In 1997, I loved two things above all else: the new Guided By Voices record and 30 minute television infomercials, especially the ones that promised untold wealth. What can I say, I worked in non-profit and was a willingly credulous viewer at 11:30 PM most nights.

I did actually buy one of those…systems from an informercial once upon a time. You were meant to learn how to purchase ridiculous products at low cost and through the magic of drop-shipping and some sort of wackadoodle home inventory system you’d be turning those around for 5-6x the original cost. Over and over again:

Step 1. Buy, for instance, 200 Monchichi fake gorilla dolls.
Step 2. Find 200 Monchichi devotees.
Step 3. Sell to Monchichi devotees.
Step 4. Profit. (Also then consider avoiding any resulting phone calls from those Monchichi devotees.)
(No offense if you love Monchichi’s.)

Here’s what was missing: how reasonable would it be for a 23 year old kid with a full time job to turn his apartment into a den of pretend simian creatures and extract a small fortune from that endeavor?

Not very. Some have done it, I suppose. Perhaps they had pets when they were younger or liked watching that Zoo lady on the Tonight Show with John Carson.

But that plan wasn’t reasonable for me. I didn’t have the organizational skills, working capital, or stuffed zoological experience that success would have required.

Fitness coaching can be like infomercials. A lot of “do this, it works for everyone” without very much thought to the fact that ‘everyone’ is made up of lots and lots of ones. A 48 year old parent of 3 with 2 part-time jobs, for instance, is not going to “never miss a workout or you won’t make progress.” That’s unreasonable.

What’s reasonable fitness coaching? It starts with the individual, and we’ll look at this in our next blog post.

Until then, if it’s 11:30 and you’re flipping channels…just go to sleep.