Ever get frustrated when you watch videos from those professional trainers, bodybuilders, and overall gym-goers?  Do you drop your head, look at your rounded abdomen, and wonder what reality they live in?  

Turns out you are not alone. 

In this short 60-second video, Jeff from Athlean-X™ demonstrates five exercises to warm up your shoulders.  Although he is right that because the shoulder has the greatest range of motion of any joint in the body, it is more likely to be injured, comments show how disconnected he is from his base.

First, there is his hilarious use of “quick and easy sequence” to describe his suggested warm-up.  He grabs what looks like a 35-pound plate and breezes through it while fans can only gape and then stammer disbelief at his warm-up directives.

Jeff doesn’t understand his fans are mere mortals and probably don’t have fake weights. But don’t let these fitness programs demoralize you. They can be educational, and you can see gains.  But if you want to know where you stack up from the untrained to the expert, ExRx.net has a list of weightlifting performance standards without the fake weights and ripped bodies.

Second, fans balk at his assumption that everyone has time to do warm-ups like this and workout and live a typical life.  One fan even added up all the time doing warm-up activities, and it was literally two hours!

Even though a study of over 32,000 people by the Centers for Disease Control found that lack of free time wasn’t a factor in low physical activity levels, fans in this particular comment section are obviously the outliers.

Or maybe a better explanation, like the study’s authors reported, is that fans would rather be doing something else.

Third, it’s typical for trainers to include modifications for workouts for those viewers who are, ahem, “just starting out,” aka weak. Fans are disappointed that Jeff didn’t suggest any ways to scale down his warm-up.  But two fans came to the rescue and offered their own modifications. 

Reasonable modifications like those suggested by fans are why you should always read the comment section for additional information from ordinary people on any workout.  Why? Because normal people deal with challenges that experts don’t have, like limited workout space, no weights, and lack of specialized education about the body.

Finally, fitness pros fail to empathize with their fans who don’t work out in a private gym and can’t just go around doing weird things in public.  Jeff doesn’t understand that he can get away with doing something like the halo move in the gym because he’s ripped. Fans call out his buff privilege.

Joshua Rothman says, “Your life choices aren’t just about what you want to do; they’re about who you want to be.” Fans obviously don’t want to be the guy who is laughed out of the gym, even if it’s for taking care of his joints. Clearly, preventative actions aren’t cool for guys, and Jeff fails to take this into account.

That’s the great thing about being a gal. I’m not subject to these standards, which is why after seeing this video, I grabbed a 10-pound plate and did “The Fluid 5” before my workout. Because what’s a few stares if I save my shoulder joints?  And surprisingly, despite all the controversy about time and fake weights, it took less than five minutes and actually felt pretty darn good.

When she is not cruising the comment sections for ways to inject her dark humor, Ursula Saqui, Ph.D., drinks tea, works out, and practices being a foodie.  Find her everywhere at UrsulaSaqui.