have a simple solution.
Fitness is simple, but not easy. Nobody gets around the basics such as weighing your food and putting in the hours. But then that doesn’t sound cool, so let’s pretend there is an easy fix!