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The Luxury of an Open Mind
Faux Fitness challenges modern workout myths and argues for a radically different path to strength, recovery, and pain-free living. Was there a specific personal turning point that led to this book?
It only took almost thirty years. I knew the answers, but I didn’t have the equations for them, so to speak. I had always been interested in fitness/health, so I watch a lot of YouTube and read a lot of books out of interest. I wasn’t actively looking. And those pieces that formed those equations started to appear.
I suppose a combination of frustration that I couldn’t really go around telling everyone they were exercising wrong and boredom from retirement finally led me to write Faux Fitness. So, not really a specific point per se. The pieces needed came together over time.
How did you land on the term “Faux Fitness”? What separates “faux” health from real health in your view?
The current ideology for fitness is to continually injure yourself, then, without our understanding, our own endorphins would mask the trauma. Injuring yourself, even out of ignorance, isn’t a very healthy fitness model. Injury doesn’t hold a place in health. When we’re injured, we’re not at full health. Real health would mean no injury, no trauma, no endorphins, which might disappoint more than a few people.
How has social media shaped harmful fitness beliefs, and are there trends you think are especially misleading right now?
I don’t think social media is necessarily shaping harmful habits, just reinforcing them. I also don’t think there are any trends that are especially misleading. They’re all lumped together under the same veil. Ways that incur injury, which means endorphins, lather, rinse, repeat. Just new ways to accomplish an old idea.
What kind of mindset should readers bring into the book, and what would you hope they question more deeply?
Well, I would hope people have the luxury of an open mind, but there will be those who don’t. The book mentions this: mostly denial, confirmation bias, etc. People are going to accept (or not accept) the information in the book. All, some, or none of it. I’m not able to make people believe anything. I can only provide evidence. How they choose to accept it is up to them.
But I would hope that they take another look at what they want to achieve and how they may want to achieve it. And maybe decide to adopt a healthier way of doing so.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website | Amazon
Finally: a user’s manual for homo sapiens. Despite what we’ve learned, read, or been told, discover how humans really work, so you can truly understand what health, fitness, and wellness are.
Have we been doing health and exercise all wrong? Faux Fitness explains how you can make distinctive changes so you can live pain and soreness-free, decrease stress, and feel your best at any age.
If you struggle with chronic pain, weight loss, and/or stress, despite doing everything “right,” this book is for you.
With facts, common sense, a touch of science, and a dash of humor, Faux Fitness is full of enlightening information and practical approaches for exercise, diet, wellness, and even sleep.
You’ll learn:
The superpower all humans have, and what it means to be truly healthy.
Simple changes you can make to increase and improve your overall health.
Why being sore after a workout isn’t necessarily a good thing, and a different, healthier way to “crush it” without soreness.
Why you might want to reconsider your perspective on endorphin-producing activities you thought were healthy (such as running, massage, chiropractic care, and even sex).
And so much more.
This book will challenge everything you thought you knew about health and fitness. And if you let it, it will change your life.
Faux Fitness
Faux Fitness by author E J Neiman sets out to flip a whole lot of “common sense” fitness wisdom on its head. The book blends the author’s long battle with chronic pain and Dr. Thomas Griner’s work on muscles, lactic acid, and endorphins into one big argument that most of us are working out, dieting, and even “recovering” in ways that quietly damage our bodies instead of helping them. Pain means injury, not progress. Cardio that keeps your heart rate high means you sit in an oxygen-starved state and bathe your arteries in acid. Chronically tight, lactic acid-soaked muscles are behind everything from back pain to sciatica to carpal tunnel. The later chapters build on that idea and move into how to move, rest, breathe, and live in a way that lets muscles stay soft and “müshy” instead of hard and angry, and how to think more critically about every feel-good wellness trend.
I had a pretty strong emotional response to the core message. On one hand, the logic about pain and adaptation made a lot of sense to me and honestly felt a bit like getting my ears boxed. I have told myself “no pain, no gain” more times than I care to admit, so seeing that motto treated almost like a bad joke felt both refreshing and uncomfortable. The way the author connects lactic acid buildup, rigor mortis, and everyday soreness really stuck with me. The writing uses lots of stories, vivid examples, and simple analogies. That style made the ideas feel very human and grounded, not like a lecture from a physiology textbook. At the same time, the constant “sit down for this next part” tone sometimes felt like it was trying a bit hard to shock me. There were moments where I wanted the same clear idea, but with less buildup and fewer side comments.
As the book went deeper into endorphins, oxidative stress, vascularity, and “faux” health habits, I found myself going back and forth between “this is eye-opening” and “I wish this section had more balance.” I liked that the author owns his position as a layperson and keeps the language plain. I never felt lost in technical talk, and the metaphors about highways, gravity, and sports teams made the biology easy to picture. I sometimes wanted clearer boundaries between what is strongly supported, what comes from Griner’s clinical experience, and what is the author’s own reasoning. The passion is obvious and that passion is contagious. For me, the book works best when it shows patterns, shares cases, and invites skepticism, and it works less well when it leans into “we have been doing it all wrong” without pausing to meet readers who are already doing some things right.
I enjoyed Faux Fitness, and I came away looking at my own habits in a very different light. I would recommend this book to people who already like to read about health and training and who are open to having their current program poked and prodded a bit. It suits readers who appreciate clear, informal language and lots of concrete examples more than folks who want dense citations on every page. If you’re curious, frustrated with chronic pain, or just tired of yo-yo fitness advice, this is a bold, opinionated take that will give you plenty to chew on.
