Before and after pictures are everything that is wrong with the fitness industry. At best, they promote crash diets and extreme exercise that is not sustainable. At worst, they are blatantly doctored pictures that show unrealistic results. We refuse to use this standard practice at The Spot Athletics because we believe there is a better way.
"Stealing credit from the client is just plain wrong."
The biggest reason we don’t advertise before and after pictures is they steal credit away from the person in the ad. These ads arrogantly boast how it is their gym or program that is responsible for the results. Yet, inherently we know that it is the client that deserves all the credit, not the program or the gym. It is the clients' hard work and consistency that leads to the results, not any magic program. These cheesy ads and marketing schemes steal this credit away from the clients and try to place it with themselves, and that is just plain wrong.
"Results NEVER come easy."
Another reason we won’t use this practice is these ads make people believe that if they follow “their system”, they could have those results easily. The real truth that these cheesy marketers don’t want you to know is that making big changes in your fitness is NEVER easy. There is no “secret” system, food, diet or training method. There is just hard work and consistent healthy lifestyle choices that lead to long-term, sustainable results. I know, not very flashy or sexy, but it’s the truth and at The Spot Athletics, we value the truth.
The most well-known reason for not using this practice is because most of the pictures you see in these ads are fake (as if you already didn’t know). I won’t get into the how of it here but to see and read more about how these pictures are manipulated, click here. The sad truth is there are services that sell these fake pictures to gyms so they can use them in their ads. Even if we thought is was okay to use this practice, we wouldn’t want our actual transformations to get lumped in with all the other imposters out there.
"It's not our story to tell."
Lastly, we don’t post before/after pictures because it is not our story to tell. When you look at these pictures, do you ever think that maybe that person wasn’t in a good place to let themselves get to that unhealthy state? There are a lot of psychological factors that go into making major lifestyle changes and it is not our place to tell someone else’s story. We realize that we are just guides on people’s fitness journey and we are here to celebrate their success together, not tell their story. If they want to tell it, great, but we feel it is wrong to tell it for them.
Now that you understand the reasons why we refuse to use these ads, hopefully, you start to view them differently. We want to be a voice of change and turn the fitness industry into the wonderful presence in our society that it should be. This horrible practice will continue until consumers, like yourself, stop responding to it. So please share this blog with your friends and help positively impact not only the fitness industry as a whole but the health of your community as well.