I don't think anyone without a fitness qualification should be giving fitness advice

Arguably, the difference is that it's more difficult to establish liability against one of the traditional vocational professions than it is to establish liability for poor advice from someone giving advice that could be relied upon to your detriment in another field.

Of course, this isn't legal advice even if it's well-known that I am a lawyer.

But if you have a situation where someone goes over to Legal Discussion and looks for advice and someone who either is or isn't legally qualified gives an answer (it actually doesn't really matter whether pseudonymous users are Judges of the Supreme Court or village idiots) purporting to be legal advice, if the person who follows that "advice" comes to some ill as a result, there is a high threshold for trying to establish that anyone in particular - the site, the pseudonymous "advice giver" etc. - having anything close to liability for that due to the protected nature of the advice.

Whereas if someone is purporting to give advice that is not of the kind that has the same protected nature, such as strength and fitness, liability might attach under the ordinary principles of negligence, a much much lower threshold.

Just to give an example that I am familiar with, a friend of mine had a PT who she was paying handsomely for "advice" regarding strength and conditioning. During one of the sessions, my friend sustained an injury to her back that has led to her suffering from a permanent impairment. She will never recover from this injury.

Now, the nature of that particular unregulated sector of "advice" means that liability attaches on the basis of negligence simpliciter and there is no need to prove the advice deviated from a professional norm or any of the difficulties with establishing liability for bad legal or medical advice. Essentially, as these things go, it's a slam dunk of a case. And I never say those words. (In this case, my friend decided not to pursue any legal action, which is why I am giving the example.)

The point is, though, that it doesn't matter whether the PT in the example had a PhD in exercising (if such a thing were possible) or had just looked at some Mr Motivator videos on YouTube, liability attaches on a relatively objective basis in the circumstances.

Deleted User wrote: »

ive read that twice and have no idea whether you think the answer is yes or no

you must be a lawyer!

The question isn't articulated as one that would give rise to a yes or no answer?

My post was in response to the one above it, asking in what way fitness advice is different from other kinds of advice that are expressly not allowed.