Fitness
'We need to be really concerned': How fitness influencers are creating 'a false sense of the world' for young boys
“Alright dumba**, welcome to lesson two here at fat f*** university.”
So begins one of the countless fleshy blurs of locally-produced fitness content pumped algorithmically into the feeds of Australian Instagram, TikTok and Facebook users.
It’s the sort of engagement-baiting approach that yields viewers and followers — designed to push men out of some apparent masculine malaise and into retaking control of their body and masculinity, usually via paid workout programs, products or supplements.
It’s also the type of content increasingly filtering into the phones of teenage boys.
While there is a more developed conversation about idealised images on social media and body image pressures on young girls, experts say research is less advanced when it comes to boys.
“I think boys are now objectifying themselves like never before and we do need to be really concerned,” said Danielle Rowland, Head of Prevention at national eating disorder charity the Butterfly Foundation.
“The intensity of training advice, nutrition and misinformation is greater than ever.”
Feeds serving up different diet
When Anthony Lee started high school in regional Victoria six years ago, social media had a different feel to it.
“In Year 7, it was just basically a way to keep up with your mates,” he said.
By the time he finished Year 12 last year, the feeds of his classmates had changed. So too, the surrounding culture.
“There is a growing problem with men having that feed of perfect body content,” he said.
“There are people who will see influencers on social media and say, ‘I’ve got to have bigger arms, toned legs, I got to have calves the size of mountains’.”
Linger on one Instagram reel showing off a set of dumbbell exercises, and you’ll likely get five more videos zeroing in on how to get “boulder shoulders”, or some protein-heavy diet advice from a shirtless influencer.
Josh Ward travels to schools in Sydney and around regional NSW, hearing from young boys as part of his work as a facilitator for men’s mental health organisation Tomorrow Man.
“There’s been a huge jump in the last two to three years in the amount of boys opening up in workshops around their body,” he said.
Mr Ward believes there’s no coincidence it’s occurred alongside a “big spike” in the amount of fitness and gym influencer content turning up in their feeds.
“If someone was in school walking around with a fitness mag in their pocket, bringing it out every recess or lunch, you’d think ‘that is some strange behaviour’. But that’s what [teenage boys] are celebrating now,” he said.
“The danger for young people is they don’t realise they’re actually the pioneer generation in terms of that exposure.
“In the last five years there’s been a crazy amount of fitness content, but that’s just what they’ve always been exposed to, so they don’t realise how strange it is.”
‘It creates a false sense of the world’
For many teenage boys on the path through puberty, working out in gyms has long represented an accelerated part of the journey into manhood.
Images of muscle-ripped celebrities and athletes serving as aesthetic inspiration, if not an unattainable physical ideal, is nothing new either.
But it’s the nature of that exposure — the type of content and the saturation of it — that has experts concerned.
“It’s that ‘in-your-face, all-the-time’ aspect of it,” said Associate Professor Ivanka Prichard from Flinders University.
“It’s seeing something on Instagram when we’re perhaps not in that frame of mind, making a comparison to this really fit person and have that influence the way we might feel about ourselves.
“We’re fed a whole range of things through those algorithms that we would never have had exposure to before and would never have sought out.”
Multiple experts the ABC spoke to reported seeing digitally-altered and even AI-generated images of supposedly naturally-fit bodies on social media.
Ms Prichard, a former fitness instructor whose research sits at the intersection of psychology, social media and exercise science, believes the constant barrage of perfectly sculpted bodies could destabilise the mental health of some teenage boys.
“For young people shaping their identity, it creates a false sense of the world,” she said.
Of the estimated 1.1 million Australians who had an eating disorder last year, one in three were male, according to the Butterfly Foundation.
For over a decade, Scott Griffiths has studied body image and psychological disorders, with a recent focus on male eating disorders, body dysmorphia and particularly, muscle dysmorphia.
“Muscle dysmorphia is a psychological disorder. It’s not just being a gym junkie,” said Mr Griffiths, an associate professor and lead of the Physical Appearance Research Team at the University of Melbourne.
“It’s a preoccupation. You are always thinking about food, training, your appearance. It’s on your mind all the time.”
According to the Butterfly Foundation, people aged between 15 and 19 are 2.7 times more likely to experience an eating disorder. It makes social media an animating and potentially potent driver.
“It can reinforce in your mind that your worth is very closely tied to, if not wholly dependent upon, your appearance, which is not the basis for healthy self-esteem,” Dr Griffiths said.
“[TikTok and Instagram] are more likely to feature influencer bodies you are extremely unlikely to be able to achieve without performance enhancement, or a level of commitment to dieting and exercise that would overcome most people.”
Blurred lines at the gym
Joshie Glover, 27, has seen just how profoundly positive a gym environment can be for young boys.
In his work at young men’s mental health charity Man Cave, he estimates he’s facilitated over 170 school workshops of more than 5,550 students.
In that time, Mr Glover has witnessed countless examples of the physical and mental health benefits that a gym can provide, as well as the connection between mates working out.
It’s when those workouts veer toward the obsessive that problems emerged.
“With gym habits, it’s very blurred lines, which is why it’s quite insidious,” he said.
In Man Cave workshops, boys often speak about being bullied over their weight, only to reframe it as a positive.
“A lot of them will say, ‘I’m actually really grateful that I’ve been teased about how [fat] I was, because it motivated me to get to go to the gym and get big’,” Mr Glover said.
“The line of when it goes from a positive social thing, motivating each other, doing something physically, to slipping into a pressured, coercive kind of motivation by ridicule, it’s really blurred.”
Andrew Tate and the problem with ‘discipline’
Another online fixation that routinely comes up in workshops is Andrew Tate, the disgraced misogynist content creator currently awaiting a criminal trial on allegations of rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women.
Mr Glover said there was an uneasy through line between the much-discussed appeal of Tate, who used to be a professional kickboxer, and the growing obsession with social media gym culture.
“Many boys are so confused as to what it means to be a man, who are the role models?” he said.
“One thing they’ve really latched onto is that a man is disciplined. Whenever you ask, ‘what’s the good bits about Andrew Tate?’, they’ll say, ‘he’s disciplined’.
“The main way that discipline can play out is attending to your physical body. There’s not really much desire for discipline in schoolwork or discipline in any other areas, it’s manifested in the gym.”
The irony that past generations have decried a lack of discipline in today’s kids is not lost on Mr Glover — but he said the dangers lie in its interpretation.
“The toxic, maybe unhealthy, part of it is that there are so many different kinds of bodies that a teenage boy would have, and they’re all being channelled into this one kind of mould of what the body of a disciplined person looks like,” he said.
The influencer credibility gap
Where parents and teachers may try, often in vain, to ward young boys away from specific individuals like Tate, telling them to ignore an entire social media ecosystem is even harder.
Fitness influencers and gym content creators have argued they are merely promoting healthy physical habits and dieting advice.
Some accounts function almost as communities of collective support for people trying to reach their goals, while many frame workout content through the lens of positive mental health.
Recent studies co-authored by Associate Professor Ivanka Prichard have analysed the content and credibility of fitness accounts on Instagram and TikTok.
The research found two-thirds of the accounts audited on Instagram “lacked credibility or contained potentially harmful or unhealthy content”, while exercise and diet advice promoted on TikTok was often at odds with national health guidelines.
In late 2022, US fitness content creator Brian “Liver King” Johnston suffered an ignominious fall from grace after admitting to spending tens of thousands of dollars on steroids and performance-enhancing drugs.
The Liver King had previously maintained his improbable physique was the result of hard workouts and eating raw meat, and that others should aspire to do the same.
Ms Prichard recommended seeking out content creators with relevant qualifications or failing that, the accounts of athletes and those who emphasise physical performance over aesthetics.
“From a user perspective, red flags are anything that has quite a lot of skin on display, is sexualised or is hyper-focussed on the appearance of the body,” she said.
“I would definitely encourage parents to also just talk to young people about what they are viewing on social media.”
At a recent barbecue, Danni Rowlands bent an ear toward a conversation her 10-year-old son was having with a few boys his age.
“They were looking at each other’s calves and deciding who had the veins popping out,” she said.
“They ranged from 10 to 12. One was saying ‘here’s my six-pack’.”
Ms Rowlands, who played netball at an elite level and has her own lived experience with eating disorders, knows an obsessive focus on physique can affect mental health, school participation and relationships with friends and family.
“I think it gets minimised and oversimplified — that it’s just a teenage thing — but there’s a real danger for a young person’s self-esteem, their identity, their mental health,” she said.
“It’s not wrong to want to take care of ourselves, but the pursuit of perfection, because we think that is the answer to all of our problems, is really setting ourselves up in a negative way to move through adulthood.”
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Fitness
Avoid doing these gym exercises now! Orthopaedic doctor reveals exercises that do more harm; the answers may shock you
Did you know that some popular exercises that we all do at the gym to stay fit and healthy may be doing more harm than good? Dr Venkatesh Movva, an orthopaedic doctor trained in Sports Medicine, sat down with Ranveer Allahbadia for The Ranveer Podcast, where he talked about the exercise one should avoid at the gym. The answers will surprise you.
(Also Read | Ranbir Kapoor ‘decides to clap’ in between his pullups. Guess how Alia Bhatt reacted?)
Avoid doing these gym exercises now!
In the clip shared on The Ranveer Show Podcast Instagram page, with the caption, “Dr Venkatesh on Which Exercises you should Avoid in Gym?”, Ranveer asks Dr Movva which exercises he would recommend gymgoers to avoid as an orthopaedic doctor. He suggested three exercises which are quite popular among gymgoers aiming to get fit, lose weight or stay healthy. According to him, one should not do overhead exercises, deadlifts, and crunches.
Dr Movva stated in the clip, “Overhead, heavy [exercise]. I mean, you can go stretch, but no military press, number one. Number two crunches; avoid them. Number three, deadlifts. (sic)” To this, Ranveer replied, “So, I’d replace the military press because it’s for the anterior delts with just front raises.” As an alternative, Dr Movva suggested people to ‘bend down’ during such exercises. “You can go bend down, raise it [weights], rather than overhead (sic),” he said.
While Ranveer, a fitness enthusiast himself, said that he would replace crunches with planks, Dr Movva suggested ‘planks and bridges’.
Lastly, for why one should avoid deadlifts, an exercise you must have seen many celebrities doing at the gym and fitness influencers pushing their followers to include in their routine, the orthopaedic doctor said, “I see more injuries than benefits with the deadlifts. If you are really well-trained and have a good muscle balance, do it. But if you are trying to get better, that’s one thing you may want to avoid. Because the risk of injury is very high. There are so many other exercises that you can compensate without doing these things.”
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek the advice of your doctor with any questions about a medical condition.
Fitness
Woman who shed 54 kg shares 7 back and bicep exercises that helped transform her body
Carrying excess fat in your back and arms can cause health concerns for many. Sorting out this issue is important, not just for how you look, but also for your general health and ability to move around easily. If you are on a weight loss journey and looking for exercises to help you target these areas, worry not. We have found seven exercises to help you develop and tone your back and bicep muscles. The routine was shared on Instagram by Meredith Hutson, who shed 120 lbs (approximately 54 kg) naturally. Check out the exercise that helped her transform her body.
(Also Read | Avoid doing these gym exercises now! Orthopaedic doctor reveals exercises that do more harm; the answers may shock you)
Back and bicep workouts to try
In the video, Meredith suggested exercises like the Smith machine or barbell mid-grip rows, outer curl into Zottman curl, cable rear delt fly, straight arm pulldowns, reverse seated rows, cable hammer curls, and cable lat pulldowns. She also demonstrated how to do each exercise in the clip and showcased modifications she added to make the routine effective.
The fitness influencer also had an inspiring message for those trying to lose weight or tone their muscles. She said, “Nobody saw my potential the way that I did…” Check out the exercises.
According to Meredith’s video, each exercise targets different areas in your back and biceps. Talking about the Smith machine or barbell mid-grip rows, she said that the exercise targets your ‘middle back for a balanced development’. For the Zottman curl, she modified the exercise by adding an outer curl, which helped her target the long head of her biceps and forearms.
While the cable rear delt fly exercise (a personal favourite of the fitness coach) targets the real delts, upper back muscles, traps and rhomboid, the straight arm pulldown helps work out the rhomboid and ‘big muscles’ on the back, thus helping create the V shape.
As per Meredith, the reverse seated rows also target the rhomboid along with the traps, biceps, rear delts, and the ‘main muscle in our backs that helps us in doing pulling movements’. Lastly, the cable hammer curls work the entire upper arms ‘focusing on the front of the arms and the outside of the forearm’, while the cable lat pulldowns target ‘lats, rhomboid, traps, and biceps’.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek the advice of your doctor with any questions about a medical condition.
Fitness
Manayunk gym aims to provide source of physical and mental wellness
PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — GoalsFit, nestled in Philadelphia’s Manayunk neighborhood, has been a community staple for 16 years.
Kasey Manwaring-Loos, who is at the helm, has created an environment that gets people coming back for their fitness fix.
“Kasey has a superpower, she has a lot of them,” said Dan Leinhauser, who’s been a client at Goals for eight years. “But one of them is she can take old guys like me, and young, very fit people, and somehow everybody gets an incredible workout out of it. No one is made to feel less than the other person.”
When COVID-19 hit in 2020, Manwaring-Loos realized the impact her gym had on her clients. It was an outlet for their physical and mental wellness. So, she felt the push. She decided to enroll in a master’s program at her alma mater, Saint Joseph’s University, to pursue a degree in mental health counseling. Her hope was to provide her clients with more tools in the future.
“I happen to have a client who was in eighth grade, and after six sessions I just saw how good she was feeling,” Manwaring-Loos reflected. “I remember one session saying, ‘You look so strong.’ And she was like, ‘I just feel so good.’ So, I thought it was the perfect spot to start with because I think it will be so impactful.”
So “Generation Move” was born. It’s a program launching in the New Year for 7th and 8th graders who may experience anxiety surrounding sports, exercise, and movement.
Manwaring-Loos said it will be a combination of exercise and “chit-chat.”
“One week will be called ‘Lifting to Feel Empowered,’ one week will be ‘Moving for a Clearer Mind,’ one week will be ‘Teamwork Makes Dreamwork.’”
At a time when professional athletes like Eagles tackle Lane Johnson have spoken out about the intersection between sports and mental health, people like Manwaring-Loos are doing the work in our communities.
“When it comes down to it, I want to do this because at least they will leave feeling in a good mood,” Manwaring-Loos shared. “Sure, there will always be struggles, sadness, problems, but at least they will find a tool that will put them in a better mood.”
Generation Move is set to begin its six-week program on January 15. You can learn more about the various offerings at GoalsFit at goalsfit.com.
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