2016 Fitness Trends: The Body Coach

Usually when October comes around we start to get an idea about what the big fitness trends of the year have been. Now, this blog usually likes to focus on ideas because focusing on individual stories is often irrelevant if they train in a completely unique way. Most of the time you won’t be able to completely replicate somebody’s regime and even if you could, there’s no guarantee that you would get the same results. 

With all that being said, it would be foolish not to class Joe Wicks, more famously called The Body Coach, as a fitness trend of 2016. Anyone who follows their passion for healthy eating and high-quality exercise on Instagram has probably been aware of Joe since well before this year but there’s no doubt his popularity has sky-rocketed since the start of 2016.

With 1.5 million followers on Instagram, The Body Coach has long been a favourite for everyone who immerses themselves in the health and fitness world. But it was last year, when he released his book Lean in 15: 15-minute meals, which went on to sell almost a million copies, that The Body Coach became known to the wider public. Add that to his own Channel 4 show and what you get is a personal trainer, turned millionaire.

So why is this important to us? The concept of making healthy meals that taste great in just a quarter of an hour is brilliant. It has struck a chord with so many people in the gym who want easy to make meals that aren’t bland and boring. I don’t see this trend going anywhere anytime soon. If you have the time to prepare healthy meals that can take hours to make then that is up to you. But for so many people that are working, looking after the kids and trying to get to the gym, that’s just not feasible.

Social media has been paramount to the success of The Body Coach. This is a trend that we have seen develop over a number of years and now we are seeing more and more people turn to the internet to get their fitness advice. I don’t need to go into why this can be a bad idea but the flip side is that makes expert opinion far more accessible than it was five or 10 years ago.

The idea of chefs looking to emphasise healthy food isn’t in itself a new phenomenon. Jamie Oliver has been doing it for years! But that’s the point, Joe Wicks isn’t a chef. First and foremost, he’s a trainer. There is an important difference between people who want to eat healthily and people who want to eat in a way that compliments their active lifestyle.

Personal trainers, particularly those who have gone on to make exercise videos, are often criticised for focusing too much on exercise and not enough on nutrition. Well this turns that idea on its head. With The Body Coach, it’s all about giving up on unsustainable low-calorie diets and turning to something that works in the long-run.

People often ask is it better to start with exercise or nutrition when you are looking to shift weight and my answer is always the same. If you can combine the two then that is going to be the best possible thing for you. Both can seem like an extraordinary effort to some people, but with some of the ideas that The Body Coach puts forward, that nutritional aspect is starting to look a little bit more simple.