We mentioned in a previous blog about making sure your Personal Trainer doesn’t provide you with a cookie cutter workout and diet plan. If you haven’t read it, you can find it here and give it a read.
There are a lot of trainers out there that sell rubbish, cookie cutter workout and diet plans online. What you will notice is that they are all the same. 70% of the time they will get someone else to write them. Then everyone who buys the plan will receive the exact same thing! Now we are going to go into how to spot these Personal trainers and also how to spot the plans. There are a few things you can look out for that are a dead giveaway that the program is just a cookie cutter program. Is this article we will run through the top Four things that you can use to spot a cookie cutter program.
Type of Person
No as said above, some people get their plans wrote for them and then they sell their plans on. Who? It tends to be reality celebrities. The people that are on Made in Chelsea, The Only Way is Essex’s, this kind of shows. They have no experience writing plans, they know nothing about nutrition, they just have a popular Instagram account and fans that will buy it. Add all that up and it equals easy profit.
Let’s say there is a Reality celebrity called “Bob”. Let’s say Bob has an Instagram account of 750,000 followers. You would argue that around 40-50% of those followers are huge fans and would buy anything Bob Releases. So all Bob has to do is go to a Personal Trainer, Get them to develop a workout and diet plan, Then they will make it look pretty, Build a simple website, then sell it. They all tend to be sold for the same price as well, but we will get onto that next.
Bob would most likely split the Nutrition and Workout plans into two separate purchases, doubling his income, then also split the workout plans into different plans. Now the issues here is that people are putting their trust in these plans, they are hoping to look like their favourite celebrity. Will They? Most likely not. They might see a few changes with these plans, but soon the changes will stop, the plan will be ineffective, and they won’t know why. Generic plans, Generic workouts, complete rubbish!
Price of Workout Plans
Straight of the bat, a good personal trainer will not come cheap, you will be looking to hire one for around 12-24 weeks, depending on goals. So when you see plans that are being sold for £20-£50, you know straight away that they are just sending you the same E-Book that they send to everyone else. Writing plans, creating diets and giving a client a good service cost money and time. So when you see your “Beach Body Workout Plan” online for £19, you know that something is off. You know that it isn’t going to be a custom plan that is made for you.
Remember, when you are spending your money on a workout plan, you want the results that they promise, You want a plan that you can trust to do its job. This is why the market these plans at this price, It is cheap enough that by the time you find out that it doesn’t work, or does very little, you aren’t too fussed about it and don’t bother to complain or ask for a further plan. Meaning they can sell these plans, with very little come back.
Now saying this there are some good workout plans out there for relatively cheap. These plans will either explain in detail what they plan to accomplish, how they are going to do it, and they tend to come with some kind of support. Also, there are some amazing online coaches that don’t charge the world. These tend to give you the custom workouts plans, custom meal plans (Macro’s and Calories). However, these are easy to spot and you can tell the kind of service you are going to receive.
The Goal
The type of workout plan or the name of a workout plan, this one can be a massive give away. A good personal trainer that is building you the perfect plan, will have a conversation with you, about your goals, your lifestyle fitness habits etc. They will get to know you and understand how you live, how you work so they can design your perfect workout. No point programming a 5 day a week fitness plan, if you can only do 3 workouts a week.
You will see plans called something like “Beach Body Plan” or “Greek God Plan”, these are your generic cutting plans, they use buzz words like toning and shred fat while building muscle. All you will achieve from buying these is a basic 4-5 day a week workout plan, your standard workout. A simple meal plan (We will talk more about this below) with generic calories and your standard meals.
I have seen celebrities from certain reality shows selling workout plans that promise that you can build muscle while losing fat. Which by now everyone should know is false information. It is one or the other. You will also find that each person or company will use a different style or trend to help sell their products, I’ve seen plans that brag about fasting, Keto, Rep ranges and even eat what you want. We don’t mean that in a Macro sense, we mean that as in you can eat as much or as little as you want. So remember, if a website is making you chose a goal when buying a workout plan, It is more than likely a cookie cutter workout plan.
Set Meal plan/Calories
Our last point will cover diets. We have covered workout plan heavily in this post, but you can also pick up diet plans online. which, as with the workout plans, can be cookie cutter, generic, recycled plans. Some diet plan online is really good. You purchase a PDF, and when you start it will help you calculate your Macros (or you can use the Free Sets & Reps application and calculate them for free), and suggest meals.
The biggest give-away is that you just go to the website, add the plan into your cart, and start to follow it. No, follow up email to ask about your lifestyle, nothing to calculate to make sure you are getting the correct macros. This is normally a massive giveaway that you are going to be put on a cookie cutter diet plan.
Another giveaway is entire meals planned for you, What a “Trainer” will do is pull some generic calories out of thin air (Men: 2000 & Women: 1600), they will then come up with a plan for those calories, they will plan meal timing and even the meals themselves. This may at first seem like a good plan, however, when you look into it, You are receiving the same meal plan that person number two is receiving. There is nothing custom, nothing personal and certainly not going to work for certain people. As we said above, some plans suggest meals, this isn’t a bad thing, however being told what meals to eat every single day is not fun. It will not create a diet you are going to stick to.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there are loads of people selling cookie cutter workout plans and meal plans. Various celebrities are doing it to make a quick buck. Use your logic, do a bit of research and follow the famous phrase, if it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is!
If you are thinking about buying a plan online, and are unsure about if it is a good value for money, Then just give us a quick email over on the advice page. We are more than happy to help, and give you our opinion.
On the other hand, If you have bought a workout plan and it sounds like it might be a cookie cutter. Give us an email here. Explain where you purchased it from, why you did and if it still works. In return, we will help adapt that workout to you specifically making it a custom plan for you, for Free! So get in touch over here!
Also if you are just after workouts, Make sure to check out our app here!
Written by Kieran Blacker
Kieran is the CEO and Founder of Sets & Reps. He decided to make an application that helped people get a gym workout when not at the gym. He designed, Coded and built the application himself.