How we started it - how you can start it

I have had my issues with the fitness industry for a very long time.  When I opened my gym (in a very small town) I knew I wanted to do things differently.  It just took me a while to figure out how.  Our gym has never had much of a personal training program due to how much we have always helped people with their workouts, but something was still missing.  We’d take people through their first workouts; teach them how to do the workout sheet and how to increase their weights but the members still weren’t getting it.  People still weren’t increasing their weights.  I then made a big poster (the sample charts at the bottom can be found here and here if you want to make one of these, text of the poster is here) about increasing your weights and how important that is.  This helped a little bit.  Then one day in the fall of ’07, a member named Eloise (she’s about 60 yrs old) was reading the poster and she came up to the desk to ask how she should raise her weights for the next workout.  I simply filled in her chart for the next day.  And then all kinds of light bulbs started going off in my head!  I told her right there to then bring up her chart to me after her next workout.

Next, I looked out over my gym floor. There were several members working out on the weights and not a single one of them had the workout chart we’d given them when they joined. Not one of them! I approached the first member and asked her where her chart was. She said it was in the filing cabinet and that she didn’t need it because she had everything memorized!!!! No!!! Nobody should have everything memorized! I went into the files and got her chart. Sure enough, she had been doing the same weight and same reps for over a year. No wonder her body hadn’t changed at all. I filled in her chart and told her to bring it back to me after her next workout. I then proceeded to do this with every member I saw in the gym for the rest of the day and following days/weeks. That weekend my wife and I went to Office Max and picked up the bin we put on the wall for everybody to start handing in their charts (picture here, word doc here). This program then blew up on us. I chased after every member that was coming in and we started doing this right away with any new members that came in the gym. The members were loving it and still do, although they accuse me of trying to kill them, they keep handing in their charts for us to fill out!

Before doing the workout charts for them, ninety-nine percent of the members would get to ten repetitions on their third set but they wouldn’t increase their weights after that because of two things.  One:  they felt that the third set was hard enough and they didn’t think they could do more weight.  Two:  they didn’t think they could do all ten reps of a third set if they did increase it.  They needed to be pushed and told that it’s ok if they don’t do all ten reps on a higher weight.  If they would just bump the weight on the next workout and only do five reps…that’s OK!!  Then on their next workout, try to get six reps and so on.  But STILL they weren’t doing it.  They need someone else (me) to actually write that in FOR THEM on every workout.  Once I told them to do it, they would.  It was that easy.  You can walk into either of my gyms anytime and find women in their 60s straining to get that next repetition on their third set.  Their faces are red, muscles tense, they love it and they are getting stronger than they’ve ever been…AND losing weight!  We have older women curling 25 pound dumbbells and leg pressing over 300 pounds! 

Most of our members had never belonged to a regular fitness center before; we were the first real gym in both towns.  The ones from out of town who joined couldn’t believe the help they were getting as the clubs they’d belonged to in the past never gave them any help at all.

 We push weight training very hard at our gym.  You would have a hard time finding one of our 600+ members that only does cardio.  I believe that the weights are the absolute best way to change your body.  Cardio is fine for your heart and lungs and overall health, but if you want to look better in a bikini, you need to lift weights.  And not little five pound dumbbells either, I mean PUSH the weights!  So far we have been doing this since the fall of ‘07 and not a single woman has complained about having big muscles.  About the only complaint we get is that they have to spend money on smaller clothes.  Not a bad complaint. 

So basically that’s how you can start this.  Put a bin up on the wall, copy out the charts I have up or make your own similar to it, then chase down your members and tell them to get doing this.  My reason for telling everybody about this program is simply to help our industry and the people we call our members.  At one time they came to us for help; they give us their money every month, we promised them results when they signed up.  They need our help.  They just don’t know how to ask for that help.  They don’t know they can do a heavier weight and get stronger, that this will help them lose weight.  They don’t know that pushing themselves a little can get them leaner than they’ve ever been.  They need to be told what to do every time they come in.

I do realize that this requires a gigantic leap of faith for any owners reading this so just think about it logically for a minute.  You’ll be helping your members that normally don’t have much if any contact with your staff.  THESE ARE THE ONES MOST LIKELY TO QUIT YOUR GYM, and they make up the majority of your members.  The ones that don’t feel like they belong, the ones that never talk to anybody, the ones that can’t afford personal training, and definitely the ones that never ask for any kind of help.  As owners, we watch our members every day, they come in, they go out.  In many clubs, staff members have no idea if their members have questions, if they’d like some help, if they’re getting results, or how they are feeling.  The most contact they have is the front desk person saying “hi” to them.  Most of your members will never come and ask for help as they are too afraid that they’ll be asking you a dumb question and are embarrassed about not knowing what to do.      

Take a look at your own gym floor sometime.  How many of your members have a workout chart in their hands?  Go ask them how long they’ve been doing the same weights and the same reps.  Most won’t even know how long they’ve been doing the same thing.  Find the workout log they were given when they joined, what does that say?  Is it really any wonder why they quit your gym after a while?  Anybody with even minor knowledge of exercise knows that your results will stop when you don’t increase the intensity.

BODY FAT TRACKING

The second part of this program is tracking body fat measurements. When people start a weight training program, it can be discouraging because the scale isn’t changing. But they may have lost 10 lbs of fat and put on 10 lbs of muscle and their clothes are fitting better. This drives me nuts as an owner/trainer because people are so focused on the scale. I can’t count how many times I’ve had a member come to me and say the scale hasn’t changed but when I ask about their clothes they tell me they’re down a size! Then I ask would you rather the scale went down and your clothes stay the same size?? I haven’t had a yes answer to that question yet. Women also need to be reassured that they will NOT get big muscles from weight lifting. This is a myth that continues to linger in our industry. Testosterone makes muscles bigger; women have a small fraction of what men have. You won’t get big muscles! My own mother is 69 years old, a size four at 123 lbs and has eight Minnesota powerlifting records. She does not have big muscles but she does look incredible.  

I take body fats measurements with a pair of Lange calipers.  I think the electronic ones and the cheap plastic calipers aren’t accurate.  All you have to do is drink a glass of water and you’ll instantly get leaner with the electrical impedance gizmos.  I do a Jackson-Pollack three site equation, it takes about two minutes to do and I have my members re-check about every two to three weeks to SHOW them the results they are getting.  It works!  It works because they are actually getting better results.  It works because of the accountability and the communication.