5 things we learned from quarantine & lockdowns

(mostly that we’re ready to never do that again)

Quarantine has been a curious new situation for most of us. Despite how introverts often feel, humans are made for social interaction. In the context of fitness, this usually means accountability from your friends and coaches at the gym – high-fives, shouts of encouragement during a hard workout, and the bond of communal sweat and suffering for personal betterment.

There’s a reason solitary confinement is such a harsh punishment. Take away a person’s social outlets and they slowly descend into madness. Similarly, take away a gym rat’s access to weight and watch them start squatting with jugs of water or doing pullups at their kid’s playground.

Anything to maintain those precious gains.

Here are a few things we realized over the course of our time away from friends, familiar spaces and fitness equipment.

#1 You Can Do A Lot Without Plates

Sure, you can do more WITH them, but don’t underestimate the power of an empty barbell and a TABATA timer.

For most of last summer, plates in particular were constantly out of stock or marked up by 3000% on Facebook Marketplace. So we made do, trying stuff like 50-rep back squat sets without re-racking the bar, TABATA strict presses with the resting position in the front rack, or insanely long Bear Complexes.

Spoiler alert: all of those hurt.

Relying on dumbbells and kettlebells for weight can get repetitive, so being creative with an empty barbell became a useful at-home fitness skill.

#2 The Importance Of Being In A Training Community Varies For Everyone

Having some like-minded people to keep in touch with is a good way to maintain sanity during isolation. But the degrees of that in-touchness range across the board depending on your situation and preferences.

Some people built out their home gyms stunningly with every piece of equipment you could possibly need, but still returned to the communal gym setting because something about solo training in their garage just doesn’t cut it. Other members you’ll never see again because they’re perfectly content in their home gym lair. Some do a half-and-half situation to balance WFH life, and some couples split the difference – parent A trains at home while parent B maintains their gym membership.

However it worked out for you and your gym fam, it’s curious to note the different ways fitness regulars adjusted their training life according to pandemic shutdowns.

#3 Bands Are Probably The Most Versatile Training Tool

They’re not just for rehab/prehab, warmup, pullup assists or IG booty models. Resistance bands are super cheap, lightweight, portable, and come in all sizes, lengths and resistance levels making them awesome for like, infinite training purposes. We think they’re pretty underrated.

You can create some serious training stimulus for a huge variety of movements with just one set of bands – work on hypertrophy finishers, spicy stability drills, range of motion stuff, or use them to substitute basically any cable machine movement. If you have access to nothing else, put a set of bands in your suitcase and you’ll still be able to train on vacation.

Or you can use something like WearBands to add resistance to household chores, yoga, and outdoor fun like hiking. The possibilities are truly endless.

#4 Fitness-Oriented People Can Be Incredibly Innovative

Turns out a global pandemic is great for distance coaching programs like those in our TrainHeroic Marketplace. With the boom of online programming, virtual workouts, and personal training via Zoom, there are more options than ever before for at-home fitness. 

We watched our beloved fitness communities around the world adapt to being without gym access. We saw people working out with all kinds of things when equipment demand was raging and Rogue had to hire a ton of new people just to keep up. We saw people getting creative with movements and workout space just to make sure they got a good training stimulus.

Isolation and quarantine highlighted the necessity for adaptation in the wake of losing our normal routines. Turns out, if you move your body regularly in a way that forces adaptation, your mind often follows suit.

#5 Having A Coach Makes Things Easy, But If You’re Gonna DIY, Do It Smart

Programming for yourself can come with a ton of cherry-picking pitfalls. Having someone behind the screen to help track your personal performance data is necessary for a lot of athletes to make progress.

But if you’re one of those athletes who prefers to program for themselves, TrainHeroic now offers an easy DIY system that’s lightyears better than a composition notebook. You can create sessions, log your lifts, times, maxes/PRs, and keep track of other factors like sleep and stress levels.

Check out the most efficient tool for DIY athlete programming, here.

// How We Saved Our Gym During the Pandemic

It was a Thursday in early March around 11am I received that dreaded phone call.  

All gyms were going to be shut down indefinitely due to COVID-19. We barely had time to shake off the shock before we had to take action.

With 3 locations, nearly a thousand members to manage, and a team of 6 coaches, we needed to quickly provide a solution to keep our base training during the shutdown before cancellations piled up.  

Our gym members are accustomed to personal programming and exercise guidance. 

Our packages ranged from $99-199 per month. We have developed a unique fitness system where each member receives individual programming and guidance in a group setting. There’s no preset templates or whiteboard workouts for all.  

We like to say, “It’s like personal training at a group fitness value.” Our members had come to expect a high level of value for the cost of their membership, and we knew we’d need to deliver.

Our First Attempt

By that Saturday we had launched a Facebook live workout series…but it was group training that lacked a personal touch. It would only get us so far.

Then we tried live Zoom classes. It worked for a while, but attendance started to fade due to the rigid time frames of our sessions and our clients’ lives being thrown into chaos. Again, the personal touch was lacking. Our members were used to exercise customized to their goals, and that was difficult to deliver in a single group Zoom class.

Both Facebook Live and Zoom were a decent quick fix, band-aid solution to keep members engaged. However, we quickly ran into other speed bumps.

For example, what if one member had more equipment at home than the others at the session?

This happened on several occasions. A member loved TRX exercises. However, no one else on the Zoom or FB Live class had that equipment. So we had to program it out.

She became frustrated and was ready to cancel her membership until we introduced her to the TrainHeroic platform where our coaches could integrate in her personal equipment. Fortunately, she has stayed active and happy for an additional 8 months now.

Another major setback was that a single group class run through Zoom or Facebook Live also doesn’t allow for personalized programming based on specific abilities.

We have a member that has two replaced knees. At each group zoom or Facebook Live that he attended, we had to quickly program out all knee flexion exercises so he didn’t feel physically hurt, embarrassed, or left out. Of course, this limited the programming for the rest of the group.

The final speed bump was the personalized guidance (coaching) I hinted at earlier. We couldn’t effectively track who participated in these virtual classes, even on replay. Therefore, we didn’t know who was being helped and who was being left out.

We faced a dilemma. How could we continue to provide the value our members expected from us?

Then a friend recommended TrainHeroic

First, we reached out to members and offered three options.

They could put their memberships on hold or continue at their normal rate for their choice of Facebook Live or TrainHeroic personal programming.

We didn’t discount our rates for these services, because we were confident we could provide equal value to what our members had become accustomed to with a combination of live classes and personalized coaching on the TrainHeroic app.

We ran Facebook Live classes every day at 9am for a general fitness group training and used TrainHeroic for those that wanted specific programs for their fitness level or home equipment.

We used the platform to save another 150 memberships. By learning from our early missteps with virtual classes, and focusing on providing what our members have come to value, we focused on three things.

Step 1 – Visual connection feels personal and is important

We hired a videographer for 2 hours. He came in and shot 15 second clips of our trainers doing over 100 exercises.

TrainHeroic has an exercise database already to go and we added this for a personal flare. The software allowed us to put our video link right next to each exercise so we could drop them in a program seamlessly.

I’d HIGHLY recommend videoing you or your staff delivering the exercises to keep connection with your members.

Step 2 – Create Program Templates

Our staff quickly put in general exercise templates into our TrainHeroic account. They were able to pull those templates into a member’s calendar and then customize it for that individual person.

It made it MUCH faster than reprogramming everything from scratch each week. Our coaches that managed the TrainHeroic side would make 1 week templates for people with 2, 3, or 4 sessions per week.

Step 3 – Checking in with clients is vital

TrainHeroic notifies us when a member completes a session so we can keep tabs on them.

During our Friday sweep through, we’d then use TH’s built in messenger (TH Chat) to check in individually with our members. We’d exchange everything from a funny meme or to a heartfelt motivating message.

That accountability piece was so important to keeping our members engaged, and very easy to reach out through the TH software.

Moving Forward Into the Future

We’re in a state with heavy lockdowns and have been going through this for over 7 months. Some members have returned, some aren’t ready. Others want to come in once a week and do personal home workouts during the rest of their sessions.

As a brick and mortar gym, we have 1 major advantage over online only training…we’ve built valuable relationships in person first. So our packages all remained at the same rate. Members can come in 2, 3 or 4 times a week or any mix of in person and online.

For example, a member with a 3x per week package can do 1 check in workout in person with their trainer and 2 TrainHeroic sessions or vice versa. Members appreciate the flexibility in making it all work around their schedules!

TrainHeroic has let us ride these waves with a simple solution that our members have truly enjoyed.

We’ll still use it long after we’ve re-opened.

TrainHeroic was an essential piece of the puzzle to pull our company through the lockdowns. We used it to add a personal touch, hold members accountable, and provide them a higher perceived value than a regular streaming workout.

// setting up your gym stream for Live Fitness Classes

For several years, my wife and I have been talking about the need to expand our coaching beyond the four walls of our gym. 

We have social media followers all over the country and across the world and more and more of them have expressed an interest in training with us. But something always seemed to pop up and divert our time and energy in other directions, so we never got past the planning stages. 

It took the COVID-19 pandemic abruptly slamming our doors shut to push us into making virtual classes a reality. 

Initially, we used a combination of my laptop and our cell phones to record and conduct online classes that were all circuit based. 

Once we were given the OK to reopen CORE Strong Fitness, it gave us the opportunity to rethink the format of how we delivered coaching virtually, what we could do to make better use of our space, and how we could offer classes simultaneously to clients who were rejoining us in the gym and those who were more comfortable continuing from home. 

First, we needed to figure out what our community needed and how they were planning to train with us moving forward from the COVID-19 reopening. So we sent out a survey to all our members to get their feedback. 

The results showed that around 40 percent planned to come into the gym, while 60 percent indicated they’d prefer to attend online classes for the time being. 

In the first couple of weeks, we’d only offered our two most popular classes virtually: 6 AM and 5:15 PM. But it soon became clear that this was a barrier to many members who couldn’t make it to those sessions, so we also decided to offer our 8 AM, 10 AM, and 4:30 PM express (a shorter workout) classes to both in-person and virtual clients. 

We also realized that the circuit training format wasn’t as effective as we’d hoped, and so chose to switch to individual stations with certain pieces of equipment, such as kettlebells and TRX Suspension Trainers, instead. This made for smoother transitions, helped us implement stronger safety protocols to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, and maximized the use of our floor space in the gym itself. 

It also simplified things for people at home who were training in smaller rooms.

Outfitting a Streaming Station

When thinking about the placement of our streaming technology, we considered the best position for allowing whoever was coaching to both keep an eye on what’s happening on the gym floor and pay attention to what online clients were doing. 

This meant mounting a 40-inch screen on an extendable arm onto a thin pillar. To upgrade the video quality, we purchased a GoPro HERO8 camera and after a lot of testing, decided on the best spot to mount it. Then we realized that this camera doesn’t have an HDMI out port, so we had to buy a converter and a cam link to connect to our computer. 

High resolution video is of little use without a stable internet connection, so we paid to upgrade our package to the highest level and hardwired a line to avoid the interruptions that can come from a router malfunctioning or shutting down. 

To make doubly sure of continuous uptime, we could use one of our laptops if the new Mac mini that we invested in went down for any reason and switch to a smartphone if the GoPro stopped working. A month of trial and error and equipment research also enabled us to dramatically improve the quality of our audio by purchasing a high-end Bluetooth wireless microphone. 

It allows us to deliver coaching cues from across the room rather than needing to get up close to the camera (one of the challenges we’d identified after reviewing video of our early recorded classes).

Keeping In-Person and Online Clients Connected

As important as it was to dial in our equipment, it was even more significant to make everyone – whether they’re joining us in person or online – feel like they’re an important part of the experience and our community. 

This is one of the main reasons we chose to run each class for both groups at the same time, rather than separating them (with time and resource limitations being a secondary factor). 

Now someone who’s in the gym can say, “Oh look, there’s Ian training at home,” and Ian can say, “Hey John, how’s it going in the gym?” 

Beyond the banter between our clients that helps add a sense of normalcy and togetherness, the coaches also make a point of acknowledging each and every client, whether we’re actually in the room with them or not. 

We’ve continued to celebrate good efforts even though I’ve had to stop my usual high-fives for now.

Another way we’ve made people feel included and appreciated is to designate a “demo king” and “demo queen” for each of the workouts. 

Having someone else to demonstrate frees the coach up to concentrate on cueing and correcting technique errors, while also empowering the king or queen of the session to be front and center. 

As they’re always eager to perform the exercises with perfect form, it’s also a nice way to reinforce movement quality. 

Plus, they come away with the confidence that they’re at a high enough level to be able to demonstrate to their peers.

Improving Reach and Value Proposition

It’s tempting to revert back to in-person only classes now that your gym has hopefully reopened, but making them dual purpose allows you to expand your services and revenue sources. 

Setting up a streaming station gives you a gateway to people in other cities, states, and countries so they can improve their health and fitness wherever they are. 

Opening up a free trial class to members of Facebook groups has allowed us to reach potential new clients in new locations. We’ve had multiple people across the US sign up and recently added our first paying member in the Netherlands.

Existing members are also benefiting because their all-access membership passes now include the option to either join us at the gym or participate in their home. We’re recording all our sessions and adding them to a categorized online library as well. 

This way, even if someone can’t make it to a live class they can still train at a more convenient time. In addition to opening up all our classes to online clients, we’re also offering our FMS movement assessment virtually. 

This allows us to better understand someone’s challenges and tailor their training accordingly.  

COVID-19 presented new and unprecedented challenges to gym owners. Ultimately, it came down to a simple choice for us: either we give up and fail or we adapt and thrive. 

It took several months, a lot of education, and a continual dialogue with our community to make it happen, but we chose the latter and made it work. 

Now we can reach more people than ever before and, as a result, help them achieve their health, fitness, and wellness goals.

// Harness the Power of Motivation and Mindset to Optimize Results When Transitioning to Remote Training

Many athletes, however, struggle with staying motivated and keeping a proper mindset when transitioning to remote training.

During my time as a Scout Sniper Team Leader in Iraq to coaching athletes in my gym for the past 8 years I’ve learned how important motivation and mindset are. 

It’s critical to address these issues because athletes who lose motivation are less likely to achieve their goals. 

Training with a sub-optimal mindset leads to suboptimal results! 

Over the years I have identified three critical training components to add to your training that will keep your motivation high and your mindset positive-helping you achieve great results in remote training.

1. Mental warm up

Going into a training session with a positive mindset allows you to harness your potential and give your best available effort, leading to better results. 

Conversely, with a negative mindset you’re constantly battling yourself and have less energy to attack your training session. 

We all know the importance of a physical warm up prior to training, but it’s just as important to go through a mental warm up as well. 

There are two areas to your mental warm up-Getting Into an Optimal Headspace and Setting The Tone for Your Session.

Optimal Headspace

However, even the best of us can get into a funk, making it tough to bring our “A Game” when training. 

I’ve had numerous athletes over the years tell me one main benefit of training at my gym was that all they had to do was “Walk Through The Doors”. 

They knew that if they could just get into the gym, I would get them into an optimal headspace, regardless of their stresses or challenges outside the gym. This is a critical component of ensuring maximization of each training session.

The best way to get your head right is to identify how the training session will help goal accomplishment.

Prioritizing the training in your mind, leads to a positive mindset.

Begin your “mental warm up” by reading your written training goal(s). This does mean you’ll need to write your goals down! Then ask yourself how the upcoming session will help you progress toward those goals.

Setting The Tone

When I took the time to focus my team on the task and mentally prepare them for what we would encounter beyond the wire, the missions tended to be successful. When I was rushed and skipped this part of the preparatory process, the missions tended to have more hiccups. 

The second step of a mental warm up is to set the tone for your training session. Remove distractions (i.e. put your phone on Do Not Disturb) to help focus on your training. Take 1 to 2 minutes to review your session and verbally tell yourself what mental approach you’ll need for each section of the training. 

Plan your Work and Work your Plan!

2. In session evaluation

You’ve spent time mentally preparing for your training going through your Mental Warm Up, but training, like life, doesn’t always go as planned. It’s critical you give yourself every opportunity to keep your mindset positive and your motivation high throughout your training. 

We use two tools to optimize mindset and motivation mid-training: Mid Workout Halts and Real Time Pushes.

Mid Workout Halts

What was a challenging goal is now too easy and leaves gains on the table. And what if it’s a day where it took all your energy just to drag your butt into the gym? Now what was a challenging goal seems impossible, making it easy to beat yourself up and get in a negative headspace, further minimizing your results.

During combat patrols our Team would take periodic breaks, called Security Halts. 

These Security Halts gave my team a chance to rest during an arduous stretch of terrain, but more importantly, they gave me the opportunity to evaluate how the mission was going. Were we staying on course? Were certain team members struggling? Halts were planned opportunities to make course corrections. 

It’s critical you plan your own “Security Halts”, or Eval Breaks, when training remotely to take advantage of days you’re on fire or keep an optimal mindset on days you’re struggling. 

First, plan where and when you’ll take breaks to evaluate and adjust your training before beginning your session for the day. 

Don’t get so focused on completing training as fast as possible that you neglect to pause and reflect on how the training session is going. It’s easier to adjust when you are having a day where everything is coming easy. Pause and ensure you are squeezing every last drop out of the session. 

It’s even more important to break briefly to evaluate on days where you’re dragging. The key here is to reflect quickly on your long-term goals and realize that any work is better than no work. 

Always determine to find the positives in the situation, which keeps you in a constructive mindset, leading to better results.

Real Time Push from Lifting Partners

I’ve trained on my own for years, and while I’m enough of a self-starter to get results, the best training I’ve done has been in real time with a lifting partner.

There’s nothing like sprint training with a partner who’s a tenth of a second faster than you. You’re able to find that extra gear trying your best to catch them! This doesn’t have to be something you leave behind when switching to remote training. 

TrainHeroic has built an amazing platform allowing you to connect with the other athletes on your training team. Reach out to one of them or a friend and set up a Zoom meeting so you can train at the same time. 

Determine set times, ideally during your Eval Breaks, when you can briefly check in to motivate and encourage each other through the training session. Leaderboards and assigned percentages from your coach are great motivational tools, but nothing beats the real time push you can get from one (or more!) fellow athletes.

3. Mental Cool Down

There is always room for growth and little details on a Combat Mission can be the difference between life and death. However, it can be hard to achieve balance during these After Actions. 

Many highly driven people don’t waste time praising themselves for what they’ve done well but focus on where they can improve. There are numerous benefits to a driving mindset including fighting complacency and pushing you or your team to new heights. 

However, this mindset can easily lead to burnout when victories are never celebrated. 

Conversely, many successful individuals have a large ego and feel there is no need for them to change anything up. This mindset can easily lead to stagnation and limit them from reaching their full potential. 

This is a key piece in your own training- To do this on your own, perform a self-evaluation after each session. Find one thing you crushed in your workout and then one area where you could have done better. 

By identifying one positive component, you’ll build a positive mindset by celebrating what you’ve done well. This can have a snowball effect building momentum and confidence, furthering your ability to maintain high motivation levels. 

When you identify the one area where you could have done better, you give yourself a new goal, continuing to keep motivation high. Remember, motivation falls off when you believe there is nothing more to accomplish. Balance is critical in your after actions-don’t get too high, but don’t beat yourself up. 

Wrapping It All up

By incorporating three easy steps, a Mental Warm Up, Mid-Session Eval Breaks and a Mental Cool Down, remote athletes can put themselves in the best mindset possible and keep their motivation high.

// Improve Your Gym And Think Like Kondō

“Clutter is caused by a failure to return things to where they belong,” author Marie Kondō writes in her hit book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. 

Such a shortcoming was exactly what came to mind when I recently saw a post from a CrossFit box owner who lives fairly close to me in Kansas City. 

The image he put on his Facebook feed showed a jumbled pile of medicine balls crammed between some kettlebells and weight plates. He was imploring his members to do a better job of putting items where they’re supposed to go, instead of just shoving them somewhere random. 

This got me thinking about tidiness at my own gym and how having a place for everything and everything in its place might also benefit you, your facility, and your business. 

We’ve all been inside a facility like that CrossFit box I just mentioned (not to pick on CrossFit at all – such clutter is all too common at gyms of every kind). 

Maybe it’s a tangle of jump ropes that first catches the eye, dumbbells left carelessly on the floor, or a pile of sweaty mats messing up the stretching/mobility area. Regardless, the initial impression that imprints in the brain is one of chaos and disorder. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who’s a guest and is comparing several local gyms before deciding which to join. 

Would you be more or less likely to give this gym your business because of how it looks? 

Beyond mere appearances, a messy space says something about how you treat your trainers and clients. It demonstrates a lack of care and suggests that you’ve let attention to detail and pride in your work slip. If you were the gym owner responsible for this disordered space with its haphazard equipment setup, you might say something like, “But it’s not me that makes the mess – it’s the people who don’t clean up after themselves.” 

Certainly, there is an element of individual responsibility here and, just like the supermarket that cannot force its customers to put carts away rather than leaving them to block parking spaces, you cannot force your members to be model citizens. 

But as a gym owner the buck stops with you, and you can encourage your clientele to be cleaner and tidier. Labeling is a simple place to start. If everyone can clearly see a shelf that says “Medicine balls,” then they’ll know where to go after they’ve done their tosses, twists, or slams. 

You could even go one better by clearly and legibly writing “10-pound medicine ball,” “20-pound medicine ball,” and so on in the appropriate spots. The same goes for your dumbbell and kettlebell racks. This way, there’s no ambiguity and people know exactly where to put their equipment.

Tips For A Clean Gym

Leading By Example

Modeling the behavior that you want others to display is another important yet often overlooked tactic that will help you keep your gym tidy. 

If clients – or those who might decide to join – see you and your training staff returning equipment and tidying up between sessions, they’re likely to follow suit. Subconsciously, your willingness to take the lead will also show that you have high standards and expect them of your staff. This sets a high bar and makes a good first impression on regulars and visitors alike. 

A secondary benefit to treating your equipment with care is that it will last longer. I’ve been in gyms where kettlebells are placed roughly on concrete floors, which can damage the bells themselves and could crack the concrete. Then there are those facilities in which other gear is piled up on top of kettlebells and dumbbells, which can lead to the handles becoming rough – not fun if you’re doing swings or snatches.

I’ve also come across sand bags and balls that are leaking because the sides are split. This might not happen immediately, but over time if your equipment has a shorter shelf life, you’ll end up shelling out for replacements, driving up your costs. 

Whereas if trainers and members alike treat everything with the respect it deserves, you’ll protect your investment and keep your gear in appealing, like-new shape. That’s one more win from a member retention standpoint. 

Keeping your gym well-organized can also make your staff more effective. When a trainer says, “OK everyone, go grab a 25-pound kettlebell and a 10-pound slam ball,” you don’t want everyone to run off on a long treasure hunt. 

They should know exactly where to find whatever they need and, when possible, this should be centrally located to avoid delays. You want clients focusing on going into their workout with enthusiasm and a desire to learn, not wasting energy looking high and low for the tools they need to get the job done.

Make The Most Of Your Space

As I was ruminating on the philosophical and practical differences between a tidy gym and a cluttered one, I thought of how much more difficult it would be for our gym to offer our members high-quality service if they couldn’t move around the facility easily. We only have 1,500 square feet and I want to make the most of every available inch. 

This is why we keep as much equipment along the edges as possible, utilize space-saving storage options, and mount all our TRX Suspension Trainers to a single rig rather than having individual stations. 

Tidiness isn’t a policy for its own sake but exists to help our clients get the most from their experience each and every time they walk through the front door. 

That’s why we declutter after every session and have arranged our equipment to help people flow effortlessly instead of them feeling like they’re running an obstacle course. 

Keeping order throughout the day also allows us to save time in the evening. As I mentioned in a previous post, we’re already investing extra effort in keeping our gym clean in the wake of COVID-19. It’s so much easier to go down a nice straight line of kettlebells with a cloth and spray bottles than it would be if they were strewn about randomly. 

The same goes for the TRX straps and all our other gear. As every item is returned to where it belongs, my staff and I can clean more thoroughly, effectively, and efficiently. This helps keep our members safer. 

Make no mistake: this is still a tough time for gym owners. 

Even if your city, district, and state authorities have allowed all the facilities in your area to open and you have a loyal membership base, I know all too well that many people are still reluctant to return to where they used to train before the pandemic struck. And those who’ve never had a gym membership are reluctant to sign up for one. With this in mind, your gym needs every competitive advantage it can get.

If your trainers, equipment, and location are nearly identical to other facilities in your area, maintaining a clean and tidy space might be the difference between gaining a client and losing them.

// How to Get Clients for Your Coaching Business Amidst COVID-19

It has felt like an eternity since we first went on lockdown due to the threats of COVID-19. With more waves popping up around the world, it doesn’t seem like a return to normal will happen anytime soon. This has spurred the question for many people who train, is it safe to return to the gym?

There are a number of things that trouble us during tough times as a coach, particularly when it comes to keeping our business moving forward. I’ve asked myself this question a number of times, even before the lockdown was official: “How am I going to get new clients if nobody is going to the gym?” Believe it or not, the first thing you’re going to want to do is drop your prices because it seems sensible.

DON’T DO IT!

Why do I say this? Because your credibility still remains the same. You haven’t changed anything that should warrant you doing so. You’re still providing the same services; you’re still coaching. Bad move to even consider it.

Secondly, you start telling everyone you’re moving ONLINE. Ok, that’s a smart move, but every man and his dog is doing that, so what are you doing different again, nothing.

Thirdly, you start creating silly get-rich-quick schemes to fill your time. Yes, this is good for generating likes and clicks to your website, but not encouraging anyone to work with you.

Your focus is to get leads. You want names, numbers and contact details, so you can start telling people your story. The following tips will help get more clients for your coaching business.

5 Tips to Getting More Clients

Time To Show The World

With these five tips, you can start sharing your story and generating some genuine interest in your coaching business

But most of all have FUN and remember no one likes a robot!

// The Motorway Theory to Your Coaching Business

We all experience challenges and uncertainty on a daily basis. Perhaps now more than ever. It can be tough to overcome these challenges if we don’t have the right mechanisms in place to do so.

I recently explained to an athlete that coaching is like a motorway, each lane with cars travelling at specific speeds. Each lane has its own characteristics (often slow, medium, fast) but it is still one complete road heading in the same direction.

Imagine there’s a car in front of you that you need to overtake (in this case COVID-19), so you maneuver the car to overtake. You change your driving to adapt to the challenge in front of you. Firstly you look in the mirrors to check what’s around you, select the indicator and when it’s clear you proceed to overtake.

Coaching isn’t too dissimilar to this on a daily basis. For example, an athlete has an issue with their session, maybe they can’t perform certain exercises, then the coach has a decision to make, taking into account all the factors and finding the appropriate means to overcome the athlete’s issues you follow the same method.

We can apply this same strategy to our lives for training around COVID-19, even though it might feel a little different.

So what has changed as a result of COVID-19?

The environment and variety of equipment available to you….Likely. But what else?

NOTHING ELSE. It’s just 1 thing that has physically changed. YOU CAN STILL COACH, YOU JUST HAVE TO ADAPT ACCORDINGLY.

tips to help your coaching business on track

Summary

If you want to learn what else you can do to adapt yourself there are many other means to creating a pathway to success.

Feel free to reach out to me.

// How I Took My College Strength Programs Online During COVID-19

My entire career, I’ve been teaching young men and women how to perform Olympic lifts in person. Sure, I’ve made an online strength program or two, but when it comes to dispensing knowledge and giving instruction, I’m most comfortable doing both face to face. Then suddenly, along came COVID-19 and this was no longer an option. And just like that, the football, basketball, soccer, and other players that I get so much joy from working with were gone from campus, and there was a chain on the door of the weight room where I’ve practiced my craft for the past decade. 

After I’d gotten past the initial sadness and frustration, it became a matter of figuring out what was next. How could I continue to serve my athletes and keep them as physically prepared as possible for whenever our school administration and their sports’ governing bodies issued the all-clear to return to campus and resume the competitive calendar? 

The simple answer, of course, was to somehow put my strength programs online and make sure that as many athletes as possible had access to them. Then I wanted to make myself available to answer questions, overcome the lack of equipment availability, and stay engaged with my student-athletes. Here is how I took my college strength program online during the COVID-19 shutdowns.

Steps to Take My Strength Programs  Online

// Why Online Personal Training and Virtual Coaching is Here to Stay

The billion dollar fitness industry has felt a massive shift in the last couple of months due to the Coronavirus outbreak. Gyms and clubs across the country have had to close their doors to customers. Even giant Gym chains like 24 Hour Fitness are on the brink of bankruptcy due, in part, to the virus.

While some states begin to slowly open up, allowing gyms and other fitness centers to operate, there are still a lot of public concerns around safety. A survey conducted in April 2020 coined the “COVID-19 Fitness Survey” reported that 34% of gym exercisers have or plan to cancel their gym memberships after COVID-19.

So where does this leave us? We know we have more questions than answers. But, one thing is certain. The fitness industry we use to know is about to drastically alter post-COVID-19.

Although some gyms begin to open up across the country these are unprecedented times. The data, trends, and news sources would suggest assuming a swift return to normal is a gamble. Is it one you want to take with your business? The fitness industry is shifting. As a gym owner or trainer you have to be prepared. Here are a few reasons why online personal training is here to stay.

4 Reasons Why Online Personal Training is Here to Stay

Wager like Pascal

Pascal’s wager is an argument in philosophy presented by the seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal. It posits that humans bet with their lives that God either exists or does not.

However, Pascal’s wager is not about faith. It’s about risk management. 

Think of online personal training from a risk management standpoint. If you invest in remote training and the world does go back to normal, you only gain. If it doesn’t, you’ve protected your business. It’s a lot safer bet to invest in diversifying your income streams than to bet the world suddenly forgets a killer virus.

To Summarize

COVID-19 has turned many businesses on their heads. The economic riptide it will have is just now being seen. The old fitness industry has crumpled seemingly overnight. But there is hope. If you are willing to adapt and innovate you can not only survive this economic downturn, you can actually thrive. Online trainers are here to stay!

// Stepping Up to the Challenge as a Gym Owner

It’s nice to see so many uplifting social media posts in the fitness world, and to hear about the kind things people in the industry have been doing for one another during the COVID-19 shutdown. I’m a naturally positive and optimistic person, so I can buy into this “let’s come together” spirit. But I also need to be real and tell you that as an extroverted person, these past few months have been a real struggle for me. Some days I haven’t felt like posting Pollyanna-ish messages of hope, but rather venting my frustrations. On others, all I want to do is scream. In this post, I’ll candidly share my experiences as a coach, small business owner, and family man, in the hope that you can find something beneficial in my words and story.

On March 15, my in-person coaching stopped instantly and I lost 75 percent of my income overnight. I don’t care what profession you’re in – that’d be a big blow for anyone to absorb. And I’ll be honest – it knocked me on my ass. My usual positivity was replaced with confusion, anger, and rage, and for a while, I couldn’t push past that. I’ve always been a hard worker, but you cannot simply outwork a global pandemic because the situation is far bigger than any one individual or company.

It’s okay to not be okay

In the end, I had to tell my wife that I was going to take a “shit day.” No, this has nothing to do with going out and buying a Squatty Potty. Rather, I had to create a situation in which I gave myself permission to stop working and fully experience the tornado of emotion that was encircling me. I cried, I hit the heavy bag, I ran until I felt like my legs were going to give out. That afternoon, my wife asked me, “Are you done yet?” I wasn’t, and took another couple of hours to process the volatile feelings that had welled up and were threatening to consume me. 

Then the next day, we got out a big white board and some markers, started scribbling ideas, and got back to business. Fortunately, we weren’t starting from zero, despite being down to a quarter of our pre-COVID income. In October, I’d started dipping my toes in the remote coaching waters via a French company, and my good friend and TRX performance director Chris Frankel asked me to do some online sessions for him.

Find the right Energy

Yet I had to reckon with the reality that many of my clients were gone, at least temporarily. Because I have a family to feed, I had no choice but to get creative and win new business. This meant conducting a lot of sales calls to replace that lost income. For a while, I really hated it. But then I realized that I didn’t have to play the role of the used car salesman and do a hard sell. Rather, if I was simply myself and let my passion for movement-based functional training shine through, the kind of clients I wanted would become inspired and come on board. This was a crucial epiphany that allowed me to stop pushing back against something I don’t like doing and am not very adept at. 

I also thought back to some of the lessons my mom used to teach me as a kid. She was all about cultivating the right kind of “energia,” which is Portuguese for “energy.” I used to get frustrated when she’d remind me over and over to only surround myself with positive people, but as a husband and father, I’ve come to realize the power in this. Energy never truly dissipates, but you can amplify it in a good way if you have those kinds of people with you, and diminish it if instead they tear you down and discourage you. So I’ve tried to focus on putting out the right sort of energia in my community and have directed what little free time I’ve had since the shutdown began to talk with close friends who are additive rather than subtractive.

Remember your worth

This camaraderie lifted my spirits (and hopefully theirs in return) from a friendship perspective. I’m also blessed to be part of a TRX coaching community in which we freely share ideas, knowledge, and expertise. As my wife and I were spit-balling ideas to rebuild our business, I toyed with the notion of lowering my coaching fee. Yet every single coach I talked to advised me against it, reminding me of all the years I’ve put into this and, as a result, my value. They also discouraged me from offering the kind of “buy eight training sessions, get two free” model that you’ve probably seen many coaches putting on their social media feeds.

Sure, we need creative ways to entice new clients to replace those we’ve lost due to COVID-19. But again, it comes back to how you define value. If you devalue yourself and your services too much, you’ll be working 24/7 and will set a bad precedent among your athletes. From that point on, they’re always going to be expecting a “bro deal” from you, and if you don’t give it to them, they might well leave and find a coach who will. At the end of the day, this is not a game I’m willing to play.

Takeaways

If you asked me for three pieces of advice for your own post-COVID-19 coaching business, here’s what I’ve got.