Pushing Supplements To Supplement My Income
Gym “Family” Fitness
On-Boarding For The Gym
At The Gym
College Days At The Boat School
The Stimulus
Recommended Dietary Allowance
Side Note
History & Alternative Paradigms
Energy
Soil Depletion
Wrap Up
Gym “family“ Fitness
This is what every day felt like while I was working for a gym here in North Texas.
Note: For those post, I would classify, “Supplement” as a pill or powder made in a lab to better balance your diet or enhance your training.
As a personal trainer at a gym, you are an afterthought. Most of the money the gym gets is from memberships and supplement sells. Yes, they do make money off of you “Selling” personal training but not as much as through the first two options. Due to this, they could care less if you leave unless you have a manager that likes your talents and wishes to ensla….I mean work with you. The money a personal trainer makes at a gym is not sustainable unless you’re training a butt-load of clients. The money the client pays the gym and the money the personal trainer receives are very different.
I’ve always been a minimalist type of guy anyway but I saw working at a gym as my way of getting my foot in the door. However, like most experiences after my awakening in 2019, it’s just left me more jaded. I partially see my championing of ways to train without a gym as a way to cripple such industries.
“Why are you trying to fight everything?!?!? Chill out….”
In addition to this, the gym payment system(ABC Financial) for customers was horrible and caused a great many headaches. One time I was dealing with an irate customer on the phone because their monthly payment went from $10.81 up to 11 something without prior warning.
Doubled monthly charges
Failed cancelations
Lack of support
It would have been great to go to the source and give them a piece of my mind…
On-Boarding For The Gym
This gym franchise likes to on-board all of the new hires in one location preferably a gym that’s central to all the others. It was two half-days worth of classes in which we talked about training logs, assessments, and supplements.
The supplement talk can be summed up as,
“Everybody else bad pills…our pills good”
We got a 10% sales commission for supplements which can be nice given the area that your gym is in.
AT The GYm
In a more affluent area selling supplements might be a good way to supplement your income but where my gym was at selling supplements felt like a pyrrhic victory. If a huge chunk of the gym population either
No Habla Ingles
Drives beat-up Nissan Altima’s at relativistic speeds through the parking lot.
Works at Quick Trip(A Gas Station here)
Then selling supplements is going to be a difficult task. But the upper management didn’t care. I could always tell when a new supplement-sell quota was about to drop just by looking at my manager on his phone as his facial expression began to change.
I tried to help where I could, but sometimes it was just the luck of the draw. If a gym goer came in and saw me at the front desk standing next to samples they knew what would be coming so they would bolt the other way. I don’t blame them lol.
We were always told that we could help people get to their goals quicker by selling them supplements. It was their “Catalyst” as they would say.
But if you know how to trigger certain adaptions in your body in a time-efficient manner that is also a catalyst.
Also, if you eat nutrient-dense foods like organ meats from a grass-fed cow, what need is there for supplements? Liver capsules can be defined as such but I would consider most of these more natural than what we had at the gym. As long as you’re trying to gain nutrition from organ meats it’s a step in the right direction.
Also, wild animals know the importance of organ meats…
College Days At The Boat School
I never really liked supplements though. The most I ever got was some whey protein in college junior year but that was short-lived. I didn’t start ballooning up to my highest weight in senior year as I’ve explained in another post.
I wasn’t really watching what I was eating/counting my calories. I just ate what the chow hall at the school gave me. Heck, sometimes I’d eat some ice cream here and there but would limit it to a week or two before one of our physical fitness tests. This often helped me to perform better.
Plenty of food, some advanced calisthenics, and I blew up. Heck who knows? Maybe there was stuff in our food…
Keep in mind there was a great deal of walking throughout the day. My barracks room was on the opposite side of our yard in relation to most of the classrooms and we only had 10 minutes during our passing periods. So there were times I needed to step it out to make it to class on time. This is good however because step count has been linked to higher testosterone.
The Stimulus
If you send the appropriate exercise stimulus, as long as nothing else gets in the way the body will adapt. The human body has been capable of performing feats of strength all throughout history. Your average English Longbowmen back in the day could easily outlift your average bodybuilder on the lat pull-down machine. Were they sitting there counting their macros and daily values like that dude from Sesame Street?
Even in past prisons and with minimal food, the human body can find a way.
I had plenty of time to carry out my ideas. In fact, I had nothing else to do. And one of the things I speedily discovered was that for many hours could this kind of physical stimulation be kept up. Instead of wasting energy, this, on the contrary, was retained. Which was fortunate for me, in more ways than one, when the position I was in is remembered. For I did not get too much to eat, I must tell you, and what I did get was not of the most nourishing nature. And so I continued for about three months, gradually recovering my lost development and adding appreciably to my depleted strength and energy. (p 116 Amazing Sampson)
Also, YouTube is filled with videos speculating on why today’s prisoners get so muscular without a large amount of proper food. Your average jacked dude in his cell provides one with a Macros/Nurtrients-Paradigm an anomaly. But I’ve never adopted this paradigm so I don’t have any anomalies in this case. But the need for supplements ultimately comes from the daily value for nutrients narrative. Where did it come from?
Let's take a trip…
Recommended Dietary Allowance
Recommended amounts for nutrients started in WW2 due to three women who were all part of a committee set to determine the minimum amounts of nutrition needed for those on the battlefield as well as for those at home. Below is some of the stuff I found on them.
Lydia Roberts
A member of the American Medical Association’s Council on Foods and Nutrition.
Awarded the Marjorie Hulsizer Copher Award in 1952 from the American Dietetic Association.
Hazel Stielbeling
Developed a USDA publication on diet planning in 1933 that is the first known publication to include the term "dietary allowances."
Her research was on the basal metabolism of women, the influence of vitamin D on calcium deposition in bone, the nutritional value of protein in human subjects, and other projects.
Helen S Mitchell
She was the research director/taught courses at the Battle Creek Sanitarium.
These women seem passionate about their pursuit to help the population at large to eat better. However, like many of us, they held onto a paradigm. My spidey senses are tingling and something tells me their paradigm on nutrition is heavily influenced by the Flexner Report. But I’ll find out later.
Side Note
While I was at this gym a family member of mine was wondering about some of our supplements. I got them a bottle of one of our more normie supplements I believe it was the calcium one. Turns out from the blood work their doctor could tell that they were taking a supplement and recommended that they cease. This could have ended badly.
I let my judgment slip. And this supplement had only a fraction of the daily value. How much rooted in truth is this vitamin stuff? I was distraught and needed a way to regain my honor…
I was an organ meats guy before this but my slip in judgment and this incident furthered my resolve.
History & Alternative Paradigms
Dig enough into history it is not uncommon to find old people. 60, 70s, and yes..even centenarians. Just read some more history. This, “Died at 40” narrative exists for several reasons.
But I believe the most important things we need to focus on are to
Get some sunlight
Fast
& eat some quality food.
But due to some research from other writers in the alternative health space I’m starting to think that light can be the most important. With the application of such principles in my life I'm starting to see them yield results as well. Let's hope we always have access to the Sun and manufactured clouds do not blot it out for some reason…
Energy
I only stick to recommending lifestyle practices that create a significant boost in my energy not just in the first week but the weeks and months following. I don’t feel this with supplements. If you do that’s fine I’m not trying to step on your toes. But I believe there are other ways to tap into things that bring our body from 30 to 70% power.
They are
Grounding
Mitigating Man-Made EMF
Overcoming Isometrics (or any form of muscle tension training)
Soil Depletion
Apart from the “Died at 40” narrative we have the soil depletion narrative that’s used to fuel supplement sales.
But I’ll cover these at a later date.
With all things, there should be the question,
“What’s the quality of the research?”
“What/who gains from this narrative?”
Wrap Up
Nutrition can be a tool to aid one on the path towards better health if used correctly. It is part of the picture but not the whole. I’ll have to further investigate to determine where supplements fit in this. But to use a tool(paradigm) we must first discern the materials(evidence) that made it.
For myself, I’ve found better gain in using other tools to tweak other parts of my life.
Thank you for making it to the end and let me know your thoughts below.
Until next time…