Scott Herman aired out Athlean-X in the most recent video shared to his YouTube channel.
Fitness YouTuber Scott Herman had some strong words for Jeff Cavaliere, the face of strength sports’ Athlean-X. In a scorching YouTube video, Herman accused Cavaliere of using fake weights and making other false promises to promote his brand. If you have 15 minutes of time on your hands, you can watch the entire video and his litany of accusations above.
“The videos [are packaged] around him doing heavy deadlifts,” Scott Herman explains. “About a month ago, people starting calling Jeff out for using fake weights on some of his lifts…there’s nothing wrong with being fact-checked, but I do have a problem when the same people fact-checking everyone else don’t fact check their boy.”
Essentially, Scott Herman himself has been called out in the past for using misleading numbers to represent his fitness statistics. However, when he realized his mistake, he quickly released and apology video, explained that it was an accident, and apologized. However, Jeff Cavaliere has chosen the alternate route and is instead digging in his heels and insisting he uses real weight when he’s been exposed by a number of channels as a fraud, with plenty of video evidence showing him struggling much more to lift much lower numbers.
“It’s not even like one person mentioned it and then he kind of moved on,” Herman continues. “So many people are talking about it and making it known and proving that the weights are fake. For him to straight up ignore it, to me, it’s like he thinks he’s up on this cloud and he’s looking down on everybody else and they don’t matter.”
Sadly, it’s fairly common for fitness brands to lie about their gains as a way of attracting more subscribers and fans. The only difficult part for Jeff Cavaliere and Athlean-X is that they’re doing such a terrible job of it people are starting to catch on.
“Differences of opinion, being able to come together and talk about these things…that’s what intelligent people do. The problem I have with the video Jeff recently put out…is that, when he does the heavy deadlift, his form starts breaking down at 375 pounds, and he does his max pull at 425 with his form being absolute and complete garbage, which is good because you can tell that effort is real. When you compare that to the 495 touch-and-go, you can easily tell which one is him lifting actual weights.”
It begs the question — just how many fitness brands are out there putting on for social media? Jeff Cavaliere may have done a sloppy job covering his tracks but he’s certainly not the only one. The truth is, we all need to start being more honest with ourselves before we go around attacking others. Many of us are inflating our gains — when we do that, we make fitness about likes and followers, when it should be about personal growth.
*All images and media courtesy of YouTube.
