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I call these posts “Thoughts from the C-Suite,” intended to share a not-so-unbiased look at my observations, experiences and insights of key findings and happenings in the industries I swim in.
No One Stages a Stunt That Bad on a Mountain
Three stories, three weeks, same industry. An athlete kept racing through a medical emergency because nobody called the stop. A betting company posed an actress naked next to gym and sports equipment to sell bets on women’s bodies they’d never trained. A golf brand scripted a man shoving a woman to the ground and thought it would sell drivers.
I want to walk you through what actually happened, because the headlines undersell it.
Functional Fitness Gone Sideways
At Hyrox Beijing, Australian athlete Joanna Wietrzyk had a bout of fecal incontinence mid-race. She kept competing, used shared equipment, and won her division. Other athletes touched what she touched. Hyrox’s statement afterward talked about protocols becoming “blurred.” Nobody owned the decision to let her keep going, though organizers did apologize several days later.
Quadrupling Predictions
Novig, a sports betting platform, ran an ad with Sydney Sweeney posed nude alongside sports gear. Female Olympians pushed back hard. Gymnast Gracie Kramer’s response went everywhere: “this is what women in sport look like.” In spite of quadrupling values, the company built a campaign on a body instead of on the sports it claims to serve.
Bad Bad Golf
And Good Good Golf, working with Callaway, greenlit a scripted ad where a man shoves his female colleague to the ground over a driver and stands over her, threatening, “do not touch my new driver.” Yeah…someone actually wrote that. Someone else actually storyboarded it. And someone else actually approved the final cut. Callaway ended the partnership, paid a million dollars to domestic violence prevention, and it still doesn’t undo the fact that a room full of professionals looked at that footage and thought, hey man, this sh!t sells golf clubs!
What would this industry look like if more of us built our businesses somewhere the incentive to perform for a camera doesn’t exist?
The Low Side of Three High Performing Sports Ads
Here’s what these three sports ads have in common, and it isn’t bad luck. Every one of them happened somewhere built. A race stage. An ad shoot. A studio with a producer and a camera and a deadline. Somewhere with an audience to perform for and a commercial reason to push past the point where someone should have said “stop. No really, stop now!”
The Mother Nature’s Gym Difference
I’ve been saying some version of this since before I wrote my book. Fitness was never supposed to be a thing you do in a room designed to be watched. It’s a way you live. Move the body, prepare the mind, let nature do what a studio never can. I called it Mother Nature’s Gym for a reason: nobody stages a stunt like these on a mountain. There’s no ad approval chain on a trail. Dignity isn’t a policy you write down out there, because there’s no producer in the room deciding it’s worth sacrificing for engagement.
I’ve watched this happen with my own clients. I took a group of my private fitness clients out of the indoor walls of the gym in Washington D.C. and brought them to my stomping grounds here in Utah, and I watched them become different people right in front of me as they applied their gym moves to outdoor fitness. Not because the workout changed. Because the room, the container, did. There’s something about the natural environment that holds you, that lets your guard come down in a way four walls and a mirror never will.
This isn’t just nostalgia. It’s a business decision, one that I’ve made and I think it’s the one more of us in this industry need to be making on purpose.
So here’s my question for you, coach to coach: what would this industry look like if more of us built our businesses somewhere the incentive to perform for a camera doesn’t exist?
That’s the whole premise behind the WebbWell Certified Coach Network. I built a path for fitness pros who already love the outdoors but don’t have a roadmap to turn that into a credentialed, profitable offer, the Mother Nature’s Gym way. You don’t need a studio, an ad budget, or anyone’s permission to approve the footage. You need a trail, a client or two, and a method that’s already been tested for almost twenty years to have the confidence and the competence to step into the shoes of outdoor fitness coaching.
The pilot round for the Certified Coach Network is opening soon. If you’re a coach who’s tired of watching this industry choose spectacle over the people it’s supposed to serve, and you want to build something that can’t be staged, comment PILOT or DM me. Let’s talk about what it looks like to guide your clients somewhere real.
About Melanie Webb
Melanie Webb is the host of The Mindful Trainer Podcast. Named “The person to call” by DEPARTURES Magazine, “a leader in the adventure travel industry” by Norie Quintos of National Geographic Traveler, and “one of the top trainers in the industry” by The Sports Club/LA (now Equinox), Melanie Webb is the founder and creator of WebbWell. A sought-after industry and corporate retreat facilitator and speaker, her fitness course Mother Nature’s Gym Outdoor Fitness Guide teaches fitness pros treat their clients to an outdoor trip of a lifetime.
