Episode 15
Why Fitness Plans Fail Real People (And What to Do Instead)
Episode Title: No Shame, More Range: Why One-Size-Fits-All Fitness Doesn’t Work
Podcast: Not So Typical Fitness
Host: Rhiannon Cooper
Listen Now: YouTube Link
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In this episode, I am shining a light on personal training qualifications and pulling back the curtain on an eight week summer shred. If you have ever felt like a plan didn't work for your real life because of things like chronic fatigue or neurodivergence, burnout, periods, this episode is for you. And if you're a coach or a personal trainer, we'll stick around because It's about time that we reframed what progress really means for people who are living with energy fluctuating conditions. So for those that don't already know me, I'm Rhiannon Cooper. I'm the host of the Not So Typical Fitness podcast. This is a podcast for people who want to learn how to prioritize their health in a way that works for them. And it's the podcast that doesn't really fit into a neat little box. Why? Because real life rarely does. I'm a personal trainer, content creator, and a neurodivergent woman who knows what it is like to live in a body that doesn't always cooperate. Today's episode is all about the disconnect between personal training qualifications and real life. Let's get into it. What qualifications teach us versus what life teaches you? Let's start with the basics. Personal training qualifications are essential if you want to work on the gym floor. So you need a minimum of a level two fitness instructing and level three personal training qualifications that are SIMSPER recognized to be qualified in the UK as a personal trainer. They're important because they teach us structure, anatomy, risk management and safe programming, but they often miss. One huge thing, human nuance. You're taught how to create a plan. You are taught how to see progression week on week, whether that is changing the weight that somebody does an exercise with, whether it's incorporating higher reps. You are taught to make sure that you are progressing your client each and every week. In theory, that sounds great. In reality, what actually happens when a plan like that meets a person's life, well, they might have things that impact their ability to progress each week. And I'm not talking about laziness. I'm talking about hormonal shifts, chronic illness, sensory overwhelm, executive dysfunction, or if you've heard of spoon theory, low spoons. So here's what I realized during my own journey as qualifying as a personal trainer. The textbook does not prepare you for the reality of the human body or the human mind. Because we do not have the ability in my experience, in my opinion, to perform predictably. Let's look at the reality of an eight week shred. So you will have heard of an eight week shred. It might be an eight week summer shred where you can get bikini body ready. It might be a shred for the dress or whatever it's called, slim for the wedding. There's a catchy one that I can't remember. ⁓ But you would have seen them everywhere, especially as we are in summer. So it'll be summer body plans, fat loss camps, get fit fast challenges. But here's the deal, these challenges are built for linear consistency. And most people do not have linear lives. I know I certainly don't. So they're not accounting for things like hormonal changes, menstrual fatigue or pain, chronic illnesses or flare ups, mental health dips because our mental health is not linear, executive dysfunction where sometimes just getting up is impossible, burnout with sensory hangovers. So when a client fails, fails with those air quotes to keep up, in my experience, it is rarely about their motivation. And in fact, most clients feel so guilty when they tell me they can't make a session. The issue is there is often a misalignment between the plan that is set for your client and the person themselves. if you're a personal trainer, ask yourself, is my plan built to adapt and not just to instruct? So are there alternatives that a client can do, perhaps where they have low energy days, or are you gonna tell them they need to stick to the plan to see progress? Could you offer a plan A, a plan B, and a plan C that... falls into a structure for their energy fluctuation. And are you normalizing rest and regression before somebody crashes? Because it is no good pushing, pushing, pushing, do one more rep, do one more rep. If your client is telling you this is too much, there is power in listening to your client. And this is why I specialize in helping neurodivergent clients is because sometimes we can't advocate for ourselves. And as a personal trainer, I take it upon myself to be able to notice if my client needs me to regulate what they're doing and to actually pull back a bit. I am not here to break people. No pain, no gain. ⁓ that doesn't work for me. Now, if you're not a professional fitness coach and you are just listening to the podcast because it's a safe place for you, I want to know if you ever quit a program like this and felt ashamed because you couldn't keep up. Because if you have, hear me and hear me loud, you did not fail, the plan did. The trainer who created that plan did. You deserve something built with your real life in mind, an individual plan for you. and your challenges and conditions. Here is a truth that often gets overlooked in fitness. Hormones affect strength, mood, recovery, sleep, everything. You will have probably, if you're into fitness, followed influencers who will share funny videos with a person who appears to be a man and a female and the difference over a monthly cycle. and a woman will feel super strong one week and then the next week unable to lift the same weight even off the rack. It's a thing. So if you menstruate, you probably already know this. Some weeks you do feel powerful and others you feel like you are moving through sludge and everything is heavy. Your body is unresponsive and you don't really feel good. Now most plans treat every single week the same. There isn't an adjustment to be made for those weeks where things are harder. And I'm not saying that you should not go to the gym, but I'm saying that for some people, the shame and guilt from not seeing progression can be quite damaging. Most plans treat every week the same. And that's not science, that's convenience. So if you are a fitness professional, learn about strength training across the menstrual cycle. Offer cycle aware programming when appropriate for your client or build in feel-based days where the plan is flexible. Encourage clients to check in with their body and start to listen to what their body is telling them that they need, because they will still see progression. It will just be sustainable progression. And if you have a week where you don't feel strong. just know that your strength does fluctuate because you are human and you're alive. And we all need to learn to let our bodies rhythm guide us, not guilt, not guilt. Chronic pain, fatigue, and then what? Chronic pain does not book itself into your calendar. I know that I live with somebody with chronic pain and it comes. It just comes. Now that is the same for burnout and fatigue. Sometimes there is no rhyme nor reason, but they arrive. you could be on track with your plan one day, you could be on track with that plan for a week, but then the next day you are completely flawed. The next day someone with chronic pain, chronic fatigue or burnout may not be able to get out of bed. That does not mean that they are weak. but we have an issue here where most traditional plans do not have a them what. Coaches and trainers will say, just push through, just push through. pain is not a badge of honour. It's a warning sign. We need to learn to listen to our body telling us when we are entering the danger zone. If you are someone who schedules programs for clients, let's consider things like flexible recovery, where rest can become part of the journey and not a deviation from it. Maybe we need to teach clients to check in with what level am I at today? Am I running on 100 %? Am I on 80? Am I on 20? Because the ability for you to push is going to be much different if you're running at 80 % versus 20. And someone at 80 % might be able to push through and just get on with it, but someone running at 20%, they might need additional rest. When it comes to tracking, track things, track non-linear progress, track mood, energy, mindset, mobility, not just numbers. We don't just need to track weight. How many kilos have you lifted in a bicep curl? How many kilos do you weigh? We can look at other factors. Because even if somebody's energy drops down because of conditions that they have such as chronic fatigue, maybe we can then look at what needs to happen to bring that back up and it's not a failure. When we assign a number to something, we can see positive or negative change and sometimes change is just change and it doesn't mean failure and it doesn't need to be negative. And for you, I want you to try something today. I want you to write a note that says, today, I honor my energy. I am not here to prove anything. Stick it on your mirror, stick it on your bedside table, and I want you to remind yourself of that when you get up or when you go to bed before a workout, that you honor your energy. and you do not need to prove anything to anybody. And let that be your baseline. The big one, okay, neurodivergence, sensory overload and mental health. These are really important to me and this is quite a personal one. You probably know by now that I'm a late diagnosed autistic ADHDer and I can tell you that sensory overwhelm kills momentum. The gym can feel like a battlefield sometimes where you do not get a break. It could be loud music, bright lights. new people or too many people needing to change what machine you're going to go on next because someone else is on it this disrupted routine and there's a mental toll that comes from pushing through that just to exercise we're not on a battlefield but sometimes it can feel like that because our brains are wired in a different way When we have the mental stress that we go through just to be able to exercise, can actually undo the whole point of exercise in the first place because we want to be going to a gym to feel good and we want to move our body because it feels good to move our body and we're privileged to be able to move our body. But sometimes the environment is not enabling us to do so. If you're a personal trainer, think about offering noise cancelling sessions. So let somebody wear their noise-cancelling headphones during a session if that helps them avoid sensory overwhelm. If you run fitness classes, could you advertise a class where people can come and the music doesn't go above a certain volume? Because I know lots of people who'd be interested in things like that. Remind people to have a drink during their sessions so that they don't get too dehydrated. But also allow for these decompression breaks. So don't just go from one exercise to the next, to the next, to the next in your fitness class. Let them have a decompression because sometimes it's not physical, although it might help them to catch their breath. Sometimes mentally we just need it to rebalance to start again. And for the love of God, if you run fitness classes and you turn the aircon off because you think it's better for people to sweat more because then they feel like they worked harder, shame on you. That is completely dismissing somebody's comfort. And if somebody is doing 45 minutes of cardio and you choose to turn that aircon off, I think it says an awful lot about you. Don't do that. And for people who are just on their own fitness journeys, just remember that you don't need to be. neurotypical to fit in. You don't need to be neurotypical to be fit. Fitness should fit you, your body, your brain, your mind. Remember what I say, fitness is about finding strength in who you are, not about changing you. Let's have a little recap and check in with each other now. I want to go through a few truths and a few takeaways and then we will call it a day because this is longer than I wanted, but this is an important topic. For coaches, stop building for imaginary consistency. Offer flexible real life pathways. I want you to validate effort, not just outcome. And for those trolls, This is not about getting a medal for taking part. This is about understanding how to work with somebody in the best way for them. Normalize alternative markers of progress. Things like better mood, better sleep, less pain, more self-trust, more self-belief, more confidence. And for you, the listener, you're not broken. You do not need to earn rest. You deserve plans that honour your full self, your body, your mind, energy and all. And it's okay to move differently. It's okay to move less and it is okay to rest. So maybe there's a mantra in here that I should make and if I decide to do it, I will. I'll make this and I'll put it on the screen right now for you to screenshot. No pain, no gain. Let's replace that with no shame, more range. More range for energy, more range for emotion and more range for what it means to be well because health and fitness is not. just about the way somebody looks and health and fitness is not just about the amount that somebody weighs. There is more to living a happy healthy life than how you look in the mirror, how other people see you and that number that measures your gravitational pull to the earth. Whew! I was gonna say that was a tough one, but they are all tough ones here on the Not So Typical Fitness podcast. But hopefully this episode has given you something to think about whether you are a coach or a listener. I want to ask you to share this episode with a friend or a gym buddy or a fellow coach who might need to hear that their body is not the problem or perhaps It's not that their clients are lazy. It's that their plans are not designed for real people. And as always, I would love for you to rate and review this podcast wherever you are listening because truly it gets me in front of more people who need to hear that their body is not the problem, their mind is not the problem, and that it is okay to prioritise your health in a way that works for you. And fitness can look different for everybody. So until next time, I want you to show up and stay you. and just focus on what you need to feel good in your body.
Episode Summary
Ever felt like a fitness plan just didn't fit your life?
In this episode, I’m pulling back the curtain on the traditional “8-week shred” and talking honestly about why so many mainstream fitness programs fall flat — especially for people with chronic fatigue, neurodivergence, hormonal cycles, burnout, or fluctuating energy levels.
This is for the people who’ve ever quit a plan and blamed themselves.
Spoiler alert: You didn’t fail. The plan did.
Whether you're a personal trainer, a coach, or someone trying to move more in a body that doesn’t always cooperate — this episode is for you.
Key Topics Covered
The disconnect between PT qualifications and real-life bodies
Why linear fitness plans don’t work for non-linear lives
The problem with “no pain, no gain” culture
Chronic fatigue, burnout, ADHD, periods — and how they impact training
Cycle-aware and energy-aware programming
Fitness for neurodivergent minds: sensory overload, routine disruptions & more
Practical advice for trainers: how to build flexible, inclusive plans
Affirmations and mindset reframes that actually help
Quote of the Week
“If you’ve ever quit a program and felt ashamed because you couldn’t keep up — hear me and hear me loud: you did not fail. The plan did. You deserve something built with your real life in mind.”
Write this on a sticky note today:
“Today, I honor my energy.
I am not here to prove anything.”
Stick it somewhere you’ll see it. You don’t need to earn rest — your body is already enough.
Leave a Review & Share the Love
If this episode spoke to you, please leave a rating or review on your podcast platform. It helps the show reach more people who feel like they don’t belong in traditional fitness spaces — and helps remind them that they absolutely do.
See you next week for another not-so-typical episode. 🩷
Permission to Not Be Perfect
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About Rhiannon:
Rhiannon Cooper is a qualified personal trainer with autism, ADHD, and a passion for making fitness accessible to neurodivergent people. She offers online and in-person training in Wolverhampton and runs the Not So Typical Fitness community.
Connect with Rhiannon:
Listen to the full episode: click here or watch the video below.
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