And then everyone was a strength coach.

There was a time when people working in gyms were fitness instructors and personal trainers. But this wasn't cool enough.

It started to get a bad reputation, the barrier to entry was low, the qualifications were easy. And no one was going to pay an online 'fitness instructor guru', it just didn't have a cool ring to it.

Being a strength coach was much cooler. All those guys training people in American high schools, and in their garage and selling online products were strength coaches.

Before you knew it, power racks sprung up and people were powerlifters and following Westside. And there were dynamic effort days and bands and chains. And if you didn't know a buffalo bar from a Texas power bar you might as well have still been balancing on a swiss ball with Paul Chek.

And then Olympic lifting was a thing. 10 years ago there wasn't one Olympic lifting technique video on the internet – I know because I looked for them and couldn't find them, so I went and did the lifting course back in 2007/8.

On the same course were some guys who were going to open something called a 'crossfit gym'. None of us had lifting shoes, we all did it in trainers, the coaches running the course didn't even mention lifting shoes. And I went back to the gym and had to practice with metal weight plates on a normal floor.

Fast forward ten years and there are coaches on the internet who by rights should be coaching the Chinese team with the expertise they appear to have – not hanging out at the local gym or critiquing peoples technique on the internet.

And everyone expected a power rack and bumper plates.

And trainers wanted to be coaches, and everyone had to deadlift and squat. Because coaches had respect and weren't poorly paid cleaners in disguise. Who could blame them, '20 years of schooling and they put you on the day shift'. And this stuff was way more interesting than standing next to a treadmill and asking someone if their RPE was 12 or 13.

And one of the safest sports started to throw up injuries. Things that were rare became common places such as end plate fractures in the spine. And your Doctor is not really looking for it because who fractures an end plate? Someone under massive spinal compression.

And heavy unilateral lifting without qualification ended up with people breaking their pelvic rings.
And then everyone wanted to train like an 'athlete' or train 'athletes'. Well kind of… Take some plyometrics and put them together in a long intense class format and give it to a bunch of people who haven't jumped off the ground since they were skipping in primary school. And there were blown ACLs and ruptured achilles.

And some of the biggest fitness/ class companies in the world started to put together HIIT/ plyometric workouts. But they didn't grasp it, they didn't fully understand it. They hadn't immersed themselves in it for years. And then 50 year old women started to rupture achilles because they were doing exercises designed for Soviet athletes.

And the strength coaches had everyone Olympic lifting, and I was guilty too. And those clients who just wanted a bit of weight loss and tone were doing cleans and jerks without screening, and had no business ever doing these exercises. Like suddenly introducing your client to the sport of javelin or hammer throwing when they are 60 years old.

And people who had no business putting a weight over their head in a deep squat were trained relentlessly for a sport they should never had started because strength was good and reps were bad unless they were metcon reps. And anything above 5 reps was cardio.

And cardio was a joke, because a fat man in a lifting suit said so.

And young injury free coaches who were used to training young injury free contemporaries who did sports like rugby thought this was a universal template. Regardless of spine disc shape, or injury history or training age.

And these coaches who were used to training high school athletes and college athletes, with GOMAD a gallon of milk a day protocol, and 5x5 was all you would ever need convinced the poor guys and girls in the local gym that everyone could be trained like this. Because they had never encountered anyone who couldn't do 10 pull ups straight off or who couldn't walk up a flight of stairs without getting out of breath.

But women started lifting weights, and lo it was good. For their body shape started to change. And booty was the new boobs, and fitness was this years model.

But don't talk about the back injuries and the stupid sit ups. And everyone wore lifting shoes all the time, and wondered why their knees hurt when they back squatted.

Now there were powerlifters, crossfitters, and strongmen and Olympic lifters in every gym, and the bodybuilders hid in the corner (even though they weren't really bodybuilders and had never entered a competition, but they clung onto their bodypart splits and preacher curls like the Golden fleece they knew it was) but their time would come again. The rise of the fitness model was about to happen, fake tan sales and posing stage costume sales were about to explode. And the fitness competition organisers knew this, and their were posing coaches, and online nutrition programmes, and people who placed top 50 in their local bikini comp were now not just strength coaches but figure coaches and body transformation coaches.

(and it was okay to objectify women and make them strut around in stripper heels as long as you tack the word 'fitness' to the event, because that's empowering, how very post modern, and as my friend heard the compere say at one of these event 'don't forget we're not just judging their bodies, but their faces as well'; at least they were being honest, T&A with quarter turns were now fine, we could all look and not feel bad like the bad old days of the 1970's and Miss World competitions. Now they didn't even pretend to want world peace, they just wanted a supplement sponsorship deal and 100,000 insta followers).

And of course, guys had fitness comps as well, where they wore board shorts and fake grins, but mostly everyone laughed at them because they weren't strength coaches.

And it was all fine, there was more choice than ever. But somewhere along the line, quality was forgotten.

And most of the strength coaches out there doing their job everyday had no internet presence. And knew training individuals was always an individual programming decision, and they thought deeply about methods of training and the philosophy of it all. But they were not trying to be all things to all people.

It was the best of the times, it was the worst of times. Everything it could ever be was right there, but it was ever so slightly off target. And it could have been so good, it could still be.

But wait long enough and everything will go full circle again and again and again.

The Real Hot Fitness Trends For 2013. What The Industry Wont Tell You.

2013 is here and PR machines are in overdrive telling you what is hot and what all the hot people are doing. Click here to see the mainstream media list.

Here I'll tell you what the real trends will be, and why some things are being pushed. And why this will be a pivotal year for the fitness industry in the UK.

Micro Gyms - A commercial chain will die

Big commercial chain gyms leak money like an old home-made wooden raft slowly sinking, they are about as profitable as an internet music streaming service (Spotify people). This is why they pay gym instructors minimum wage, try and tie you into a 12 month contract and charge their freelance personal trainers £900 a month in rent.

What Mike Boyle calls Micro Gyms are on the rise. With the rise of kettlebells, free weights and training with minimal equipment, the start up costs are less than ever before. No need to spend £10,000s on sparkly cardio machines anymore. Micro Gyms don't need as much space and they don't need as many members to survive as the big chains do. They don't have expensive money drains like Swimming Pools and they have minimal staffing costs.

In the town I live, in the last year an independent gym has opened, as well as a classes only studio, a personal training studio and a Crossfit facility. Each one of these only need a couple of hundred members to survive and if they are a small PT studio less than 50 clients probably. Whereas somewhere like Virgin Active needs 3000-5000 members.

People can generally get a better service in these micro facilities for about the same cost per month or per class as one of the chains. They don't feel like another tick on the sales managers chart. If each micro facility takes 50-100 members from the local big gym then before you know it the big gym fails. I can see this happening locally where I live. I predict by the end of the year a company like LA Fitness will go under and fail (or be taken over).

They face a three prong attack, Micro Gyms and PT studios, lone PTs and park based bootcamps and budget gyms. Lets face it, if you want to get treated like another drone in an overcrowded gym you might as well pay £9.99 a month for it rather than £60.

Yes, the Micro Gym will rise and a commercial chain will fail this year.
(Of course, some micro gyms will fail as well due to misunderstanding cash flow, margins and being too optimistic).

Small Group Training - the real reason it will trend

Small group training works well, that's the reason I mentioned it back in 2011. However, the large commercial chains are latching onto it for another reason: to save money.

Studios cost a  lot of money to run. You have to pay the studio instructors way more than you pay fitness instructors, and then you have to cover their holidays, plus you have to pay for class licences and equipment. All this and you might get 5 or 10 people turn up to a class. Most studios have a hardcore of users, they get good value for their membership. But for the big business it can be a lot of effort and money for no return and a whole bag of hassle.

The answer? Small group training. Some of the bigger chains (they know who they are) tried to binned all their studio instructors or most of them and then got their fitness instructors to teach the classes, no extra payment, minimum wage classes. Then you have all the classes on the gym floor, maybe only 30 mins or 45 minutes each, 10 people or less -bingo - you can have a class timetable with as many classes as you had before or even more, but the costs have halved. Half the classes might be small group training with the minimum wage fitness cleaner but the timetable looks good. They are told to teach the class, some aren't given the proper training and end up going through the motions.

Now let me be clear small group training works, I like it. And if the instructor is paid appropriately and has the proper training and knowledge they will motivate clients. And its great for the clients.

Its just some of the big commercial chains subsumed it to save money.

Interval Training - HIIT

Yes it works, always has. If you are in fitness and you've only just heard of this, then you have been walking around with your eyes closed or you fell off a swiss ball and developed amnesia.  It's a trend because now companies are selling courses on it. Yes, just in case you can't figure out how to use interval training or put together a 20 minute workout, someone has worked it out and will sell it to you for 4 REP points.

And see above, a 20-30 min class is cheaper to run and you can run more and pay some chump £6 an hour. Meanwhile all your members just went down to the local Crossfit and are paying them £60 a month to attend 8 classes - that's how to franchise to the max!

Interval training is just a training method, like fartlek, hill reps, 5x5 or supersets but I don't see anyone selling these as a new concept... yet

Functional Rigs

When I was at Leisure Industry Week last year you couldn't move for 'functional rigs', even the big players like Life Fitness have one. The reason is everyone wants a piece of the Crossfit pie, much like the rise of HIIT, the industry can't ignore the Crossfit franchise looming over it. A mere 5 years ago at LIW you were lucky to see a kettlebell, it was the usual cardio equipment and was pretty boring. But Micro Gyms don't buy £10,000 treadmills and the big chains only replace their equipment every 5 to 10 years at best. The functional rig, HIIT, small group training and Micro Gyms are all really part of the same trend. As a bonus they are encouraging more women to lift weights.

Cool rig

Low Carb- High Fat

Intermittent fasting hit the mainstream last year, there was even a program about it and the health benefits on BBC2 with accompanying BBC news article about it, see my prediction here in 2011 about it.

Like many of these things the strength/ hypertrophy training community were early adopters of this (and pre contest prep low carb and carb cycling have been mainstays of bodybuilding and figure comps for years). On a side note the first time I was aware of barefoot training was from strength training coaches, way before any runners mentioned it.

Paleo is almost in the mainstream consciousness, after being a big favourite with the Crossfitters and alike.

Low carb, high protein, high fat has been mainstream for a while with Atkins & Dukan diets. However, the focus has always been on weight loss. I think this year the health benefits will come to the fore, as well as using this strategy for endurance events.

Tim Noakes has become a big proponent of Paleo/ Low Carb/ High Fat approach. He has been emphasising the health benefits for blood sugar levels, triglycerides and heart health and disease prevention. His status as an MD and respected Sports Scientist has changed the game, whether you agree or not, what he says will have more cache than a health/ food journalist writing. It may also lead to more research.

Also the work of Jeff Volek, Stephen Phinney and Joe Friel has changed the paradigm for endurance athletes. Before, carbs were the sacred cow - you couldn't go long without them in ultra and ironman events. In 2012 The Western United States 100 miler ultra was won by Timothy Olson in a course record of less than 15 hours, and he eats low carb. Tim Noakes has said that the carb loading section in his book Lore Of Running is wrong and should be ignored. This is powerful stuff and is filtering down to average runner on the street.

Strength Coaches - All the personal trainers want to be strength coaches now

There's a reason most people in the fitness industry don't want to be called a personal trainer. It has a bad rep, it has too many connotations of some douche making a poor fool stand on a bosu while fleecing him of cash.

Personal trainers wanting to become strength coaches is now such a phenomena that in the most recent UKSCA Journal they outlined how they are working with REPs to make it a level 4 course. The UKSCA courses get booked up quick. Be careful, your coach may have learned plyometrics from the UKSCA or your trainer may have learnt it on a HIIT course. The most important thing is do they know how to apply it and qualify their athlete/client, do they have the knowledge to know when to go hard and when to do less, knowing when not to do something is just as important.

PTs are two a penny as are PT courses.

Strength and conditioning coach has more kudos. You are a coach, you train athletes, not the general public. You lift weights, you get to talk about Olympic Lifting and Mesocycles. Except of course, you don't get to train athletes. You end up trying to make some poor desk jockey do a clean and jerk because that's what the guy who taught you how to do the lifts does with the 19 year old Rugby players he trains at his university. And lets face it, they are nearly always a 'he' and they are used to working with young teams before they get broken down, damaged and retire.

Strength and conditioning is good if you really have in depth knowledge and you really know what your are doing. But has it gone too far. Joe Public is not necessarily a strength athlete, elements of the coaching may work but not all. And lets not forget, some S&C coaches can be as old skool and as misinformed as some personal trainers.

As a friend of mine said the other day, 'its swung too far', not everyone was born to Olympic lift or do sprint drills. And I say that as someone who has done the BWLA course and gives the UKSCA £50 a year.

As always there are good PTs, good strength coaches and some PTs who should be S&C coaches because of who they train. But do it because you love it, not so you can put another course on your CV, another tick in the hope of generating business. Don't be superficial in your pursuits.

Of course, if you hang out in the usual commercial gyms and big chains none of this will happen, you're probably wondering what a barbell looks like.

In most commercial gyms you will still see this as the trend.

And the rest

Crossfit will continue to grow in the UK, as well as women lifting weights and entering figure and bikini competitions.

It almost goes without saying, but Bokwa will be big (at last years Leisure Industry Week Bokwa had more flashmobs that a mobile phone advert) and by the end of the year there will be
Aqua Bokwa
Bokwa for Grey Hair
Sh'Bam for kids
Zumba HIT
Cxworx for GP referral
GRIT and metafit for cardiac rehab etc etc

And never forget, most people never go near a gym ever.

And what should be big but probably wont:

Feldenkrais,
Primal Move
Animal Flow
Move Nat

Yes, slight bias as I am certified in Primal Move and I have the Animal Flow video (see my top products of 2012).

And look out for Physical Theatre classes - they're gonna be big ;)



Oh and one more thing

Remember that Olympic legacy and getting more people involved? No, neither does the fitness industry.

Forget trends

 "Move well, then move often" - Gray Cook

Where Are All The British Coaches? (Why are all the strength & conditioning coaches American?)

Just a bit of fun, I don't want any irate nationalists or geographers emailing me

What do the following all have in common: Eric Cressey, Mike Boyle, Tony Gentilcore, Chad Waterbury, Glenn Pendlay, John Broz, Dean Somerset, Mike Roberston, Ross Enamait, Joe De Franco, Jim Wendler, Dave Tate, Paul Chek, Vern Gambetta, Nick Tuminello, Jason Feruggia, Dan John, Mike Mahler, Mark Rippetoe and Bret Contreras?

Yes, they are all American, if you are in strength & conditioning in anyway you probably know who all these people are; most probably from the internet.

Want some famous ones who aren't American? How about Charles Poliquin & Christian Thibaudeau from Canada.

How about some Russians - Verkhoshansky, Pavel Tsatsouline.

How about some physiotherapists/ physical therapists: Charlie Weingroff, Gray Cook, Bill Hartman, Shirley Sahrmann - all American.

How about some sports scientists. South Africa got Mel Siff and Tim Noakes.

Quick, name a famous British coach or sports scientists... come on... (crickets chirping)? That's right, South Africa got Mel Siff and Tim Noakes and we got fuckin' Matt Roberts. On the flip side, the USA has Traci Anderson, so they have their own cross to bear.

(In fact, I can think of one, Alwyn Cosgrove, who is Scottish but lives in California).

In the world of bodyworkers and manual therapists we fair slightly better as does Europe. The Europeans gave us Janda, Pavel Kolar, Ida Rolf, Feldenkrais (ok, he was from Israel, but they're in the Eurovision song contest so it counts), and we can muster Leon Chaitow as the British entry. The Americans have Thomas Myers, who came up with Anatomy Trains.

Nutrition wise the USA got Lyle McDonald, Alan Aragon and John Berardi, oh and we got... Pete Cohen. Hmm.

The under representation of European strength coaches can be put down to a language barrier, but Britain doesn't have that excuse and nor does Australia, the only antipodean coach I can think of is Ian King; so they're doing as well as we are.

Internet Marketeers

There is a good chance you have heard of most the above coaches cos they are on interwebz innit. And most of them got there first exposure via T-Nation. Of course, some of them did it without t-nation, Paul Chek for example. Charles Poliquin was well known before he appeared on t-nation, and Ross Enamait is well known for being freakin' awesome. The other exception is Charlie Weingroff who holds a unique position of being a former NBA strength coach, a powerlifter, physical therapist and FMS genius; who grew a base of support because of his knowledge and experience. There is no British equivalent of t-nation, and there is no British equivalent of Charlie Weingroff either.

Had you heard of Bret Contreras before he appeared on t-nation? No, me neither. He was just some guy training people in his garage who used to have a small personal training facility and had an obsession with glutes. And because he had come up with an exercise that went against much of the perceived wisdom, most of the initial comments about him on the forums portrayed him as some kind of chump just because he didn't coach an elite team or Olympic athletes. Personally, I think Bret Contreras has a great website with loads of info, and I couldn't care less if he never coached a team to the 'state championship' or whatever ( though he is still slightly obsessed with horizontal load vector glute exercises!). However, without the internet I never would have got to access or the great info he put out, and the same goes for Eric Cressey, Dan John and all the rest. Also they know how to promote themselves, but know what they offer is a quality product with lots of top notch info given for free as well.

You can blame American cultural hegemony, but half these guys started out training people in their garage, they're not exactly the Disney corporation.

A while back Mike Boyle took umbrage at a list of influential strength coaches because some were just 'internet coaches' training at their own facility or in a garage and many of the great coaches weren't on the internet, so no one had heard of them. Of course, the internet is full of chump coaches (yes, I''ve used the word chump twice), but then again so is professional sport. For example, premier league football and the leagues below abound with knucklehead strength coaches and archaic ideas about resistance training. But having said that, there must be some good coaches working in Britain with elite athletes, or in their own facility with 'ordinary' members of the public, that no one has heard of.

Maybe it's a British reticence to promote ourselves and market ourselves. (But the world wide web was invented by a British guy, just sayin'). Maybe like Mike Boyle intimated, our best coaches are out there coaching people and don't have time for websites, self promotion and to sell products.

Come to think of it I can't think of one strength & conditioning book, DVD, ebook or e-product that I have purchased that was produced by someone who was British. It's a sad state of affairs.

Certification


Whatever you think of them Paul Chek & Charles Poliquin are well known if somewhat 'eccentric'. A few years ago doing the Paul Chek certification was all the rage in the UK, this is before Chek went completely 'up river'. Then in recent years the Poliquin PICP became the certification de jour, and Charles garnered packed audiences at the fit pro conference. I've never done either course, I'm sure they have some quality content. The point is no British coaches had developed their own certification or had the marketing nouse to make it a success. We had the YMCA and Premier and few other small players but no one like Poliquin.


Could it be there is no one?

I can't bring myself to consider the fact that may be we don't have any great coaches. We have a history in strength sports, in bodybuilding we had Dorian Yates, in powerlifting we've got Andy Bolton - the first man to deadlift 1000Ibs, in strong man competitions we have Terry Hollands and in the past we had Geoff Capes and Jamie 'keeping the dream alive' Reeves. Not only that, but the first man to run a sub 4 minute mile and we invented ping pong goddammit!


In the world of Olympic lifting Brian Hamill wrote the seminal paper on weight training and injury in children, and if he was American he'd probably have a facility like California Strength and would have written books like Greg Everett instead of training people in a cupboard in a leisure centre in Woking. As far as I am aware BWLA was almost bankrupt a few years ago, and despite the recent explosion in Olympic weightlifting it doesn't seemed to have capitalised on it the way it should have. Again, maybe it's a British reluctance to ask people for money or have faith in their product, or market ourselves. I know I suffer from it, we feel bad about asking people for money and end up giving it away. (Up till a point, there is an inverse relationship here, the more of a douche bag a personal trainer is, the more money he will ask for).

In the world of athletics we have some world class athletes - Jess Ennis and Mo Farah for example. Though, of course Mo Farahs coach is Alberto Salazar, who is American. Can you name another running coach apart from Alberto Salazar? Me neither. Okay, Brad Hudson, but he's American too. In th world of ultrarunning Scott Jurek and Dean Karnazes are well known, however British world record holder Lizzi Hawker is not.

Ideal opportunity for a Jess Ennis picture!

Networking

The other thing about all the American strength coaches is they all reference each other. If you look at Ben Bruno's good fitness reads for the week, it tends to be the same people mentioned every week. And even though its interesting, we can end up with a small pool of information, and a small cabal of people providing most of the content. Even though there is a lot of great content it can end up seeming like a small group of coaches all promoting each others products. (quick you've only got 48 hours before the price goes back up to $197!).


The elephant in the room

There is one other glaring omission from the lists of fitness professionals above. A lack of women. In general there is a lack of women strength & conditioning coaches on the internet, and even fewer with actual products like books and DVDs available, and even fewer published in research journals.

Once again the Americans are leading the field in overcoming this. The Girls Gone Strong group has recently got some good internet coverage, and they are nearly all American - Alli Mckee, Neghar Fonooni, Nia Shanks, Molly Galbraith, Jen Comas Keck et al. The point to mention here is that many of these women already have connections to many of the male strength coaches mentioned above, training at their facilities and more. And again, looking at the internet videos, best views for the week from Ben Bruno mainly features these women, again it can feel a bit like a closed knit love in. You could get the impression that no other women in the world were lifting weights from the video links of most male coaches. (except of course Zuzanna at bodyrock tv!)

There must be a British equivalent of Neghar Fonooni, for the love of all that is right there must be!

Now I know, there are loads of British women who are strong, lifting proper weights, training hard, but they just ain't on the internet or they aren't getting mentioned on the well know fitness blogs and websites.

And finally most of the figure athletes are, of course, American.

Alli McKee has competed in figure, oh, and is not British

There is hope

So we've established that the Brits maybe just aren't as good at internet marketing. And we don't have the internships or college sports scene that the USA has, so opportunities are limited. But...

We could lead the world on professionalism and innovation. As far as I am aware to be a member of the American National Strength & Conditioning Association (NSCA) you only have to do a multiple choice exam. Whereas to be a member of the United Kingdom Strength & Conditioning Association (UKSCA) you have to actually demonstrate weightlifting technique, plyometrics, do an exam and put a program together for an athlete and justify your choices. I haven't done the accreditation myself yet, but by all accounts unlike nearly every other fitness certification there is actually a failure rate, passing is a not a fore gone conclusion. Setting tough professional standards means we could set a bench mark for quality coaching.

This is a call to arms for all British fitness professionals. If you know what you're doing get out there and shout about it. If you don't, some chump with a Vipr in one hand and Zumba weight in the other will!