Bodyart

Like most gay men on social media, I follow certain Personal Trainers on Instagram, Twitter and/or YouTube. In addition to sharing fitness tips, these chiseled bodied men bless us by showing off their abs and muscles daily in the form of new photos and videos.

Their positive inspirational photos and videos in no subtle way say, “you can get like me with just a little hard work and consistency.”

And there’s a lot of truth to this. These men have no doubt bust their asses to achieve the physiques they have.

However…

Recently, I started to see through the Matrix that is the Social Media Influenced Fitness Industry and noticed a very common trend.

Just about 90-95% of the most popular, oiled up and chiseled fitness models online selling us Herbalife supplements and discount “training” sessions had an unfair advantage from the start.

Turns out, most of them just might be full of shit.

THE UNFAIR ADVANTAGE

Its safe to say that most people who seek out the help of a personal trainer are looking to lose weight, sometimes tons of it. They hope to lean out enough to expose the muscle hiding underneath, giving them a “toned” look. Basically, obtaining the lowest possible body fat percentage is the goal.

We see these magazine-cover-ready trainers posting the weight loss progress photos of their clients and assume that their own personal journey was the same. They surely overcame the same struggle of losing those layers of stubborn fat that once caused unwanted bulges in their clothes.

Right?

Let’s take a look at one of the main hot-bodied “personal trainers” out there, super attractive Dolvett Quince, best known for his work helping overweight people lose pounds on NBC’s The Biggest Loser.

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According to his own book, The 3-1-2-1 Diet, he says about his origins:

“One day, I caught my reflection in a car window, and I looked huge and ripped. My string-bean body had responded quickly to the rigors of weight training.

Dolvett helps people lose hundreds of pounds, yet he’s never had that struggle in the past himself. He was (and is) a naturally slim guy who had/has the struggle of gaining muscle, not losing fat.

Two different beasts for most people. Even more difficult if your goal is to both lose fat by limiting calories AND gain muscle by consuming more calories when your body has a slow metabolism and naturally follows its evolutionary instinct to retain all fat possible for survival.

And there you have it.

That’s the main unfair advantage that I noticed over and over.

Most of these male personal trainers whose photos and videos we lust after and seek advice from started off with the unfair genetic advantage of a High Metabolism. They’re naturally slim men whose primary struggle is eating too FEW calories, not eating too many calories.

Most people don’t have this “problem.”

Is this akin to being a Marriage Counselor who has never actually been married himself?

What’s harder: Gaining weight or losing it?

Given that our society obsesses over being “slim,” I’d argue that it’s the latter.

Case in point, there’s never been an NBC show called, “THE BIGGEST GAINER” featuring slim men struggling to gain mass.

Full disclosure, I’m sorta one of these naturally slim men as well. While my love of junk food and alcohol causes the size of my mid-section to fluctuate, I’ve always been more of a skinny guy…So I know the struggle…but I’ve never been so skinny that I was one of the men who could “eat anything and never gain weight.”

Turns out, many Personal Trainers are like this and they avoid sharing this key detail with their clients.

Many of them had perfectly fine and desirable toned bodies even BEFORE they ever stepped into a gym.

On top of their naturally high metabolism, many of these Trainers were lifelong athletes whose bodies were already heavily conditioned to look like they had worked out for years, even if they hadn’t.

Their BEFORE photos look better than most of their clients’ AFTER photos.

Let’s go through some of them now.


1. Ray Grayson aka Mr Shut Up And Train

Based out of Atlanta, celebrity personal trainer Ray Grayson who also goes by the moniker Mr. Shut Up and Train, boasts an impressive 67,000+ followers on Twitter and over 48,000 followers on Instagram.

He’s undoubtedly helped a lot of people and worked hard to achieve his own fitness goals, but an archival photo reveals that he never had to face the struggle of losing tons of pounds.

As Ray puts it regarding this photo: “Twelve years ago you couldn’t tell me I wasn’t fly and Swole (skinny swole)!!!”

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2. Ray aka Big Play Ray

I’ve been following the “other” Ray (aka Big Play Ray) and his bodybuilding tips and videos for years. He’s amassed an impressive 4.6 million views on his YouTube channel. But as “swole” as Ray is now, his journey has never included being a 6′ 2″ tall man needing to lose 20-40 lbs of body fat before he saw any of those impressive gym results.

Like Ray Grayson, Big Play Ray can  eat whatever he wants and STILL lose weight and maintain definition if he doesn’t go to the gym multiple times per week.

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3. Ulisses Jr

Bodybuilding Icon and 4-times Musclemania Pro champion, Ulisses Jr, details his workouts and meal plans to his over 1.4 million followers on Instagram…but as built and defined as he is, it turns out his main struggle is adding and KEEPING the mass, not losing layers upon layers of fat like most of his followers.

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4. Chris Smith aka GetFitBySmith

Personal Trainer Chris Smith has over 250,000 Instagram Followers over multiple accounts and goes above and beyond helping people achieve their goals with fitness tips and positive inspirational messages…it doesn’t hurt that he’s also a beautiful man.

But digging into Chris’ archives we see that he’s also one of those naturally “skinny nikkas” who probably played sports since he was able to walk. Check out his Before and After. I’ve seen male strippers who currently look much flabbier than Chris Smith did way back before he started his gym journey.

So not fair.

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5. Rauve Suave

Personal Trainer and (sexy) Model Rauve Suave shares fitness tips with over 53,000 Instagram followers and looks amazing doing it. But again, unlike his clients, it turns out that adding mass was his main struggle, not losing weight like his clients.

I don’t know many women (or gay men) who would turn him down if he still looked like his Before photo. There are many men out there who would trade anything to AT LEAST look like Rauve Suave did 3 years ago.

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6. Gabriel Sey

Former athlete and current bodybuilding personal trainer Gabriel Sey shares his workout and fitness tips (and sexy British accent) with well over 4 million YouTube views and over 45,000 subscribers.

But as you can see, being athletic with a high metabolism, Sey has never had the struggle of looking in the mirror and seeing a depressingly fat belly like most of his clients.

Slender, muscular, college-aged Gabriel Sey’s body looks even better than some of the other current personal trainers in this list.

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7. Brandon Hendrickson

Trinidadian Brandon Hendrickson has clearly worked hard on his physique, leading him to place 5th at the IFBB 2015 Olympia Competition. He shares his journey and fitness tips to his over 27,000 followers on Instagram daily.

But as we can see, once again, Brandon’s diet of Caribbean Rotis and Doubles couldn’t compete with his super high metabolism back then.

Notice the trend yet?

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8. Justin Reynolds

Personal trainer and aspiring musician Justin Reynolds has amassed over 70k Instagram followers and a whopping 250,000 twitter followers over the last 4 years. I’ve been there since nearly the beginning after learning about him when I responded to his unexpected “follow back” request long before I started blogging.

He’s grown from a young cute light skinned dude to an impressively muscular grown man in that time.

The key thing to note, though, is that once again he started from the point of it being hard for him to put on mass, not lose fat.

Must be nice.

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9. Markell aka Mr London

Another British personal trainer, Markell aka Mr London has over 35,000 Twitter followers and over 18,000 Instagram likers who closely follow his workout/fitness tips, as well as lust over his many thirst trap photos.

As you can see by his Before photos, losing a pudgy mid-section was never a concern for the London native.

First World Problems.

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10. Jonathan Garcia

Personal trainer Jonathan Garcia helps his over 10,000 Instagram followers lose weight, but he would never have been accused of being “fat” before he started hitting the gym and learning the tricks of the trade for his future clients.

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11. Laquan Jones

Trainer Laquan Jones would have been called a “twink” if he was gay, but since he’s not, back then he looked like just another naturally skinny man who’s now impressively swole and teaches his over 3,000 Instagram followers how to lose weight.

A problem that he’s never really had himself.

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12. Brandyn Watson

Personal trainer Brandyn Watson’s ripped muscular body is sick! His physique is full of striations and veins, you can tell that his body fat percentage is insanely low. The hard work he’s put in is very evident. This impresses his 3,500 Instagram followers, but a guy like me sees his Before photo and realizes that natural genetics plays a huge factor in his cut up appearance. I’m sure he’s a guy that LOSES weight if he doesn’t work out.

Does this hold true for most men out there?

Brandyn is blessed with the metabolism that keeps him lean, no matter what he eats. Lucky man.

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13. Corey S. Taylor

Model, Actor and Personal Trainer Corey S. Taylor effectively inspires many of his over 3,000 Twitter followers with photos of his own progress. But as you can see in the Before and After photo below, Corey was sexy as hell even without gaining the extra muscle mass. To be honest, I had to squint to see the differences between the two photos.

Many of his clients, walking tubs of body fat lard, don’t have such a solid starting point as a foundation to work from.

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14. Metrell Hurst

Had to include at least one fellow gay man to the list. Open gaylebrity, Personal Trainer, Military Veteran and Recording Artist Metrell Hurst has over 16,000 followers on Twitter who not only look to him for updates on his music career, they like to see his slim muscular body  (present company included, the man is beautiful).

Many of you may remember the D’Angelo “How Does It Feel” inspired music video he produced where he is essentially naked.

However, once again, this chiseled black man (who’s also now Married and off the market) starts off from a place where getting fat is really not a possibility for him unless he tried very hard.

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Granted, there are definitely exceptions to the rule. There are some popular Personal Trainers out there who started off fat and lost the weight.

For example, green-eyed YouTube personal training sensation Elliot Hulse has an astonishing 46 Million views on his channel…As you can see from his Before photo, he’s been what we would call overweight at the start of his journey…But if you look at his After photo, he doesn’t quite have the “Magazine Cover Model” look that the men above have.

No doubt that he’s still very attractive and muscular, but he’s not very lean or defined or, well…chiseled.

True he has tons of followers and YouTube views, but there is clearly a difference in the results here over the others mentioned.

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Elliot Hulse looks perfectly fine. And he’s probably in better physical shape than anyone reading this. But I can’t help but to observe that his less-than-defined body reminds me of how bodybuilders USED to look in the 70s and early 80s.

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Living in Atlanta, I know many non-famous Personal Trainers here in the city…and sure enough, 100% of them have the same story. They started off and maintained a slim/toned physique even before getting serious in the gym.

None of them were ever overweight or fat men who then lost the flab to go on to become fitness trainers

So what was the point of all this? Am I saying that the men listed above did not work hard for the bodies that they have? That they just had great genes and didn’t have to put in much effort?

Nope, the opposite. I know for a fact that a high metabolism and genetic predisposition to muscularity doesn’t always guarantee muscle mass and definition. The individual still has to put in the daily effort in the gym and eat properly.

However, we also have to accept that many of the above men find it much easier to shed fat than the rest of us. This makes their journey to muscle definition and “results” a bit easier than the plight of their clients and fans who have muscle mass hidden by hard-to-lose fat.

Are they actually “full of shit” as the title states?  No…that was click bait…Many personal trainers at the very least are motivators to get people to resist temptations.

They’re kinda like Alcoholics Anonymous Sponsors who help stop addicted people from having a drink…except A.A. sponsors typically also used to be alcoholics themselves.

I seriously doubt these naturally lean Personal Trainers are telling their clients that they’ve personally never been “fat” or had to work as hard to lean out like most Americans.

What are your thoughts?