Friday, March 30, 2012

Long Term Contracts Got a Bad Rap!

Today’s tip isn’t so much a tip as it is an explanation and hopefully with it some clarity and guidance toward the correct exercise path.  Like most things I write about, I never really thought it was a big enough issue to address, but also like most things, I notice it’s something that comes up A LOT and therefore is a topic on which we should expand, perhaps.

Today’s topic is long term gym contracts.  What does a long term gym membership have to do with your results?  Glad you asked…

Over the last few years long term gym memberships and contracts have taken a bad rap.  This is due (once again) to corporate Globo-Gyms and their inability to deliver results.  Yet, as dumb as they are when it comes to fitness, the owners and operators of Globo-Gyms pay close attention to the numbers that dictate their bottom line. 

One of the things they noticed, is that a typical gym member lasted about six weeks on average.  We all know why – the member liked the look of the place, signed up and started going.  Then somewhere along the line, they noticed that they weren’t getting results and the truth was the gym sucked despite it’s good 1st impression.  So they would stop going – and stop paying.

Corporate Globo-Gym’s response was to offer only long term contracts.  This way, when the member says “This place sucks – I’mma bounce, yo’”, the gym’s answer would be “Sorry, you signed a contract and you’re going to pay us anyway, even if it’s our fault you aren’t getting results.”

Consumers then became very leery of long term gym memberships and rightfully so – they wouldn’t get results and would have to pay for it anyway.

As a result of the backlash against long term contracts, another business minded response became prevalent: that’s the “No Long Term Contracts” advertisements from fitness facilities – both large and small.  It was announced as a badge of honor that they would never take your money if you didn’t come in and train.  The member could go month to month on the agreement, or in the case of personal training, could buy sessions and pick and choose when to use them, etc.

Guess what that led to?  Members never came in and trained.  And members that don’t train don’t get results either.

If you’re a fitness and exercise consumer, I hope you don’t this as a personal attack, but if I’ve learned anything in my decade plus in this business, it’s this:

As a fitness facility, letting the member decide when, where, and how they will be working out is a prime example of letting the inmates run the asylum.  If the consumer could do this on their own and succeed then they (sit down for this one),  would do it on their own and succeed – they wouldn’t need you in the 1st place! (Duh…)

More specifically, here’s what we’ve learned at The Training Rim:

Awhile ago, we switched to long term memberships only (we have a 3 month option and a 12 month option – 1 month trials are only for people who are new and aren’t sure if it’s for them or not).  And yes, because I’m a business owner as well, I track the numbers that drive my business too.

Here’s what we found: Members’ training frequency almost doubled when we switched to 3 and 12 month memberships only.  No, that’s not a misprint.  Members were almost TWICE as likely to train on a consistent basis than they were prior to the switch.

The reasons for this of course, are multi-factorial.  There’s obviously a psychological and financial aspect to it among other things.  But the reality is we don’t care about the “why”.  The ONLY thing we care about at The Training Rim is getting people results.  And here is what statistics have told us:

1. People who make commitments are more likely to train consistently.

2. People who train consistently are more likely to get results.

3. People who get results are happier and healthier.

So guess what?  We’re going with this “We’re going to need you to make a commitment, thing”!
Unlike the long term model offered by Globo-gyms, you’re going to like coming here and you’re going to get results.  Our training is backed by years of evidence that it works, and when surveyed about why TR members liked coming to the TR, “It’s fun!” was the overwhelming number 1 answer.

And unlike the “train whenever you want” reactionary trainers who let the inmates run the asylum, we’re going to ask you to make a commitment to us.  Not because we have some overactive ego, but because we know if you make a commitment to us you’re going to get results.  We’re going to hold up our end of the bargain, and we’re going to ask you to do the same.

So when you see a fitness facility that only offers long term contracts, don’t offended by that aspect of their business.  Instead, get offended that they suck at their job.

And when you see the short term, come when you want facility, don’t jump all over it just because there’s no commitment.  Because as we’ve all learned: no commitment = no results.

Instead, find a place that expects you to make a commitment and will hold you to it, assuming their team will hold up its end of the bargain, as we do.

No need to be afraid of this guy - as long as he has a TR logo somewhere on him...

Monday, March 19, 2012

Bruce Lee and The TR!

The longer I’m in the business of figuring out how to get results for people from exercise, the more I notice there are lessons to be learned from all walks of life, not just ones inside the gym.  If you’ve followed my stuff before, you may remember I’ve made correlations to the financial world and the animal kingdom before that contain lessons that will help you improve your level of fitness.  Of course I should note that they were two separate articles: the jokes about correlating the financial world to the animal kingdom would be too easy.

Today I’m going to tell you what Bruce Lee can teach you about how you should approach exercise.

Bruce Lee’s impact on exercise was enormous: reciprocal inhibition was a cutting edge topic in the late 90’s and early 2000’s – Bruce wrote about it in the 1960’s.  Back when the bodybuilding/nautilus machine/Schwarzenegger at Gold’s Gym culture was just taking off, Bruce was the one who called “BS”, and said, if you want to be truly strong – functionally strong – you needed to get off the machines and do total body training.

But it’s not his thoughts on exercise that we’re going to use today – again, that would be too easy.  It’s his philosophy – specifically his philosophy on the martial arts.

Bruce was a huge reader of philosophy, and he used his education to see mistakes others had made in the past, and to formulate new ideologies that would lead to greater success, both in martial arts and in life.
One of these philosophies was the need to stop naming particular martial arts, or calling each art a particular “style”.   He thought it clouded things when we call Kung-Fu, Kung-Fu, and call karate, karate, etc.  He felt it limited the practitioners of each particular style to the strengths of that style only, and in doing so opened up vulnerabilities and weaknesses when outside the realm of that style.

To him, each particular style only worked if you used it against someone who operated within the rules of your style.  Karate, for example lost its effectiveness when a good wrestler didn’t want to play by karate rules and just took the karate fighter down with a wrestling takedown.  Judo lost some effectiveness when someone trained in Muay Thai said: “No, I’m not just going to let you grab me and throw me.”

So Bruce Lee’s point was that you need to know EVERYTHING in order to be a good fighter.  If you painted yourself into a corner by naming your art and insisting it was the best art, ultimately your short sightedness would work against you and limit your progress, both in competition and in life.

It occurred to me one could say this holds true with exercise programming as well.  If you insist on labeling your workout, and limit yourself to the confines thereof, you ultimately will limit your own progress, both in the exercise world and life.

Core training, flexibility, strength training and conditioning are pretty much useless in and of themselves – unless you do all of them.

You need to do everything.  Core training, flexibility training, strength training and cardiovascular conditioning - when combined - present a totality far greater than the sum of the parts.

Mixed Martial Arts and the UFC taught us that Bruce Lee’s theory about fighting was correct: karate, BJJ, Judo, boxing were pretty much useless in and of themselves.  Only the fighters who combine all of them are truly effective.

Similarly, my experience and observations in and of the exercise world have taught me these things:

People who only “do cardio”, generally speaking, are weak as shit.

People who only work on flexibility are slow as sloths AND weak as shit.

People who only strength train can’t even look at a kettlebell without getting winded.

People who only do macho bullshit interval conditioning are orthopedists dreams they’re so injury prone.

Don’t even get me started on workouts with actual names like we discussed earlier: “Zumba”, “P90X”, and that insult to brain cells, the “Bar Method”…uugghhh…If it has a name, generally speaking, it’s replaced common sense with marketing, and is absolutely useless.

You see where I’m going with this.  If you truly want lead a life of looking and feeling great, you need to be proficient at everything.  And I can hear your voice already:

“But I don’t have time!”

Most people don’t.  That’s why most people who exercise fall into one or more of the categories above that I mentioned, despite their well meaning intentions.

The issue is can you combine it all?  We do.  We get all of it done in a few hours per week.  Anyone who tells you it takes longer doesn’t know how to do it very well.  Frankly, I’ve always maintained that if you exercise more than 5-6 hours per week and you DON’T look like Ryan Reynolds or Jessica Biel, you really need to re-evaluate how effective your training is, because it probably sucks.

Every single session we address mobility, core training, strength training and conditioning.  We emphasize certain aspects as we de-emphasize others on a rotating basis (undulating periodization) to provide active recovery for those that aren’t being emphasized and to reduce the monotony found in the other “named” workouts.

This is why TR members get results – they get everything done in a few hours per week.

Does that make me the Bruce Lee of training?  No, of course not, it just makes me someone who’s seen thousands of people try and thousands of people fail.  And quite often, it’s because they trap themselves into a style: “I have to do yoga,”  “I have to do cardio”, “I have to bench press”, etc.  And end up becoming proficient at those particular disciplines without recognizing that’s only a small percentage of their overall health and fitness levels.  And unfortunately, this ignorance leads to the exact opposite of the desired goal: frustration, weight gain, joint pain, etc.

That being said, I still try to crack my knuckles just by making a fist the way Bruce Lee did…