January ain't what it used to be.

Why the January gym rush wont happen this year.

There was a time in the fitness industry when everyone waited for January.

Sales targets were cranked up and everyone braced themselves. Most of the years finances were dependent on the first 2 months of the year.

People keep asking me if it is busy yet, are all the new people taking over all the equipment. The answer as always at the start of January is no.

The first 2 weeks of January in my experience are never that busy anyway. People stay away because they think it will be busy or they are still at home finishing off the last of the Baileys and Stilton before they can start their exercise plan.

The people you see in the gyms in January are normally returning members, people upping their number of visits, not substantially new people. Most of the people you seen in the gym in January are the people you saw all year round, they are just visiting more.

Everyone is posting up memes on social media of the January gym rush. Everyone expects it to happen, but it hasn't really happened like that in a few years. Everyone hypes it up, and this may put people off coming because they think it's going to be crowded.

This probably wont happen. Source: every fitness person on the internet

I don't think the rush is going to happen. The last couple of years I've noticed the rush in January isn't as big, and there is a much more even pattern of people joining throughout the year.

The busiest I've seen the gym I work in is actually in August, with all the students returning and working out.

I was training in a budget gym this morning, which has over 4000 members, it was quieter than normal. The same gym in December on a Wednesday afternoon, you couldn't move in the weights area for bro's.

Possibly, the public have got wise. The industry is now relatively old. Twenty years ago, no joining fees and joining a gym were a novelty. Now, the discounts are old hat, and most of the public are not so wedded to the idea of joining a gym in January. They have either 1) already joined one and stayed 2) Or have joined and dropped out so many time they realize this is not going to work for them.

I could be overestimating the mood of the general populous. As I would have thought everyone would have got wise to Boxing Day, Black Friday, January sales but they patently have not.

The market is also increasingly fragmented, 15 years ago, you either joined one of the big health club chains (Esporta, LA Fitness, Canons, Holmes Place - remember them?) or your local leisure centre or sat at home with your Davina workout DVD.

Now you can join a budget gym, sign up to 30 days of yoga for free on youtube, join a crossfit gym, go to a yoga studio, do clubbercise in your local hall, join a local micro gym, go to a PT studio, find a local PT online (with a professional looking website), buy a programme online, do a bootcamp in the park, have a gym in your garage, download an app, go for a run, buy a bicycle and joining a club or go for a walk.

A personal trainer friend of mine recently said January is good for gyms but not so good for PTs, people join gyms thinking they can do it themselves, realize they can't and then find a PT in March. He could be right.

I think January may not be so good for gyms anymore.

This is a good thing, as an industry and model we have matured, we have a more even stream of income throughout the year. We are not cashing in so much on broken dreams and promises.

I've noticed more and more gyms, local and multi site now offering 3 day and 5 day passes to entice people in, it seems to have overtaken the no joining fee sale. Probably because no joining fee is now available all year round, and no one sees it as a special offer anymore.

But the people who use your free pass in January are essentially the same people who use it the rest of the year (unless you are in a large town with a large turn over of population and a transient workforce).

In most gyms now, the cardio equipment is hardly ever all in use. The weights areas are full. You don't see anyone putting their towel on the screen to cover up the time, next to the sticker that says 20 mins only on a treadmill. The queue is for the power rack now*

This implies to me that most gym users are 'experienced' in some fashion, most newbies steer clear of freeweights areas and stick to cardio.

The people who go to the gym, go more and get more value for money, and the people who don't go, don't go at all.

The exception to this may be the budget gyms, that rely on 5,000 people not all turning up at the same time.

Something is shifting, the paradigm is changing, and something is going to happen but I'm not sure what yet.

Fitness companies and trade magazines will naturally remain buoyant in their appraisal of January and February and the market penetration and number of people joining. But that doesn't help move things on.

I hope when sales targets are missed and income levels drop, companies don't try and do more of the same, make more calls, give out more free passes. The game has changed. The strategy needs to change too.

Of course, I could be wrong. You could go to the gym next week and it is full of newbies and all the equipment is in use. In which case, welcome them, we were all beginners once.



*Freeweight areas are much busier and cardio areas much quieter in gyms: I've noticed this in the gym I work at, a local independent gym but more importantly at a large budget gym I go to. This budget gym has a whole floor of cardio equipment, 20 plus treadmills etc, and it is hardly ever more than half full, and mostly empty. Whereas, the floor with all the resistance machines and freeweights can be very busy and full. Walking in this gym, it is like going back 20 years, the cardio area is mainly women and older people, the weights area is 99% young guys with the occasional women venturing in; hats off to them for not being intimidated by the bro 'love in' and skinny jogging bottoms. I'm pleased to say where I work the freeweights area has just as many women in it and sometimes more women than men, all credit to the coaching team for achieving this. It's easy to forget that some parts of the industry haven't moved on and certain things are still not the norm.

Leisure is dying. But something new will emerge. Part 2.

For part one go here

So in part one we looked at some of the problems facing the industry, now we have to ask some tough questions and be open to new answers.

Sacred Cows and Lost Opportunities.

The most important thing we can do to find new solutions is break out of the old model of doing things. And the first way to do this is in the way we listen and really go back to the basic fundamental question of why does this business exist and who is it for?

U Lab and Otto Scharmer talk about 4 levels of listening. Most listening we do in meetings is at the basic level 1, this is where everyone sounds the same, talking nice and saying what the boss wants to hear, we are not learning anything new. Even at the next level of debate, all we are doing is listening and reacting, trying to defend our position, not getting beyond our point of view.

Scharmer gives an example of when American automobile executives visited Japan in the 1980's to look at the they way they were producing cars. When they returned they were  convinced the Japanese hadn't shown them the real factory as it was too clean and organised. They couldn't get past their own perceptions of what their industry should look like even when presented with evidence there was a different way.

To really move on we need to go to the next level of reflective dialogue and collective creativity. We need to ask genuine questions, to move away from blame and not just defending view points and excepting all the sacred cows we cannot change.

Here are a few leisure industry/ fitness industry sacred cows and trite statements and products that we persist with, that we all buy into:-

• Of course no one is in this industry for the money
• Swimming pools are a money pit but we can't get rid of them
• We have a sauna and steam room that most customers don't use
• We have a monthly membership
• People buy PT in blocks
• Of course we need to have PT
• Why do studio instructors get paid 3x more than lifeguards
• We have to open at 6am, 7am, 24 hours to compete
• We have to have student discounts even though this group is already spending £9000 a year minimum on education and is therefore willing to get into massive debt
• We have to have discounts for the over 60's even though at the moment this age group have more disposable income than people in their late 20's
• We have to keep running kids birthday parties even though they are a massive hassle, we can never find the staff to run them and the parents complain
• We have to have badminton courts that make us £10 per hour maximum where a small PT gym in the same space as a court would make £100 per hour
• We're not in it to make a profit but we do have a profit and loss spreadsheet. Leisure is somehow different from all other industries and can't make any money
• We need a certain amount of cardio equipment even though most evenings now most of the cardio equipment is empty and the free-weights area is full, people's exercise habits have moved on
• We don't have online coaching or products because we have a building. We can't have an online & physical business. See the example of John Lewis later for an answer this
• We need changing rooms and showers
• What would happen if we closed the studios and expanded the gym?
• What would happen if we closed the gym and expanded the studios?
• Our IT systems are too complicated and don't work for us, they make the job of the people on the front line harder, but there is nothing we can do.
• etc etc

I'm sure you can think of a few yourself. In the words of U lab we need to 'turn the camera around on ourselves'. 

And realise that as an industry we collectively created these problems. It's easy to blame other individuals (Peter Senge, Ulab interview) rather than looking at our part in this as well.

We are all weird now

Seth Godin has made the point there are no average people now. As an industry we still think we can attract all people at all times. We can't. The middle market that leisure centre and health clubs are all clamoring for disappeared a long time ago or never existed in the first place as a substantial business sustaining segment.

We thought we could all be Tescos and be everything to everyone, but even supermarkets can't do that any more.

Does Top Shop try to appeal to the young teenager and the old pensioner? No. But we try to, with the same space, with the same gym and then wonder why the pensioner then complains that the music is too loud. I'm never going into Hollister to shop, and I am not meant to, its not for me.

Add up all the tribes, the outliers in fitness - powerlifters, cross fitters, Les Mills (which even breaks down into sub tribes, those who only like Body Attack, those who like Body Combat), figure competitors, olympic weightlifters, yoga (which then breaks down into different types of yoga) and all these tribes out number the middle mass market.

Solutions.

From the above discussion hopefully a few points have jumped out already... nothing is sacred, what can you safely remove from your business with no detrimental effect, what do you need to hold onto, what differentiates you, how can you craft an experience?

Pull up the weeds...

Richard Boyatzis of Case Western Reserve University (Coursera.org course Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence) gives an example of a vineyard in the wine country of Barcelona.

This vineyard was making cheap $10 a bottle bulk wine, and it was a loss maker. It couldn't even make money. Then one day the two brothers running it noticed some of the grapes were exceptionally good. And they thought, what if we could produce a vintage wine only using these grapes?

They had no previous history of producing quality wine. So they went to the rest of the family and explained their vision and what they would have to do. They would have to pull up and destroy the poor vines, and start to only grow the best vines.  They also went to the other growers in the area to explain their vision.

They would have to accept a transition period. They knew it would take time.

Now a bottle of wine from the Mas Doix region is worth $140 and is rated as one the best wines in the world.

So what are you best products, your best grapes? What can be ripped up and abandoned? How much of a transition period are you willing to accept?

Seth Godin gives the example of Jackson Hole ski resort when it transitioned from a resort aimed at everyone to only aiming at extreme skiers.

Yes, when you remove certain products you are going to piss off a certain number of people. There will always be that person who uses the sauna or whatever but you have to accept you cannot please everyone.

You have to ask fundamentally Why are we here as a business? And like the two brothers in Barcelona, the emotionally intelligent thing to do is take into account other peoples feelings and ideas to create your shared vision. Yes involve stakeholders and customers, but mainly involve your ground level staff to create a shared vision.

The perceived degree of shared vision predicts success (Boyatzis,2015 Coursera). If your staff aren't with you then it is already over.

And bear in mind you may not get it right first time.

'Nothing important will happen with the first try' (Ulab edx.org)

Staff again.

How your customers feel about your company is how they feel about your staff. You can either make the customer feel a little better or a little worse (Boyatzis, 2015, Coursera).

Isabel Guerro (former Vice President of the World Bank) states in an interview with Ulab)

"Remove as many obstacles as possible for people on the front line"

If the world bank can do it surely a club or centre can do this. Really think about the obstacles your staff have. Are you making your product simpler or more complicated? Are support staff helping or hindering. Are ideas lost or adopted? Do your training systems, recruitment strategies and rewards work or not?

"The people working on the front lines are often better positioned to drive continual improvements." (Robertson, 2015;33)

What your HR department thinks your organisation looks like

But really are your systems working for you?

What your organisation probably looks like, source: www.integrationtraining.co.uk

The experience.

As alluded to previously in part 1, the new economy is experienced based. The whole book Stuffocation is based on people looking for experiences rather than stuff.

People go to Disney for the experience (and it may not be an experience I want, and that's okay they are not aiming at me). People go to see Star Wars for the experience of the film.

Pine and Gilmore in Welcome to the Experience Economy state

"Experiences are a distinct economic offering"

and are they are memorable, is your club or centre memorable for the right reasons?

I see some people confusing the idea of experience with architecture. Yes, if your experience is predicated on fantastic changing rooms and designer towels and shower gel you've got no choice. But experience is much more than this. No one goes to Westside Barbell or Metroflex Gym or any crossfit gym for the shower gel and towels. It is a distinct experience.

I would say a company like Les Mills have grasped this. When I visited their Head Office in London they had very much realised that the design of the group fitness space, the instructor, the music, the lighting, the feeling of a tribe (and which tribe they were aiming at - millennials or mums) were all part of the experience. Even if many of the places that buy the licence for their product have not grasped this concept. (I have no affiliation with Les Mills by the way).

What do people remember about the experience of your product, and remember the experience doesn't just have to be in your building, it can be online too.

"I don't want stuff. I want the need or experience it fulfills." (Rachel Botsman quoted in Scharmer 2013;134)

Do we even know what experience we are trying to produce? And please don't say friendly and welcoming with good customer service! Who doesn't want to be these things, experience goes beyond this.

A company like John Lewis has grasped experience (as well as a different way of employee remuneration). A few years ago they had no online presence, now they have a massive online presence. But this hasn't taken away from their stores. Their Christmas advert has become a tradition in a few short years. People still go to their stores and buy things, especially at Christmas, even though they can buy the same things online.Why? They have created an in-store experience that people want to be part of.

Experience is about participation. The customer has to be engaged. When I switch utility suppliers I don't really care about participation, it's a passive thing. But when people come to a club or centre they are actively choosing to spend at least an hour of their leisure time with you. How do engage them, how do you make them feel like they are part of something to justify your price being more than a budget club. After all, they could easily go for a walk for free outside or put some weights in their garage, why are they with you?

What adds to your experience, what detracts from your experience? A few ideas

• Does a vending machine selling the same stuff as your local petrol station add or detract from your health and fitness experience?
• Does your class booking system add or detract from the experience?
• Does the entry point, music, layout, staff uniform add or detract from the experience?
• etc etc

 


Fundamentally ask why does the world need us and our product? (Robertson, 2015).

Conclusion.

You may have noticed I haven't given you a prescriptive solution, as in you need to get rid of this and focus on this. First of all, every place is different, what your strengths are (your award winning grapes) I might not have even thought of.

For you the answer might be to have a hall that only has badminton, you've figured out a way to make money from a badminton only business (if someone can make a ping pong bar then this is probably viable). I hereby copyright 'Badminton Bar'!

Or your strength is rehab and GP referral and this should be your niche. Or you've figured out a way to make a business based on swimming lessons (and make a profit?!)

Or should focus on youth strength and kids fitness. Or you should have a great group fitness experience that only does Les Mills or indoor cycling like soul cycling.

I don't know what your experience should be, but please don't just try and tack on the above ideas to what you already do and hope for the best.

Secondly, collaboration is a powerful thing, I don't have all the answers, but I bet your team has all the answers you need if you let them tell you.

You should know what dead wood needs to be removed, you should know what your strong products should be, and the experience your customers should have.

Start with

"If this was my company, what would I do?' (Robertson 2015;25)

Key points

• Have the conversation with the front line staff, really listen they have some of the answers
• Are managers and support staff adding value to your business?
• What is the shared vision?
• This vision decides which choice grapes you focus on and which weeds you pull up
• Accept transition and you can't please everyone
• What is your experience going to be? Craft it.
• Keep evolving, creating and improving.

Yes, I was melodramatic at the start of part 1, is leisure dying? It will still be here in some form, of course, and it will drag on in its current form for a while until everyone goes and opens their own microgym or goes to work for Lidl to get paid more.

But something new will emerge. And collectively we can create this. Exciting times.

 

"Decades of scientific research have revealed that great creativity almost always springs from collaboration, conversation, and social networks—challenging our mythical image of the isolated genius. And research shows that when a group is in flow, it’s more likely to resolve problems with surprising and creative solutions." (R Keith Sawyer quoted in The Science of Happiness, University of Berkeley, module 7,edx.org)

Film reference of the day: It depends on why you built it, where you built it and who you built it for. image source: www.corumgroup.com

For more on all this stuff please see the following posts from me
The digital disruption of the fitness industry
Induction, Program, Leave, Repeat
No Joining Fee. The Fitness Industry Epic Fail

References and acknowledgements.

This whole thing has a big debt to two Massive Online Open Courses. (MOOCs). The future of learning probably isn't £9000 a year institutions any more.

Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence. Case Western Reserve University. www.courser.org
U Lab: Transforming Business, Society and Self. www.edx.org
U lab website

plus

The Science of Happiness. University of Berkeley. www.edx.org

Books

Goleman D, Boyatzis R, McKee a (2002) The New Leaders. Transforming the Art of Leadership into the Science of Results.

Scharmer O & Kaufer K (2013) Leading from the Emerging Future.

Robertson B (2015) Holacracy. The Revolutionary Management System that Abolishes Hierarchy.

Wallman J (2015) Stuffocation. Living More with Less.

Journals
Pine & Gilmore (1998) Welcome to the Experience Economy. Harvard Business Review.

Leisure is dying. But something new will emerge. Part 1.

To be clear leisure as an activity is not dying. People will ride bikes, go to the park and visit the cinema. What is probably dying is the business of leisure centres and health clubs.

In part one (yes this so big it's a two parter) I will identify the reasons and diagnosis/ evidence it is dying and then in part two offer some possible solutions.

And this comes from a point of honest and open discussion, if we all just shut down and hope for the best or keep repeating what we have always done then we are doomed to failure. I happen to know about leisure and fitness, you could apply these ideas to many types of business that are dying right now.

Imagine a business where 1) most staff get paid minimum wage 2) the company doesn't have to pay rent on it's premises 3) you don't have to pay VAT 4) and if you are lucky someone gives you a grant each month as well. If this business can't make a profit or break even, then their business model is in big trouble, it is a failure model.

Film reference for the day.

The same goes for the big monolithic health clubs. They have more overheads but still follow the minimum wage model, and yes they can raise some money from the private sector for a while but eventually the house of cards collapses. There is no sound business at the core of what they are doing.

The pressures on these business are considerably higher than they were 10 years ago. The market has fragmented and exploded. The competition comes from budget clubs charging £16.99 a month, from micro gyms (so called boutique gyms, but I don't like this name, makes it sound like a clothes shop in Camden), crossfit, workout in the park, fitness apps, online coaches, people buying programmes from someone on instagram.

Too big to fail? Of course not, visit any high street, where has Blockbuster, Woolworths, Virgin Megastore and a hundred other big business's gone? They failed to adapt to the emerging future. And remember the financial crisis, several banks only exist now because they were bailed out. And then there are governments and nation states which fail all the time, such as is happening in Europe right now. To think that the people running the leisure industry are any different would be myopic at best.

You think anyone is going to bail out the leisure industry when it goes pear shaped? Local governments are £10 billion in the hole, their priority is not going to be to save your LBT class (although, local councils do seem to love swimming pools for some reason...)

The basic business model centres and clubs hasn't really changed since the 1980's. Have a big building. And the contents of these buildings have evolved from squash courts to multi gyms to big gyms, and always the ubiquitous swimming pools. And in the 1990's the big health club chains expanded and most leisure centres just followed this model with monthly memberships and gyms and studios and all that, and nothing has really changed. Then there was the concept of leisure for all, even though it never can be because at some point you have to charge some money and even if it was free some people don't want your product, and now most budget gyms are way cheaper as well.

Actual money pit and perennial excuse.

If It can happen in the private sector, anyone remember Esporta, Holmes Place, Canons? Then it can happen in the semi private/ trust/ charity/ council funded sector as well.

Signs & Symptoms.

"most companies perish while their management is frozen with terror" 
(Goleman, Boyatzis & McKee, 2002;320)

A few key pointers that an industry is in trouble:

• Heavy discounting of the product, hoping that somehow this will attract new customers (as Seth Godin says, if someone doesn't want your product, discounting it won't make any difference).
• Raising the price for existing customers. If they are already with us, may be we can make them pay more.
• Reverse pyramid management structure. The front line service is cut but you still have a whole bunch of middle and upper managers (people rarely make themselves redundant).
• A 'sell more' one trick pony strategy. We just need to sell more, this isn't a strategy but a shrill shout of someone who has run out of ideas. This is like the manager of a football team saying 'what you need to start doing is winning', and 'if you keep kicking the ball at the goal one of them is bound to go in'. Thanks coach, we all know what we need to do, but how, where is the plan, where is the coherent strategy?
• And engaging in a whole process which Otto Scharmer and U Lab at MIT would call 'absencing'. There is closing down, holding onto what we already know, holding onto the patterns of the past and collectively enacting results that no one wants.
• Continuing to pursue aspects of their business that do not make money in the hope that these will somehow magically transform into something that makes money and they don't want to piss off the minority of people who still use these services.
• In his book Holacracy Brian Robertson lists some other warning signs about organisations including "emails flying around with many people cc'd in, often for unclear reasons" and "people have lots of ideas about what 'we' should do... but 'we' doesn't do it" (Robertson 2015;41)

Cutting costs, skimping on staff, not fixing things, does that sound familiar? It's the standard model for most failing business's.

"It's what most companies and institutions are doing today - they respond to challenges by doing more of the same: cutting costs and becoming lean and mean, but not reinventing themselves." Scharmer & Kaufer (2013;245)

Clues

#1

A lone person with a Skype connection can make more money and influence more people than most of the current traditional fitness industry.

#2

Micro gyms don't follow the same old tired model. In some ways they have figured out that 80% of their business comes from 20% of their clients (Paretos Law). However, I do see some micro gyms which end up following the same path as the business's they left. They decide to have monthly memberships with all sorts of discounts for all sorts of people, they then decide that what they need is longer opening hours and before you know they're paying some poor sap (coach) to sit on a reception desk for minimum wage while not actually coaching anyone. At this point they have become a single site version of what they tried to avoid except the owners have some equipment that they personally like in their gym. For how to do it properly see Cressey Performance, Cosgrove and Mike Boyle to name a few.

#3

50% of people in management positions are not adding any value. Another 20-30% may be adding value in one persons view. Therefore 70-80% of people in management can be removed from their role and the organisation will run smoothly. (Boyatzis, 2015, Coursera.org)

Think about that for a second, and if you're a manager really think about that. Does your organisation really need you, do the customers in your club really need you. What do they really need, what value are you adding?

#4

The only asset you have that can't be copied is your staff.

Most aspects of your business can easily be copied, anyone can rent a space and lease a load of equipment. Anyone can have a really good website these days. These are not hard things to copy.

The only thing that you have that cannot be directly copied because they are unique are your staff. They create the culture, they create the atmosphere. But how much are we investing in ground level staff?

Despite this, the turnover of staff is very high in leisure at the lower levels. How can you retain customers when you can't retain staff. The holy grail of member retention is lost before you've even engaged with a customer.

Right now, Sport Direct have announced that they will be paying above minimum wage. This means that a company that is widely regarded as being one step above working in a gulag has just trumped most of the leisure industry.

And why do most people leave?

"The number one reason that people cite for quitting is dissatisfaction with the boss. In a tight labor market, when people have the ability to get an equivalent job easily, those with bad bosses are four more times likely to leave than those who appreciate the leader they work for." (Goldman, Boyatwzis, McKee  2002;105)

#5
Thinking this is a service industry when it's an experience industry.

It's easy to think you provide a service, here is a room full of machines, here is a swimming pool. Thinking in terms of pure utility. And there are some customers who want a pure utility, a cross trainer, a class taught by anyone in any old room. These people are going to go and buy the lowest price option.

In the world of renting telephone lines and broadband, this idea of service works. All prices are pretty much the same, the same line is coming into your house whoever you rent it from. However much these companies think they are different they really aren't.

It's easy to confuse customer service and experience. One way to think of it is explained by Pine & Gilmore (1998) in their seminal article:

"An experience occurs when a company intentionally uses services as the stage."

And guess what, if you think you are in the service industry you probably turn your product into an experience everyday you don't clean something or someone gets told the wrong thing at reception and the complaint comments flood in.

"The easiest way to turn a service into an experience is to provide poor service." (Pine & Gilmore)

More on this later in the solutions section.

That's the end of Part 1. The stage is set, we all know what the problems are, but how do we change it? See you in part deux, which is here.

For more on all this stuff please see the following posts from me
The digital disruption of the fitness industry
Induction, Program, Leave, Repeat
No Joining Fee. The Fitness Industry Epic Fail


References and acknowledgements.

This whole thing has a big debt to two Massive Online Open Courses. (MOOCs). The future of learning probably isn't £9000 a year institutions any more.

Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence. Case Western Reserve University. www.courser.org
U Lab: Transforming Business, Society and Self. www.edx.org
U lab website

plus

The Science of Happiness. University of Berkeley. www.edx.org

Books

Godin S (2011) We Are All Weird

Goleman D, Boyatzis R, McKee a (2002) The New Leaders. Transforming the Art of Leadership into the Science of Results.

Scharmer O & Kaufer K (2013) Leading from the Emerging Future.

Robertson B (2015) Holacracy. The Revolutionary Management System that Abolishes Hierarchy.

Wallman J (2015) Stuffocation. Living More with Less.

Journals
Pine & Gilmore (1998) Welcome to the Experience Economy. Harvard Business Review.

How to choose a gym

I wrote an article for my friends over at www.maximaleffort.com

It's called 'How to choose a gym', so you can probably guess what it's about, you can find it here

I've Seen The Future And The Future Is... Coaching (or possibly cleaning, one or the other).

"The quality of a man's life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field or endeavor." - Vince Lombardi

We are in a golden age of gym equipment. A few years ago you were lucky if you could find a gym with a basic power rack and an olympic bar. Standard health club gyms consisted of resistance machines, some kind of terrible key system and cardio, and if you were lucky the dumbbells went up to 20kg. The management were afraid of 'hardcore' lifters and were trying to attract some mythical exerciser who was willing to pay £60 a month for the chance to sit on a stationary bike; except that person never turned up in large enough numbers to build a viable industry.

Nowadays, some of the biggest chains have power racks and bumper plates and functional rigs. Crossfit* gyms and micro gyms opened and they all had Olympic bars and ropes, sleds and prowlers and minimal if any of the standard cardio and resistance kit. A few years ago bands and chains and specialist bars were rare, they existed on the internet in Westside. Now the average 16 year old gym goer may have seen a safety squat bar, football bar, cambered bar, pushed a prowler, tried to break his leg by jumping on a stack of plyo boxes and build his biceps with a thick grip barbell.

Its is only 5 or 6 years ago when I went on an Olympic weightlifting course, it was hard to find, it was the only one I could find and they didn't even call it Olympic weightlifting (BWLA weightlifting for sports course to be exact) and I think one of the guys who opened Crossfit London or Manchester was on the same course. And I couldn't find any videos on the internet on Olympic lifts or how to do them. My, how times have changed, suburban housewives are doing Oly lifting as part of their daily WOD and the Reebok shop in Covent Garden sells Crossfit branded Olympic lifting shoes (there was one website that sold them in the UK when I purchased a pair).

Equipment is not enough.

But. It is easy to become enamoured by gym equipment. More people are Olympic lifting than ever before, but very few people lift heavy or come close to being national level. There hasn't been a sudden rush of world records or big powerlifts. Quite a few people have got their 10,000 hours in, but we're not suddenly giving China or Eastern Europe a run for their money. There is a possibility that it takes more than practice, that 10,000 hours has become over emphasised. The same is true in endurance sport: triathlons, 100 mile ultras and weekend 10k's are fully booked, barefoot running is mainstream but as a nation we are less competitive than we were 30 years ago in Marathons - take out the one runner we have and we have no one. People are running slower marathons than they were in the early 1980's.

And however much equipment there is, there is always someone who wants more, if only your had Eleiko bars or a monolift - then they would be a champion, despite the fact people were lifting heavy and winning for eons without any of this stuff. And some guy in a Bulgarian basement is lifting with a rusty barbell and kicking their ass.

Rocky 4 - back to basics, it's not about the equipment

But I digress, the point is, if it was only about equipment and facilities and participation we would see way more people competing at a high level. But we don't. Of course, many people doing these activities have no desire to compete, they just enjoy them, and they like training and being fit.

"the best teacher is repetition, day after day, throughout the season." - John Wooden

And the other point, is having the equipment is not enough. You can have a room full power racks and performance equipment, but if the gym culture is still embedded in body part splits, it will all be empty apart from the bench press and the adjustable benches closest to the mirrors. And there is a fear, a lot of guys and even more so women, who have been using gyms since their rise in the 1990's default to what they know. Why try something if you risk looking like an idiot, its pretty hard to go wrong on the cross trainer or doing a bicep curl, but get the glute ham raise wrong and not only could you end up being rescued there is a chance your hamstrings will explode.

So without coaching and a change in culture all this new equipment (which is really a return to the old0 will stay unused.

"The more I coached the more I became convinced that the mind, the will, the determination, the mental approach to competition are of the utmost importance." - Brutus Hamilton

What do Jess Ennis, Mo Farah, every professional football team and all of British Cycling have in common? They all have coaches.

"'The main thing about Percy is that he coaches your spirit' Elliott believed 'The body itself may only need two months training to get fit, the rest of the time you're building up your spirit - call it guts, or some inner force..." Herb Elliott on coach Percy Cerutty

Health Commitment Cop Out.

If you go to a small micro gym, studio or Crossfit facility there is a good chance you will get some coaching (the debate about quality is for another day) due to the format these facilities use - small group training, one on one, you have to book in. These facilities also have an advantage that certain populations would have self selected and excluded themselves. People arriving at Crossfit or an olympic lifting gym know what to expect, they know what the deal is, the chances of the obese grandma with a dodgy knee and blood pressure pills turning up to take part in the WOD are slim.

In a health club or leisure centre the system is set up differently, anyone can turn up and expect to do anything. Many clubs in the UK have now adopted the Health Commitment Statement produced by UK Active (the governing body for the fitness industry in the UK??!). It is designed to replace the Par-q which was too medicalised. For example, the first line on the HCS is

"We will respect your personal decisions, and allow you to make you own decisions about what exercise you can carry out. However, we ask you not to exercise beyond what you consider to be your own abilities."

Now, we are treating people like adults, which is a good thing, and not expecting the coach to start delving into medical history. In another section it states

"You should not exercise beyond your own abilities. If you know or are concerned that you have a medical condition which might interfere with you exercising safely, before you use our equipment and facilities you should get advice from a relevant medical professional and follow that advice."

Except, firstly people ignore what they have just signed and still ask you what to do about their bad back or achilles or what is best for blood pressure. And secondly, what both the Par-q and HCS fail to address is that most people don't have medical conditions that restrict them, they just have appalling movement patterns, poor mobility and have no idea about how to make an informed decision about what the best exercise to do is or how to it correctly.

And certain exercises will be unsafe for them at this stage, they don't have the knowledge to decide, their judgement of their own ability is flawed. Its like saying, go into the supermarket and buy healthy food, some people will get it right, some people wont. Or like asking someone if they are a bad driver, most people are going to say no, ego is a powerful thing. If someone has a warning light on the dashboard of their car, yeah, they could keep driving and hope nothing happens or they could go to a mechanic and find out what it is. The HCS is kinda like saying to the public, you might have some warning lights up, but we'll let you decide if you can keep on driving the car, we don't want to get involved. We don't want to put up barriers.

And yes, if you work on the premise that most gym members are going to do 10 minutes on the cross trainer and then do a few resistance machines, then they will probably be okay. Except the game has changed, they could turn up and start doing high intensity intervals or body attack or box jumps supersetted with thrusters.

Just Say No.

So what is to be done? Well don't be afraid to coach. And don't be afraid to say no. And knowing what is appropriate and not appropriate requires screening, unless someone has been screened in some fashion, how do you know what there is ability is? This is where Crossfit and the general fitness industry fail, screening is virtually non existent and no one gets told 'actually this is not for you'.

Consider the short burst fast classes and HIIT classes that are all the rage. In a large health club anyone can turn up. The coach on the gym floor has to make a decision, the person turning up has signed the HCS form, but there is a good chance the person signing has no idea what a tabata interval is, there decision is based on incomplete information. So the coach has several choices, scale the workout (it's not high intensity anymore, you are not ready for high intensity), let them do it and risk the possibility of them literally stroking out Andrew Marr style or say no. Sometimes coaching is about pushing people, sometimes it's about saying no.

Somewhere along the line, the industry got desperate, it needed to make the sale, we lost faith in ourselves. Don't be afraid to say no to the client, there is always another choice for them. And this could work in your favour sales-wise:

"The minute it was clear that we weren't desperate, the moment we started to lead instead of beg, the sale was made." - Seth Godin

Coach & Differentiate.

"Let all know that you expect them to possess the highest level of expertise in their area of responsibility." - Bill Walsh

The way to differentiate is to coach. Anyone can buy equipment but can they use it? Anyone can shout at clients and make them do 1000 burpees. But can you affect change, can you get results? Is anyone even measuring your results? Coach everyone all the time in your facility, this is a world away from personal training.

Nearly every elite athlete, every team, has a coach or a whole team of coaches. And yet, the public expect to turn up and get results with no help. They are scared and disappointed too. Scared of looking stupid and disappointed by an industry that let them down on numerous occasions. Be different, start coaching everyone and the atmosphere will change, you will change the game from the inside out. Suddenly there will be a buzz about your facility.

Have a training philosophy, have a deep knowledge about everything your are doing and not doing but then realise that coaching is not always technical. It could be simple phrase or word or look, it could what you leave out that matters.

"Teach 'connection and extension'. An organisation filled with individuals who are 'independent contractors' unattached to one another is a team with little interior cohesion and strength." - Bill Walsh

Be aware of the prism you see everything through. Maybe you personally favour hypertrophy, or strength or kettlebells or whatever. But be ware of processing all your clients needs through these prisms. Start blank, see it through the prism of the client, what they really need and then pick the right coaching route. Your philosophy of coaching should be bigger than the tools and methods you use. Coaching is flexible.

Does Louie Simmons Put The Hoover Round?

But what if no one cares about your coaching. There is a good chance that if you work in a commercial facility the management has never even asked you about coaching or measured it, there is a 100% they have measures your ability to clean. The scenario could play out like this:

The health club see all this stuff about small group training and functional training and thinks this is a bandwagon we need to jump on. So they buy all the kit and tell the instructor he/she now teaches fast classes. The instructor is teaching the class and someone complains about the cleaning. The instructor is then conflicted, they are being measured on the cleaning, not the  coaching, and all this stuff could be a fad anyway. The instructor then realises they are actually a cleaner, which is not a bad thing, except they then discover that the actual cleaner gets paid more than them. They then figure out that the studio instructors are getting paid three times as much for teaching a class as the fitness instructor is for teaching on the gym floor and no one asks the studio instructors about cleaning. Yes, its a way of having all these classes on the schedule without paying the instructor more than minimum wage. The instructor gets demotivated, the kit stands empty, everyones doing what they always done. Of course, some clubs pay the instructors a decent rate for coaching, but show me a manager who didn't panic about a cleaning complaint and I'll show you a....

Of all the people, whoever left a gym , it seems no one ever left because they failed to achieve their goal, they left because they didn't have time or it wasn't clean enough.

Which makes me wonder, does Louise Simmons, Eric Cressey and Mike Boyle have the same issues. No one ever released a fitness product on how to keep your gym clean. Does Louie put the hoover round first thing in the morning, do lifters complain that Westside is too dirty or there is too much chalk around, do people tell Rippetoe to get better air conditioning at Wichita Falls. Does Louie just catapult any complainers out the door with a purple band? This topic seems sorely unrepresented on fitness forums.

I can't help but feel the likes of Boyle and Cressey are missing a trick here, how about 'Shoulder health while dusting, avoiding anterior glide of the humerus when cleaning cardio equipment' or 'Advances in mutli-tasking in the gym environment, how to re-tune the TVs on the CV equipment while dealing with a complaint about the music'.

The game has changed.

"'That's the way we've always done it' is the mantra of a team setting itself up to lose to an organisation that's not doing it that way any more." - Bill Walsh

The large chains still pursue a supermarket model, they are trying to cater to the masses. They think they can be all things to all people. But if you try to market to everyone, you have a product aimed at no one. And you end up with some pissed off members, because your product was never really for them in the first place, you just told them it was.

"Don't try to make a product for everybody, because that is a product for nobody." - Seth Godin

Much like coffee shops, you could go to Starbucks and get an insipid cup of coffee that doesn't really offend anyone, but at the same time there is a rise in independent coffee shops, its the same for pubs and micro-breweries. It's the same for gyms, except the way to differentiate is with coaching. Except way more people go to coffee shops than go to gyms, going to the gym is a niche activity, whether you like it or not. Going to the gym is more akin to collecting vinyl or vintage cars, it's a niche that wants to be mainstream. Once you accept this marketing becomes easier, you are not trying to please everyone.

There are really only 2 or 3 big players in cardio and resistance equipment, most gyms look the same. Anyone can buy some dumbbells and weight plates. It is what you do with it that counts.

Somewhere along the way, personal training became the antithesis of coaching. It became number counting. No one wants to be associated with the personal trainer moniker anymore. The fitness courses didn't teach people how to be coaches. How to motivate, how to inspire, how to innovate, how to individualise but still have a system. So, the trainers aspired to be coaches, but you'd be shocked at the level of knowledge in these courses.

And the coaching course are stuck in another era, if you've ever been on one, its more about how to control large groups of people and make sure no one falls down a hole; basically a health and safety course. That's what we did to coaching in this country, we turned it into the lowest common denominator health and safety course pitched at kids. It is more akin to an old school PE lesson, which is okay if you are teaching kids. But most of us are coaching adults, grown ups, professionals, who need professional coaching.

Coaching is not about holding someones hand or shouting, its about teaching them a skill, knowing when to instruct and when to not. Knowing when to let someone make their own training decision, and giving them the information to do, but also having the confidence and guts to say when someone should not do something, when to push and when to say enough is enough.

The game has changed, the big health clubs just don't know it yet, or like most large industries with layers of bureaucracy are too slow too react, suffer from inertia or try to copy something really half arsed.

The best gyms have a system, they coach everyone and they have results they can show you. Not one off aberrations, but consistent results with clients across the board.

I could be wrong, maybe all health clubs should bin all their instructors and employ 10 permanent cleaners and everything will be fine. Or possibly there should be a new REPs level 4 cleaning qualification.

The answer is to coach and coach some more, or get out like alot of people are doing these days. Open your own facility, be picky with the clientele, it takes guts for sure.

Have confidence, the equipment is secondary. It could be just me standing in a room with a couple of kettlebells and a bar, and its worth the money because of the coaching and the atmosphere.

Build the gym, but then coach, and create the atmosphere and the reputation. Build it and they will come is only half the answer, the building is just the first part, the people is the second part and the most important. People get results.

Be 'consumed by the process of developing the ability of others. You do it because you really care for it, you do it because you have to.' ( Bill Walsh)

"Concentrate on what will produce results rather than on the results, the process rather than the prize." - Bill Walsh

Coach, the alternative is to be the same as it ever was, which is no choice at all.

References
Bill Walsh, The Score Takes Care of Itself. My Philosophy of Leadership.
Gary M Walton, Beyond Winning. The Timeless Wisdom of Great Philosopher Coaches
Seth Godin, Purple Cow & The Icarus Deception

* Without wishing to get drawn into the eternal crossfit debate, here's my 2 cents worth. There is a puritanical element who seem to think crossfit are responsible for all random training shit. As if before crossfit everyone walked around with a copy of Supertraining under their arm and everyone periodised properly and everyone trained properly and it was all logical and despite powerlifting, olympic lifting and bodybuilding being the most minority of sports - it seems everyone in the gym was competing in these disciplines despite never actually competing; and all training programs had a clear goal and purpose. And of course, everything was logical like splitting your workout into bodyparts, and no one ever did anything illogical like working chest and arms everytime they went to the gym. And all sports are logical like swimming 2.4 miles and cycling 100 and running a marathon, and 22 people kicking a bag of air around a park, and back flipping on a beam and bench pressing in a triple ply denim shirt. Of course, all pro athletes train using a completely systematised approach and no one ever coasted on their genetics, and how someone trains for football or baseball or powerlifting should be the basis of all training, because the gym is only full of serious athletes. And you can't copyright circuit training, in the same way you can't copyright dancing (Zumba) or yoga and pilates (Bodybalance), but goddam they cornered the market and created a tribe with minimal equipment and we all wish we had thought of it first. And its dangerous, because I've never seen a powerlifter or bodybuilder who had to get their pec re-attached or their bicep rupture repaired, and no endurance athlete ever had to have knee surgery and no football player ever had an ACL repair, and every year thousands of people get rescued off of mountains after throwing themselves down them on skis after no actual training or practice and everyone in the world now knows what rhabdo is, and I've never seen anyone get it even in ultra endurance events. (and I can't do a handstand press up or a kipping pull up and there is no way I'm wearing long socks).