Even Fitness Instructors Need to Work on Body Image

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Many women are unhappy with their bodies and exercise to change their appearance. While exercising is usually healthy, working out only because we are dissatisfied with our bodies can be harmful. Negative body image is considered among major risks for such conditions as depression or eating disorders. Therefore, group fitness classes should support positive body image instead workouts designed only to correct bodily imperfections.

While one would think that fitness instructors have no problem with accepting their already widely-perceived as ideal body shapes, this is not necessarily the case. For example, Reinhold and colleagues (2022) reveal that body image problems and harmful exercise dependence are actually common in the profession. Like their clients, fitness instructors need to feel good about their bodies. How can they build a more positive body image?

Exercising for internal reasons

To serve as role models and motivators for healthy exercise behaviour, fitness instructors need to build a positive personal body image. This is possible, Reinhold and colleagues suggest, if instructors exercise for internal reasons such as enjoyment or harmonious passion (intrinsic motivation) instead of external pressures that encourage working the body to an ideal size (extrinsic motivation).

Building self-compassion

To further build intrinsic motivation, Dobrich (2022) recommends self-compassion. This means recognizing that we all are worthy of compassion even if we fail. When we accept our bodily flaws, for example, we will be less judgmental of how our bodies look. To develop self-compassion, Dobrich suggests that fitness instructors engage in mindfulness such as mediation or writing exercises on their own. They may also participate in group education sessions on self-compassion.

Learning self-compassion can, then, help individual trainers feel more positive about their bodies—and their coaching work can also become a more positive and enriching experience. However, Dobrich emphasizes that the fitness-center environment needs to foster body positivity to support individual instructors. To battle this, Dobrich suggests that club managers revise their marketing and promotional materials and class names to encourage more intrinsic motivation and health instead of external motivation on appearance.

The ideal fit body as a business card

Other researchers indicate that it is not that easy to ignore the ideal body shape when working in the fitness industry. Instructors often feel strong pressures to look the part and believe that thinness is a prerequisite for a good fitness professional. For example, Juan-Miguel Fernández-Balboa and Gustavo González-Calvo asked six female and eight male personal trainers and fitness instructors in Spain about their body perceptions. The instructors believed that ‘a beautiful body’ was a necessary professional qualification in the commercial fitness industry. They invested a lot of time and energy in shaping bodies they considered to be their best ‘business card.’ This, nevertheless, meant that the instructors lived with a fear of fatness. A female personal trainer explained:

"I feel pressured every day to improve my physical appearance. The sad truth is that I am very hard on myself, harder than anyone else, as I am extremely influenced by social conditioning. It has a great impact on me."

The instructors continued to battle ‘fatness,’ because they believed no one would hire an overweight instructor. One female trainer exclaimed: “Under no circumstances do I imagine an overweight trainer. I just do not consider it. I do not think there is room for such a person in this profession." As role models whose bodies were constantly on display in tight-fitting exercise gear, they felt pressure to look fit with toned muscles and no extra weight.

Because possessing the ideal, fit body was perceived as a necessary requirement for fitness-industry professionals, the instructors also feared aging. One female personal trainer pondered: “When I grow old…I will no longer have the body I possess now....The fitness industry only wants a lean, fit, and ideal body." Another male instructor in his 30s added:

"The fitness industry is not for old people. You have to be active, flexible, strong. [These are the] attributes of young people. I started hating everything about this idea when I turned 30 years old. I wonder how I will make a living once I get old."

To battle their perceived body problems, the instructors followed strict and carefully planned eating and exercise regimes.

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Alternative ways to build positive body image?

While fitness instructors can improve their body image through, for example, self-compassion, their professional value in their industry continues to be based on possessing an ideal, thin, toned, and youthful body. Although good instructing skills do not depend on one's body shape, fit appearance continues to be a primary external pressure when working in the fitness industry. The instructors then have to carefully negotiate these pressures for a successful career. In this context, it is difficult to feel positive about one’s body.

Changing the entire industry, as Dobrich notes, seems hardly possible at this point. Dobrich suggests that if we want to transform the fitness culture, we need to promote health instead of body shaping, appreciate diversity as normal, discuss the requirements of body work more openly, and learn from indigenous perspectives on health and well-being.

These are good suggestions and may already be part of the industry in some places, but change, at the moment, is slow. Perhaps the instructors need to take a more active part in this transformation through more open discussions of body issues and considering alternative goals to appearance for their classes.