What popular fitness fads are going wrong

There seems to be a new trending workout every month. Each one guarantees a happier, healthier, stronger and slimmer you.

There’s a viral challenge known as ’75 Hard’ that promises to improve your mental toughness if you exercise for 45 minutes twice a day – while also sticking to a diet and drinking a liter of water a day, among other things. Another, known as 12-3-20 (not to be confused with 12-3-30 or 25-7-2), claims to transform your body. And there’s always a new kettlebell routine with thousands of TikTok views saying it can make you a faster runner almost instantly.

There’s no doubt that a vigorous fitness regimen can help improve your endurance, just as eating a healthier diet and getting more sleep can make you feel more energetic and rested. The actual workouts from these plans are often fine, but the problem is how they remind you of exercise.

Often, the advice of these fitness strategies is “misleading at best and dangerous at worst,” says Victoria Sekely, a physical therapist and founder of Train Smart Run Strong, leaving you feeling worse than before and leading to injury or burnout.

Here’s how to identify which workout fads can help you achieve your goals and which can set you back from injury or disappointment.

Be realistic about your starting point.

Many fads are actually aimed at people who already have an exercise routine and may not be suitable for beginners. Influencers don’t know where you start.

“The person on social media giving you advice doesn’t necessarily have any background in it other than their own anecdotal experience,” says Heather Milton, a clinical exercise physiologist and strength and conditioning specialist at Sports Performance Center at NYU Langone Health.

If you have never worked with heavy weights before, try doing a daily workout Kettlebell swing ladder could cause injury. And while some plans don’t prescribe the type or intensity of exercise, starting a plan with an hour or more of exercise per day can be overwhelming.

Instead, Ms. Milton recommends starting simply with 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity weekly. Decide for yourself what is moderate, rather than taking someone else’s word for it.

“Each person has individual needs based on genetics, medical history, including injury history and body type,” Ms Milton added. These factors influence our ability to do different exercises and determine how useful they will be, she said.

If you are able to do so, work with a professional who can help you tailor the workouts to your current fitness level.

Focus on both ‘process goals’ and end goals.

Viral training plans often work based on a simple equation: perform a certain activity for a certain number of days to achieve a certain result.

Experts call these types of results – a faster mile time or the ability to do more pull-ups – a performance (or end) goal. To get there, it’s helpful to focus on what they call process goals: smaller, achievable steps, such as improving technique, says Carla Meijen, an exercise psychologist and assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam.

One of these process goals is learning to listen to your body, a skill in itself. Bringing awareness to your workouts is much more important for longevity resistance than to continue to follow a rigid course in the short term, experts say. If you find yourself having a bad day and slogging through a workout, consider it an opportunity to build a process goal by working on mental toughness, rather than berating yourself.

The same recommendations apply to athletes participating in a race. Instead of focusing solely on an end time – the performance goal – experts recommend identifying smaller goals along the way.

Avoid plans without rest days.

For many programs that are tied to a number of days, the challenge is a daily commitment, no days off. If you skip a workout in the 75 Hard Challenge or don’t follow your diet, you’ll be expected to start over from day one.

While this may work for some people, most need time off for their body and mind to recover, said Dr. Sekely.

“You can’t build muscle and get stronger and faster and do all the things without rest and recovery in the picture,” she said. “It’s physiological how our body works.”

Don’t judge success by the way you look.

Before and after photos can make many plans go viral. But be careful and use your appearance as a measure of success.

There is no unique ‘fit’ body type, and our bodies don’t respond to exercise in the same way, Ms Milton explains.

More sustainable goals are about how you feel: getting stronger, building endurance, or gaining flexibility. But a lot of this comes with patience and steady work, which isn’t usually the focus of a fitness fad.

“Habits are created by doing very simple, very easy things, and slowly introducing them into your lifestyle,” said Dr. Sekely. “If we let go of perfection, we can actually make progress.”