Oftentimes, we envy the “bikini body” or “yoga body” possessed by our yoga teachers, fitness instructors, and personal trainers. These people live and breathe fitness, so it stands to reason that their bodies are among the fittest in appearance as well as practice.
However, this isn’t always the case. I’ve seen a lot of judgment come down on yoga teachers and fitness instructors who don’t have a six pack or who, for whatever reason, don’t look like they walk the talk.
This gets especially vicious online even in the most unwarranted of cases, inspiring one fitness instructor to make this video, but I also saw it happen in the workplace when my boss didn’t hire someone specifically because she wasn’t fit enough. She didn’t have a yoga body, or what society in general would have us believe a yoga body looks like.
I can understand this. It’s reasonable to expect the instructors you hire to be fit. I can understand why participants expect their instructors to be fit. Anyone who cares enough about fitness to get into the industry should probably be someone who takes good care of his body.
But here are a few things to consider, in defense of the teacher’s yoga body and whatever it looks like:
Just because they look good doesn’t mean they’re healthy.
I dated a personal trainer once who had a naturally slight build. He lifted weights, so he had great muscle definition. But he had a horrible diet: boxed pizza, chips, and diet soda. I never once saw him eat a salad. He was blessed with an efficient metabolism and a love of lifting and that kept his weight controlled, but he was certainly not healthy and I would not consider him a good role model for anyone trying to live a healthier life.
They have their own fitness goals.
A six-pack has never been that important to me, so I’ve never pursued it. (For most of us, it requires not only a lot of ab work–which I do–but also an incredibly strict diet to get lean enough to see those muscles–and I’m usually not that strict.) Sometimes it comes out on its own, sometimes it disappears, and I don’t think much of it either way.
Until recently, the majority of my exercise time was devoted to running in preparation for the marathon, so I’m thinner and less muscular than usual. As my goals change, my body changes.
Some instructors are simply recreational instructors.
With the Zumba boom, a lot of people started teaching who had no prior interest in or experience with teaching fitness. They started because they loved Zumba, they were maybe good at it, and they thought it would be a great way to make a little extra money while having fun. There’s nothing wrong with this, but you can’t expect this type of exerciser to have the same type of body as one who has a higher level of devotion to fitness.
Fitness instructors have babies and get older, too.
I worked with a few 40- and 50-year-old instructors with kids who were in enviable shape. I worked with others who were strong and could run for miles, but who still carried some extra weight. They were great instructors; their bodies just responded to aging and pregnancy differently. (Of course, I also have no idea what their diets were like; perhaps that played into it.) Some of them spoke about this in frustration.
Bodies are all different.
We’re not all going to look like fitness models no matter how in shape we are, regardless of age or whether or not we’ve had any children. That goes for each participant in class, too.
They’re subject to luck of the genetic draw, too.
We’ve all read those interviews by supermodels who say they’ve never worked out a day in their life. Some fitness instructors, though they do work out, are just that lucky anyway. And some aren’t–some have to work to keep every pound off. Some started teaching fitness or personal training after going through their own weight loss journey, and maybe they’re not quite up to fitness-model standards–but they do have the experience of going through what many of their clients are going through.
A good body does not make a good teacher.
I’ve been to so many fitness classes that were sub-par, sometimes even stupid: we’d receive instructions to do an exercise that didn’t target the body part the teacher was saying it would target, or to do something outside the realm of the branded class. (For better or worse, an instructor is supposed to follow a pre-choreographed class to the letter.)
I’ve been in classes where the directions were unclear, where the instructor wasn’t following the music, where the instructor didn’t pay attention to the students’ exercise form, and even where the instructor was demonstrating poor form herself. Just like in any profession, you’re going to come across poor and mediocre professionals, and their bodies have nothing to do with it.
What I’m saying is, we need to lay off the judgment.
We ALL have a yoga body, because we all have a body capable of yoga in some form. Judging our teachers, our fellow exercisers, and random people we see online based on their body fat percentage is as bad as judging based on skin color, and it’s simply evidence of our own low body confidence.
When I’m a student in a class, I don’t care how fat or thin or muscular my instructor is. I care that she’s motivating and educated and that she delivers a well-planned and effective class. And if she does look especially fit and awesome? It’s just a reminder that I have that potential, too.