Determining the Bogus from the Authentic

The problem with most off-the-shelf “fitness” programs -- including those taught by most “certified” instructors, is that they presume you’re in good condition -- and if you aren’t, they weed you out, so at the end, the program is “successful” for those to whom the program works. The countless others will be urged to continue their training under long term contracts because only then, will the results be forthcoming -- if they haven’t been evident all along, they promise.

A lot of people fall for that -- because they’re not offered any alternatives but what their fitness professional says is the only way things have to be -- and suggest if you try anything else or any other way, you’ll die of a heart attack because the others might not have been “certified” in First Aid and CPR -- which is largely what “fitness instructor certifications” certify -- that one has previously gone through the properly accredited First Aid and CPR class (offered to anyone) -- and have had that training kept current by the accreditor's time table for ensuring steady and reliable income too.

So they convince the unwary -- of qualifications that have not been proven effective, but are immensely profitable to the accrediting organizations -- which may exist for no other reason than to produce a steady revenue stream from their captive clientele. The first who have to be convinced of the value of such “credentials” are of course the “professionals” themselves, hoping in this manner to secure a competitive advantage -- if for no other reason, by shrinking the pool of people “du(e)ly qualified" to practice in this field.

There may be legitimate courses that are very different from the bogus -- which many people lack any means of determining, mostly because of an inferior education (conditioning) that doesn’t enable or empower them to question the claims of any other who may be more forceful, intimidating or unscrupulous at asserting theirs.

One would hope that the newspapers and other media would be the first line of defense in protecting the public from misinformation, but in these times, have become the greatest source of misinformation, and are poor judges of the validity of the new. That’s why they like to repackage the old as the new, and call that “news.”

These are the very kinds of people, scam artists look for in aiding them in their deceptions -- the guy so sure he knows something but would never know how to find out for themselves. They think it is enough just to express an opinion on every matter in an authoritative way -- and if less confident people believe them, that is truth enough.

These people are usually pretty easy to spot in person: they don’t look like healthy human beings, or human beings at all anymore, and they work in cubicles that house a lot of people who look just like them -- so nobody notices that these people are far from being your average person -- but have metamorphosed into something else entirely.

These are people you don’t want as your first line of defense -- in determining reliable information.