That quote is quite literally saying that fitness apps don't provide all the tools necessary to become fit and strong, or more specifically that they don't help towards the criteria listed which the poster views as necessary towards becoming fit and strong. Keep in mind the listed sport was powerlifting and not a vague 'fitness' goal, all of that advice is incredibly mainstream and is generally taken to be the advice that a powerlifter should follow. I can't see how it's suggesting that you need to follow it (and that if you don't you're not doing fitness correctly) but rather that fitness apps at best are supplementary to established knowledge and not a means to an end. This isn't entirely true of course as some apps have started incorporating programming and technique information as well as dietary information etc and can provide live coaching services at a premium, but this is starting to get beside the point.

Powerlifting as a sport is full of gimmicks and fads, the post struck out to me as calling out these gimmicks and fads and to return to the basics and bare essentials with the lowest barrier of entry, which to me seems to be for a good reason as the fads often come across as gatekeeping the sport and raising the barrier to entry in general, which begs the question, is it gatekeeping to call out such gatekeeping behaviour? To put it another way, would it be gatekeeping to suggest that healthy weight people don't need to follow fad diets to remain at a healthy weight? Is it gatekeeping to call out often times harmful fad diets? Is it denigrating to the people following said diets? The implication seems to be that it's wrong to gatekeep even if the purpose is to caution against spending money on gimmicks or fads that might not be the best way to achieve a persons goals.

> That quote is quite literally saying that fitness apps don't provide all the tools necessary to become fit and strong... I can't see how it's suggesting that you need to follow it (and that if you don't you're not doing fitness correctly)

The quote says literally that you "have to" do all these things and they "cannot be derived from apps".

> This isn't entirely true of course as some apps have started incorporating programming and technique information as well as dietary information etc and can provide live coaching services at a premium, but this is starting to get beside the point.

It's not beside the point, it is the point. The quoted claim is wrong. Everything the quote claims you can't get out of an app, actually you can.

> the post struck out to me as calling out these gimmicks and fads and to return to the basics and bare essentials with the lowest barrier of entry, which to me seems to be for a good reason as the fads often come across as gatekeeping the sport and raising the barrier to entry in general

I don't see how offering an app to do x is gatekeeping, unless someone tries to suggest that that app is the only way to do x (which is not something I've seen happening). Whereas saying that you have to do x the traditional way and anything else is never going to work, is absolutely gatekeeping.

> To put it another way, would it be gatekeeping to suggest that healthy weight people don't need to follow fad diets to remain at a healthy weight? Is it gatekeeping to call out often times harmful fad diets?

If you claim that the only way to maintain a healthy weight is the way that you do it, that's gatekeeping. If a specific diet is harmful then by all means call it out, but if you start making blanket - and false - claims like diets can never help anyone, or all diets other than the one you like are fads, then that's gatekeeping.

> The implication seems to be that it's wrong to gatekeep even if the purpose is to caution against spending money on gimmicks or fads that might not be the best way to achieve a persons goals.

That wasn't the purpose that came through in that post.