hi I'm W he and since I got into fitness I've been able to make a pretty good change to my body and my life but the more I think about it the more suspicious I get about the fitness industry there's something quite Dark and Dangerous going on if you're not careful it can trap you and ruin your life it's time to debunk what I call the myth of Fitness this video we're going to debunk the idea of Fitness alog together and we need to start with the word itself Fitness what does it even mean we
say he's fit to work he's fit to play he's fit to it means you are able to carry out what you're supposed to carry out so when we talk of Fitness in the sense of Life as a whole it means you are fit enough to live life that is what Fitness should be so the first problem is that Fitness has become too much about vain looks and I actually urge all of you watching this to take this broader aspect of Fitness so that you can start not just obsessing like how big is my bicep but
actually thinking how fit am I how healthy am I next why does this happen since when has Fitness just become about German protein shakes it was none other than Mr Carl Marx who talked about the logic of capitalism when we used to live back in the day before the rise of capitalism we used to think about how useful something was in life What mattered for a table was that it was used to put food on it and what was good about exercise was that it made us feel healthy but what happens with capitalism is that
we become so obsessed with generating profit so instead of valuing things for the sake of what they can do for us we value things for how much they can be sold for how much profit can be generated so what does that mean the table is not valuable because it allows us to put dinner on it the table is valuable in so far as it can be sold for x amount of dollars and the same thing happens in Fitness where the whole industry is based on how can we make the most amount of money with this
Fitness idea so what do you do got to build a gym have all these machines so all the machine companies can make money by selling gym machines you won't actually look good unless you buy these supplements these extra BCAAs these protein shakes oh and why not this creatine and a whole industry develops on the supplement side because again it's about what they can sell to generate profit so profit becomes the central force that drives Fitness rather than what the use value of Fitness which is to build a healthy body to build a body where we
feel strong where we feel fit to do things that life requires us to do whatever that is maybe that's just you going about your life lifting your kids up and down maybe it's you recreationally playing football and basketball and Jiu-Jitsu whatever it is that ought to be the main benefit and the value of Fitness next have you actually thought about why the fitness industry is called Fitness industry why is it called an industry what is an industry back in the day fitness was not an industry it was just like soldiers preparing for war it was
just guys like wrestling so that they could go to the Greek Olympic Games Fitness was done for physical Excellence for physical health it wasn't done in a way to mass produce and sell if that's what you want then Fitness becomes an industry where everybody wants to strive to look like this gim bro everybody has to have this protein everybody has to do this bench press and everything becomes standardized every physique kind of starts to look the same you unify the standards that people chase with bodybuilding competitions and and these aesthetic bodies and we are creating
this kind of mass production and it's kind of dystopian but this is also what you see nowadays where pretty much all across the developed world you see guys that are hitting the gym they're all kind of doing the same exercises all trying to kind of look the same and it is a little bit depressing and actually another dude called Adon talked about this he's another philosopher who said within a capitalist system everything starts to become industrialized there's factory production on a mass scale industrialization happens when you want to mass produce things so that they can
be sold over and over again to what generate profit so what you have with the music industry you get these record labels churning out all the same songs that are kind of the same pretending to be different why because they can be sold reprinted and sold and sold and sold in their masses and the fitness industry the reason it's called industry is because it's become just that next now what happens along with industrialization is the creation of new and fake desires let's say you wanted to get a big chest and I made a bench press
I've satisfied that desire you're happy you no longer buy anything because you got the thing you want but wait don't you want big arms too don't you want the cable row machine don't you want the lap pull down machine oh but the lap pull down machine if you really want that wi lat you need to use this xgrip machine rather than the normal lap and what this logic of capitalism and industrialization does is that it's constantly generating new things for you to want genuinely actually think how this happens in every aspect of your life you
could actually be happy with a pretty minimalist setup of like enjoying the food you want spending time with your friends going on a holiday here and there but wait don't you want a Ferrari don't you want that new necklace from this brand don't you want that new t-shirt you're constantly bombarded with new things that you should want you don't even know you wanted it until some ad and go into your mind and we create things so that you suddenly want this new thing it actually happens this way because that's how you make more sales that's
how you make more profit by telling people you should want this and this is how you get it next now what happens in the gym is that we are in some ways channeling the natural male aggression and testosterone into a socially acceptable way nowadays what's happened is that we're confining it to certain walls in this space you get to be all gy grow grunting masculine aggression so that it's contained it never explodes you just obsess about looking pretty don't question the society that you live in don't question the way in which things are run don't
Channel your masculine aggression to overthrow the current system just stay subservient and docile following the routines that we've set for you using all your strength on those machines I'm interested to hear your thoughts on it and what you think about this let's get on to the next Point instead of us being free beings free movement exploring different things it's just like okay confine yourself to these bodily movements move in this way in just the way that we say therefore you will have this kind of body and everyone's kind of just like following this and of
course it sounds weird for me to say this cuz it's like dude nobody told you to do go to the gym like all these gim Bros are doing this out of their Free Will what are you talking about is this even a video topic you might be thinking this but a lot of the work of Fuko and a lot of the modern philosophers is precisely this that even though we don't have this governing like dictatorial structure telling you like go to the factory and do the work what's happening now is that we have these designated
spaces where you kind of regulate yourself and move in a certain way that is acceptable I used to grow up playing in the streets like making goalposts out of bins and playing hide-and seek in the streets of so you never see that now cuz it's all about cars cuz cars need to drive the roads need to be clean so playgrounds children's playgrounds need to be segregated to a designated City space where they get to play and then they get to go home and that's where you study that's where you play and and then you you
just go and chill at your own house same thing for you go to your work go to your gym go back to your house this idea of freely moving exploring space and just building your body in a creative playful way has escaped us and now even our body movements are confined to the walls of the gym and for the freeth thinkers amongst you I urge you to actually think of ways that you can challenge that you can challenge it just by you doing it differently like you could train outside you could train with your body
weight you could train using some of the stuff you see in the streets before you say oh you know what the hell are you talking about this is in essence the the philosophy of skateboarding at least when it started instead of Surfing when there were no waves the skateboarders would use the urban architecture to play and interpret the cityscape the environment in a creative way and I think that's such a cool thing which we can also do with Fitness next selfregulation and self-control that you exert upon yourself again this idea there's no one that's telling
you make you get 200 g of protein make sure you work out five times a week There's no one that's forcing you to do it but do you realize how this soft kind of culture of Fitness has permeated every aspect of the fitness world where as long as you're in the fitness world you're kind of expected to do these exercises have this much protein live this kind of Life train at least three four times a week all of these things where you are free but you regulate yourself now we don't need a dictator or a
controlling police to regulate you but you're constantly regulating your own body fat constantly checking yourself am I eating right doing all the right things you think you're in control but in many ways a lot of your actions and desires have been indoctrinated and controlled by what we have right now which is the fitness industry so to conclude what can you do what is the way out of it is awareness I didn't necessarily give Solutions but I want to tell you that by just thinking about it in these kind of ways by bringing your awareness to
some of these forces you can make new decisions that challenge the status quo you can make decisions that are a little bit different maybe train in a public space Maybe train with different equipment than normal experiment with new movement patterns there are lots of things that you can do as a subversive interpretation of the current status quo I hope you enjoyed at least parts of this video see you in the next one
