Brunos Fitness

Archive for the ‘Fitness Scams to avoid’ Category

The truth about the fitness industry is that they are like any other industry concerned only about money. That may seem harsh, but the truth is that every gym, supplement manufacturer, vitamin shop, and TV exercise equipment peddler is concerned about making a profit. The fitness industry is a multi-billion dollar industry (that’s right billion with “B”) and companies are trying to capitalize on the fad obsessed, superficial, materialistic culture in the developed world. These companies range from your local gym, supplement manufacturers, and television advertisers, and all they want is access to your wallet (or credit card, that’d be fine too).

The truth about your local gym/fitness club is that they want you to fail. They know that people will make a New Years resolution to get in shape, apply for a membership in January (the busiest time in the gym and worst time to join) and know that 20% to 30% will drop off within the next 90 days. This is actual information gleaned from working at a large national fitness club chain. And do you know what’s even more nefarious? They don’t care if you stop coming at all. As long as your monthly dues make it into their bank account, they don’t care if you attend their gym or not. In fact they’d prefer if you don’t, it eliminates wear and tear on the machine and facilities. And if you’re ever in a situation where you feel pressured by a sales person, walk away.

The hidden truth about supplement manufacturers, vitamin shops and the supplement industry is that they know you’ll pay exorbitant amounts of money for something with only a smidgen of scientific evidence to back it up. Creatine helped to build muscle mass in a study of 12 Danish bobsledders? Terrific, lets spin that into a marketable sound bite and run it. The fact is a majority of vitamins and supplements either have unproven effects, or can’t be absorbed entirely by the body and are eliminated through waste. Or as a European doctor friend once put it “Americans have the most expensive pee in the world”.

And the simple truth about those television sales people who are selling the newest ab-lounge, ab-blaster, or home treadmill is that they know that enough people are going to buy their product to make it worth their advertising dollars. They know their product doesn’t work, but they also know there’s enough gullible people out there who’ll buy an expensive clothes hanger, because that’s what that product will likely turn into. Remember that you can never, ever spot reduce. Any machine that specifically targets your abs, thighs, whatever, is lying to you. You can have the tightest, most well defined abs in the world, but if there is a layer of fat over them because you don’t do cardiovascular exercise, you’ll never see them.

So despite all this negative talk is their an answer to the fitness industry? Yes. You need to realize that they’re an industry, focused on making money. If you accept that, realize their motivations and intent, you can make better decisions. And realize that fitness isn’t going to come overnight, but is a lifestyle change involving a healthy diet, regular exercise, proper amounts of sleep, and exercise your most powerful muscle common sense. With a well balanced diet full of fresh fruit and vegetables, whole grains, and little processed food, you don’t need to take vitamins. And with a comprehensive exercise program, you may not need to go to a gym. Make the decisions on your own without salespeople influencing you – and don’t forget to flex that common sense muscle.

I don’t think that there are any true natural bodybuilders taking part in any bodybuilding contests or natural bodybuilding contests these days, at least not in the contests at any significant level. The reason is very simple, they would be blown away from the stage by their doped fellow competitors. Yes, anabolic steroids and other drugs are that effective. Most so-called natural bodybuilders are using hormonal drugs such as anabolic steroids, growth hormone, insulin or prohormones during contest preparation, or have been doing so in the past to build their physique, especially the heavy weight competitors.

I think it is fair to state that since the 50’s, when testosterone and anabolic steroids became available to athletes, competitive bodybuilders have been using them consistently, especially the professionals. Most of nowadays professional bodybuilders started using hormonal doping products already as a teenager, and sometimes even as early as the age of 15. I seriously doubt whether competitive bodybuilding would ever have come off the ground if this hormonal doping would not have been available.

So far, there exist no contests for true natural bodybuilders, mainly because of 2 reasons: it is impossible to test whether a bodybuilder is TRUE (life-time) natural, and true natural bodybuilders simply don’t look impressive enough (not enough muscle mass and too much body fat compared to doped bodybuilders). And to be honest, I hope there will never be contests for true natural bodybuilders as there will always be cheaters showing up.

I believe that true natural bodybuilding is and should stay simply a healthy, sporty lifestyle. I approach it as a competition against myself, in which I try day after day to push my personal limits one step farther. I don’t believe there is any honor or money to win by true natural bodybuilders in terms of competing or becoming an idol.

Let’s start with a simple truth that helps feed the big, fat health and fitness lie. That truth is that the average person would much prefer to go on a diet or take a pill rather than exercise. This is why the fitness industry, at $17.6 billion in annual revenue, pales in comparison with the diet and weight loss industry, which exceeds $40 billion. Even the supplement industry, with more than $20 billion in annual revenue, outperforms the fitness industry. Yet with a success rate of sustained weight loss as low as 5 percent, more than 50 million Americans line up each year to go on a diet. Why? The answer is simple. When people think about exercise, they relate it to work. Even the phrase we use to describe exercise is to “workout.” The truth is that the average American spends the majority of waking life working. Who wants more work? We want to play. We want to relax. We want to escape from the reality of work, Exercise is the last thing we want to do. Instead, we want a shortcut, and the desire for a quick fix is an open invitation for health and fitness parasites.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The smoking gun that reveals the real truth about the state of health in the U.S. is the stratospheric revenue within the pharmaceutical industry. Between 1995 and 2005, prescription drug sales increased by 249 percent to a staggering $251 billion on more than 3.6 billion prescriptions written annually. This doesn’t include the $17 billion we spent on more than 100,000 over-the-counter drugs that contained in excess of 1,000 chemical compounds. As you peel back the layers of the lie, you quickly realize that these record-breaking numbers were made possible by drugs that treat conditions and diseases, which are largely self-inflicted or forced upon us by accomplices that stand to profit from our ill health.

If history has taught us anything, it is that when a business concept exhibits the potential for growth, companies and industries spread like a virus to expand and exploit the opportunity. From the meager beginnings of muscle-bound bodybuilders, steel barbells, medicine balls and once-a-day vitamins, the health and fitness industry has transformed into a multi-billion dollar juggernaut. Health and fitness professionals, such as personal trainers have evolved from spandex and headbands to being highly trained sales and marketing snipers. The trainers working for them are there puppets, and are making sure that your cash is their target.

They are very rapid growing trend. The 3 main reason why they are is as follows.

1. Its is very affordable.

2. You can go with all your friends and try holding each other accountable.

3. There is usually one or two people leading the boot camp, so you can relax a little bit.
But the most important thing you are not being assisted with in boot camps, is efficient resistance training and nutrition. Which are the two main components in weight loss and muscle definition.

Boot camps stress on cardio, yes cardio is a great thing, but in order to maintain your goals of weight loss and definition you have to eat right and train right. Lifting a 5-8lb dumbbell in your bootcamp is not sufficient enough, and the amount of repetitions you are doing are too high in order to stress the muscle enough so it can grow, which is the point in resistance training. More muscle will increase your metabolism, which will then allow your body to burn fat. After 20min-30min all your carbohydrate stores are done. After that, your body relies on easily accessible protein to use as fuel!! This is BAD! This is called catabolism, and your body ends up using your protein stores for energy, this makes it harder for your body to add muscle tone, as you have no proteins no longer in your body to do so.

You are probably wondering. Will you lose weight doing boot camps?
Yes, but it isn’t just fat, you are burning fat and protein stores, which could have potential lead to muscle.
So why would you want to do that, when muscle is what speeds up your metabolism?
Also in boot camps you will very quickly reach a plateau. Which means your body will not change much. I am just here to inform you about what bootcamps are truely doing, it is a money market for most trainers.

The main thing also is that they charge everyone $20 each time. If there are 30 of you that is a quick and easy $600 in ONE hour of work! Do you think they really care about your results?

I have worked at fitness first, all I have to say is negative things about it. I will try to be polite and professional as possible. I will tell you some of the things I have experience there, working for this corporate gym. The manager at my gym at the time, was such a douche bag. All he cared about was making sales, and letting all the trainers suffer with high rent costs, while being stuck on a 1 year contract with lack of clients.

The male receptionist at the time was a complete ignorant moron. Below are just a few out of thousands and thousands of comments made by people who have trained and have been members of fitness first. I have also left out the really nasty ones to.

Fitness First member #1:

I will make this report short and sweet.

The trainers at Fitness First are sorry excuses for trainers. My wife’s trainer explained to her how most of the trainers were certified by a truly crappy certification course that would never fly in a “real” training business. The male trainers are the worst! 20-something, horny, pestering, cocky, jerks!

In the end, I suggest NEVER SIGNING UP WITH ANY PERSONAL TRAINERS FROM FITNESS FIRST!!! Just don’t do it! If you want to get in shape, look elsewhere for training. These people are salesman first! The personal training is crappy, the contracts are binding for 6 months to 1 year. Please take my advice! I’m tired of people losing money so some corporate CEO so he can wipe his butt with $100 bill’s.

Fitness First ex-employee:

They charge way to much for personal training and the member gets no benefit from buying it from them. Its hard to sale something you don’t believe in and I am being honest to the consumer cause I truly care about being healthy. Personally ITS ALL ABOUT MONEY and NUMBERS to them. They can care less about you and the results you get. The system is a fraud and they will try to sale you anything so I would not recommend buying anything from them. I hope you take your health and fitness seriously and if you do stay away from Fitness First cause its not worth your time, money, and agony. You will become very frustrated and then its a hassle to get out of the contract you signed.

Fitness First member #2:

One of the worst gym i have ever been to. People stay away its a total rip off company. Whenever u will try to cancel the membership they will not let u do that easily. I called their head office in order to cancel my membership and i was told it will be done by the end of january 2010. But they still charged me for the month of Feb. I called again to get my money back and the lady said there is no record of my one month notice of cancelation. She says the membership can only be cancelled by the end of March.So i have to pay till the end of march in order to cancell the membership..WOW.. What an ethical company… customers have to pay for their mistakes…

Fitness First member #3:

I was a platinum member then black lable member for 6 years, this year I finally left. There standards have dropped and there is no such thing as customer services in this company. They are soooooooooooo unbelievable rude especially at there head office, its a problem to leave, they over charge you, the male personal trainers and staff perve over both men and women, borderline stalking, the a lot of the female staff eye ball you, if you even breath in the direction of any male staff for genuine exercise advice. they breach your data protection and give your number out… Well I suppose if you pay peanuts you get monkey business… Good riddens to bad rubbish… Whoooo hoooo freedom… Happy new year!

Fitness First member #4:

i hate fitness first, all there after is your money and if u stop going fitness first don’t care as long as there getting your money still, BUT if u stop paying them fitness first will put debt collectors on 2 u

so if u stop going 2 fitness first u still have 2 pay them, that just f##k up i think

stupid 12 month contract

Fitness First member #5:

They have gyms everywhere which would be great in an ethical organisation who treated you fairly, however with Fitness first, all they do it get you signed up and leave you for dead. They know you can’t cancel if you ever plan to use them again in the future because they keep raising their fees and charging join up and admin fees. I wanted to put my membership on hold for 6 months because they were too busy and I couldn’t find an available machine, so they charged me $22/month… For what? I’m not using anything. Fitness First St Leonards is run by amatures who couldn’t care less about you. They’ll never be around when you need to meet and will never reply to concerning emails. Try and cancel and it’ll take a couple of months. I’ve been with them for years but that counts for jack all!

Fitness First member #6:

I joined and cancelled within the 10 day money back period due to its blatant unprofessional half-wit reception staff. Never met anyohttp://www.brunosfitness.com/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=565ne like them. Did I get my money back? Did I hell. To add insult to injury, not only had they not refund the joining fee which they promised I’d get back but the also charged me for a month membership – I’d not been to the gym to work out once! Thoroughly dissatisfied with this”organisatioon”. The manager now wants to see my bank statement as proof of the transactions which I am gladly going to take to him tomorrow. STAY AWAY!! You’ve been warned.

Former Fitness First member and trainer

Someone need to really take these pr**ks to court. I worked as a trainer there, and I was on contract. I started out with 3 other trainers, by 2 months they had already added 6 more trainers into the gym. It was impossible making an income competing against 9 other trainers while paying them $250 a week for rent. Also I told the manager Daniel Brims that, what if you where renting your home and the landlord brought home a few more tenants, shouldn’t your weekly rent go down????? CON ARTIST FIRST!!!!!Daniel Brims got a promotion at Miranda Fitness First FOR MAKE THE CORPORATION MORE MONEY, WHILE MAKING ALL THE TRAINERS AT GRANVILLE FITNESS FIRST BROKE AND STUCK ON CONTRACTS. STAY AWAY FROM THAT C*CK EYED PR*CK!!!! I hope I never run into this c*ckhead ever again, i don’t know what i would do to that ugly liar f*g mofo.

Want more follow the link below:
http://www.reviewcentre.com/review536133.html