You Don't Need A Fitness Photoshoot

Fitness photoshoots are a really strange part of the health and fitness industry.

You know the ones I’m talking about right? The one’s where people sign-up for an 8-12 week transformation that ends with having a photoshoot booked in for your after photos.

An after photo that’s professionally shot and lit, professionally edited with high sharpness and contrast, prepared for with hair, make-up and a spray tan, and coached towards with a highly restricted diet and water down bodybuilding prep-programme. And I’ll be honest, I just don’t get it.

I mean I get it as a general concept. I can see why people would be impressed with the results and the before and afters. I understand that people want to lose fat, build muscle and improve their confidence, and that these types of programmes can show an extreme and marketable version of that.

But I don’t believe that the reality of what people experience matches up with the concept of the programme. And I hate how they dominate the industry, how they attract coaches as a business model which clearly works (but in my opinion doesn’t serve the client best), and most importantly…

How they make the majority of people’s main experience of coaching, personal training, and the health and fitness industry as a whole to become little more than bodybuilding prep. It can and should be so much more.

I think the health and fitness industry as a whole would benefit massively from more coaches helping people see their body and their fitness as more than a body fat percentage, or a “look”.

That doesn’t mean that bodybuilding is bad. If someone is aspiring to be the next Arnold or CBum and they are massively passionate about the sport, go absolutely ham. The same goes for any sport that I don’t personally connect with. If it’s your jam, who am I to say it’s shit and you shouldn’t do it. It just means that Betty down the road will have a much more productive and rewarding fitness journey if she isn’t constantly hammered with bodybuilding prep dressed up as health and fitness coaching.

The two are very different things.

The Main Problem With Photoshoots Full disclosure, I have never done a bodybuilding style photoshoot prep before, and I clearly have no intention of doing one. As I said in episode 115, I have only ever tracked my macros intensely once. Mainly because fuck that, and I think most people feel the same.

But I have been in the industry for a long time (I’m getting old AF), I have a big network of coaches, and know a lot of coaches and clients who have completed these kinds of bodybuilding photoshoot prep transformations.

So these are my opinions. I think they’re pretty well informed. To me, the main problem with these kinds of photoshoots is that the client never learns the skills they need to change their long-term behaviors. At best, they learn that they can lose a good amount of body weight or body fat in a set timescale when there is a hard date for accountability at the end.

But what about when the photoshoot is done? What about 8-12 weeks after the photoshoot when they’re not in that shape anymore?By definition, photoshoots are peaks. They aren’t sustainable. They are a literal snapshot into a specific moment in time. But people sign-up to them because they are unhappy with their confidence in their everyday life. They didn’t sign up because they didn’t look how they wanted to on 12th September last year and they want 12th September this year to feel different. It’s the accumulation of how they felt day in and day out that leads to wanting to make a change.

And the change they want is for that feeling to be gone, for good. And to feel like how they think they’re going to feel on photoshoot day everyday thereafter.

And they more often than not don’t.

So coaching towards a hard peak, which then passes, and coaching service then ending without an exit plan the majority of the time isn’t helpful at all.

Photoshoot Comedown

Here’s two common cycles we see with a lot of people who go into the photoshoot prep cycle.

Cycle 1 - The Comedown

Person signs up, does the extreme diet and intense training plan. Puts everything on hold for the process because if they don’t the photoshoot is going to go badly.

They do the shoot, they get the photos, they leave the coaching process with little to no support as the coach has got their before and after photos for marketing, and the client needs a break from that lifestyle. 8-12 weeks pass. They gain weight and body fat, and look back on the photoshoot photos.

And they hate them because they no longer look like that.

Cycle 2 - The Rebound

Cycle two starts exactly the same as cycle one.

They sign-up, follow the plan, do the shoot and get the photos.

8-12 weeks pass and they hate that they don’t look like that anymore.

So they book another photoshoot as that is now the answer.

And they cycle between photoshoot prep, and living like anything other than photoshoot prep.

This is 100% fine if you’re a super passionate bodybuilder or bodybuilding hobbyist. I’m not saying that nobody should do this and that this isn’t a valid goal.

I’m just saying that these 2 cycles are going to be very damaging to the everyday person who simply wants to improve their relationship with their body, their self image and their health.

And when this process is pushed as the most mainstream route in health and fitness culture like it currently is, it bleeds out into almost all other areas of fitness coaching.

Another Way

Feel free to hammer me for my biases here, but I’m a career coach who’s been thinking about these things for 16+ years. I try and acknowledge my biases, challenge my lines of thinking, and put my clients first. I try my best to work in line with my main 3 coaching values of having a simple, honest, impact.

And I always come back to wanting more everyday people to experience the benefits of training in a strength and conditioning format.

Not because I think that strength and conditioning is a specific and correct route for everyone.

But because I think the thing that separates an S&C coach from a PT, a bodybuilding coach, a powerlifting coach, CrossFit coach or whatever, is that S&C coaches are supposed to take a step back and assess the athlete's needs.

Without bias, and without agenda.

Strength and conditioning in its essence isn’t a style of training. It’s a coaching process.

When the time is right it can incorporate elements of powerlifting, weightlifting, bodybuilding or whatever.

But only because the needs assessment informed them that it was important to do so.

And when an S&C coach does a needs analysis on an everyday person who wants to lose 5-10kg, feel stronger and more confident in themselves, I don’t think many good ones will come to the conclusion that what that person needs is an 8-12 week bodybuilding prep and photoshoot.

What that person is much more likely to need is a combination of:

• A style of training they enjoy and find rewarding

• A performance aspect to ensure it improves their life outside of the gym and is constantly improving a broad spread of qualities

• A nutrition intervention that doesn’t compromise long term adherence for short term weight loss

• Ongoing support to make sure it sticks

This is exactly why I created STRONG IN 60.

To help more people get access to top quality coaching that actually improves your life.

That turns everyday people into everyday athletes.

Who can enjoy all the benefits of improved strength, fitness and body composition everyday.

Not just for one day at the end of a coaching process.

But from living a bigger life as their strongest self.

By being an everyday athlete who is in control of their life and for whom activity is a non-negotiable. 

Not because they feel like they have to do it because of extreme accountability to a photoshoot and external judgment, but because they want to do it because they know it is a key part of being the best version of themselves. And an everyday athlete who is in control of their nutrition 24/7, 365 not because they’re afraid of the scale or their own reflection, but because they understand and enjoy everything they eat, and know how to fits within a busy professional and social schedule.

These mindset shifts away from hard external accountability to photoshoots to strong internal accountability to yourself and your quality of life are huge.

And I really want more people to experience how rewarding and enjoyable all aspects of health and fitness are, not just being smaller and having less body fat.

There is a whole world of training and nutrition beyond bodybuilding style prep out there to be enjoyed, you just have to look past the influencers and the marketing tactics.

And STRONG IN 60 is a great place to start. Ian.