What's up guys, Sean Nalewanyj, realscienceathletics.com.
And in this video today, I never thought I'd be saying these words because for those who
have been subscribed to my channel for a while, you know that I never make these types of
videos.
But today I wanted to weight in on the whole Jeff Cavaliere Athlean-X fake weights controversy.
Now this is very different from the content that I normally do, but I've been producing
pure, informative fitness content online for many, many years now.
I have almost 500 videos on this channel, 500 articles on my website of straight training
nutrition and supplementation information.
And honestly, I'm just at the point now where I wouldn't mind mixing in some other types
of content just to keep things fresh.
And so I might, depending on how it goes and what the response is, I might from time to
time start addressing certain issues in the YouTube fitness community that I think are
worth talking about.
And this is one of them.
So for those who don't know, it has recently come to light that Jeff Cavaliere of Athlean-X,
and I'm sure the vast majority of you know who he is.
He has one of, if not the biggest fitness channel on YouTube, that in some of his videos,
he has been using fake 45 pound plates that exaggerate the amount of weight that he's
lifting in those clips.
Now, this video here is not about debating whether or not Jeff actually used fake plates.
The evidence on this whole thing is very clear at this point.
Some other big channels have already made videos about this and everyone pretty much
agrees so far.
No one with any real lifting experience seems to even be questioning this.
And even the people who are defending Athlean-X are more so in the camp of, yeah, he used
fake plates, but who cares versus he didn't use fake plates.
He almost certainly, like 99% plus, used fake plates in a deadlifting video where he actually
verbally states that he's lifting 500 pounds even though he's not.
Now as we get up here, touching sort of almost at 500 pounds.
He did it in a close grip bench press video to make it look like he was benching 315 on
a pin press when he wasn't.
The plates were used in a bicep curl video where he's doing very strict curls with them,
there was a clean and jerk video, squats, overhead presses, barbell rows, tricep extensions
and there might be others out there as well that I'm missing.
But those are the ones that I'm personally aware of.
I'm not going to go over all the points here that basically prove these weights are not
real.
That's already been covered in detail by another channel that goes by the name of Curlean-X.
And I would basically just be repeating what he's already shown.
So full credit goes to him for breaking this all down in detail.
And I'm just going to link the relevant videos of his in the description box if you want
to check those out.
But the bottom line is that based on Jeff's lifting technique, the bar paths, the movement
of the weight at certain points and the range of motion in combination with his age, his
body weight and his strength levels from past videos, yes, these weights are fake.
There's no real debate here.
And if they're not fake, then Jeff could very easily prove this wrong.
Even with just a quick Instagram video and make himself look really good and make everyone
else look really bad.
So if he doesn't attempt to verify in way that these lifts are real, then I would say
that that's even more evidence in favor of the plates being fake.
Now, the real question though, and what I want to talk about here is does it actually
matter?
So like, what are the implications of this?
If you're an Athlean-X follower, then should you care?
Should Jeff Cavaliere address this?
What does this mean for his channel?
First off, I want to know what you guys think.
Okay.
This is an open discussion.
I'm going to give you my thoughts here in a second, but please do comment below and
let me know your opinion on this situation.
As a strength and fitness coach, is misrepresenting the amount of weight that you're capable of
lifting, is that a serious offense and why or why not?
So comment below and let me know.
Now, what do I personally think?
Okay, I'm not going to dance around this topic like I've seen others do.
I'm going to give you my real honest opinion on this.
I know a lot of people out there are big fans of Athlean-X and so I might get some backlash
on this, but keep in mind guys that I am not saying that this discredits everything Jeff
Cavaliere has said in the past, or that he isn't knowledgeable or that you should stop
taking advice from him.
Not saying any of that.
Okay.
But talking about this instance in particular, just on this issue of fake weights specifically,
regardless of whether this was Athlean-X or anybody else.
You can replace Jeff in this instance with anyone else who might've done this.
But I personally think that the use of fake weights is a big deal.
I've seen some other YouTubers out there defending this and saying, it's not a big deal, but
based on how I view this, I do think it's pretty bad.
And I think that it should be called out.
Okay, I'm not a hater, I'm not trying to tear Jeff down.
He has like a hundred times the following that I have and nothing that I say is going
to actually affect him.
However, I do think that if you are a strength coach, which he is, okay, he teaches people
how to get stronger among other things.
And he sells programs based around that.
And you have millions of followers, a large percentage of which are young, impressionable,
beginners who don't know better.
And showing yourself lifting very heavy weights.
If that increases your credibility in the eyes of those followers, just as his physique
is also a big part of his credibility, which is why he does most of his video shirtless
and stays very lean year round.
And if that credibility plays a role in you gaining more followers and ultimately selling
product to them.
And it's also used to some degree as a gauge in comparing you against other fitness YouTubers
who are actually lifting real weights, then it is wrong in my opinion.
It's wrong to film yourself, demonstrating very impressive feats of strength that you're
not actually capable of.
I don't see how that's controversial or unreasonable to say that because keep in mind that if he
really could dead lift 500 pounds for reps at 40 years old and 170 pounds or so, then
he'd essentially be a world-class lifter.
Hey, call me crazy but I think it's wrong to claim that you're able to do that when
you aren't even if the central theme of the video is to demonstrate form, and it's not
specifically a lifting video.
You still know full and well that people are paying attention to what you're lifting.
And you can just read the comments on the videos and see all the compliments that people
are giving about how strong he is.
It's not as if he just put some light bumper plates on the bar to make it look better aesthetically.
He actually went out of his way to purchase fake weights that have 45 pounds written on
them and then verbally claimed that they were real.
That is a much different thing.
He says, here I am dead lifting 500 pounds, knowing as he's saying that, that it's not
true.
I don't logically see how that's any different from say, photoshopping your physique pictures
for example.
You are intentionally misrepresenting yourself to make yourself appear to your audience as
something that in reality, you're not.
Using fake weights as the exact same logic, but it's just using strength as the metric
rather than body composition.
Because if he didn't think that this was going to benefit him or make him look better in
the eyes of his viewers in some way, then why would he do it?
Right?
There'd be no reason to do it.
Just lift whatever you can lift and it doesn't matter.
You'd only go to those lengths if you really thought that it was going to benefit you in
some way.
So yeah, in my opinion, and I guess you could say that this is a subjective thing.
So at the end of the day, it's just my opinion and you are free to disagree.
That's fine.
But I think that as a strength coach using fake weights in YouTube videos is wrong.
And if it really isn't a big deal, like a lot of people are saying, then what I would
also ask is why is Jeff censoring all the comments on his YouTube and Instagram right
now?
If you go there, you'll see that there isn't a single comment in relation to this topic,
which obviously means that someone is manually filtering through them.
A lot of people are defending Jeff and basically saying that these plates were just for demonstration
purposes and that he never claimed to be super strong, but it's implied because he actually
did say out loud how much he was supposedly lifting.
And it's an amount that would be extremely impressive for someone at his age and his
body weight.
Okay.
If he was actually capable of lifting those types of weights, but he just decided to use
fake plates for the demo because there were repeated takes and he didn't want to tire
himself out or whatever.
Then that would be one thing.
But if you can't actually lift that amount of weight to begin with, then whether it's
a demo or not, you shouldn't pretend that you can, and maybe everyone is wrong on this
and Jeff really is a top tier strength athlete and really can deadlift three times his body
weight for reps at 40 years old, and press 315 and do a strict curls while leaning forward
with 135 pounds.
Maybe he can do all of that.
And if he can, then he should demonstrate it using real weights to prove everyone wrong.
But I really don't think that that's going to happen.
And one important question I would ask for people who are defending this is if this wasn't
Athlean-X, okay, if this wasn't Jeff Cavaliere, if this was someone else like say V Shred.
What's going on guys?
Or Vince Del Monte or Mike Chang back when he was making fitness videos and they showed
themselves dead lifting 500 pounds on camera, even if it was just a demonstration and it
later came to light that they were using fake plates in those videos, what would your honest
reaction be?
Okay.
Think about that and be honest, because I can guarantee that those guys would be absolutely
decimated by the YouTube fitness community if they did this.
And I think that we should be holding people to the same standard and not giving people
a free pass, just because, well, it's Jeff Cavaliere, So it somehow it doesn't count.
And then the one other thing that I find odd is how did Jeff not realize that this was
going to be found out?
Like if someone really was a bench press expert, then they would know that a 315 pound pin
press couldn't possibly look the way it looked in the video, right?
He's barely arcing, there's no leg drive, the bar comes down kind of wobbly and bounces
off the pin and then he pushes it back up very easily.
If that was a real 315 pound press, then the weight would slow down at the bottom and there
would be a much bigger struggle involved.
So that is pretty strange to me.
The same thing goes for the deadlifting video.
Anyone who's actually ever dead lifted up in the high 400s, I don't anymore but I did
back in my earlier lifting days, they know that the bar bends at that type of weight.
The slack has to be pulled out before the lift starts.
So it's pretty weird to me that someone who is giving coaching on these particular lifts
and is an expert on them that they wouldn't know fairly basic things like that.
And would just go ahead and upload those videos and watch them back and not see any issue
with it.
So that's my view guys.
Again, I don't think that this somehow nullifies all of the advice that Jeff has given out
over the years, not at all.
Okay.
I'm not saying you should unfollow him or that he should be absolutely crucified over
this.
He's human he definitely made a mistake in my view.
I personally think it's a pretty noteworthy mistake.
Your mileage on that might vary, but fake weights, fake [inaudible 00:10:18], these
are not things that the fitness community should be tolerating and no one gets a free
pass on this, regardless of who they are.
Maybe Jeff was able to lift weights similar to that when he was younger and so he thought,
hey, I've lifted that amount of weight before, so it's not dishonest.
I still doubt that, but it's possible, or maybe in his mind, he truly just didn't see
it as a big deal.
I'm not saying he's a bad person.
Maybe he just felt a lot of pressure to show that he was strong.
And as a result, he used some poor judgment on this.
I don't know.
Most of these videos were also from several years back.
So maybe he just had like a temporary lapse in judgment and then realized it was a bad
idea and stopped doing it.
Again, I don't know.
The worst ones, which I think are the deadlift video and the pin press video.
Those are from 2015, so like five years ago.
The most recent one that I saw was the tricep extension video.
That's from 2018.
So hard to say.
I don't think that Jeff is going to publicly acknowledge this whole thing.
Maybe he will.
But at the end of the day, he's got like 10 million subscribers.
Other YouTubers are going to make their rounds of videos on his subject.
He'll keep making his videos and probably act like this never happened.
And I think that this whole thing will probably just fade away over time.
That's my prediction.
But again, let me know in the comments, what you guys think about this.
If you agree with me or you just think that I gave a fair perspective, then feel free
to hit the like button.
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You can follow me over on Instagram as well at Sean Nalewanyj, the official websites are
over at seannale.com and realscienceathletics.com.
And I will see you in the next video.