The Actionaut

February 25, 2010

What “Chain” Gyms Don’t Want You To Know (Part 1).

Filed under: Fitness,Training — Tags: , , — Philippe Til @ 10:00 AM

CONTROVERSY WARNING: I will name corporate gym chains and their practices. I will disclose things trainers should know when applying, as well as help people looking for trainer recognize when they’re getting a deal, ultimately helping both sides reach the best decision regarding what’s most important: training.

This article is not weeks, but at this point, years in writing and is based mostly on my own experience in the trenches, as well as feedback from colleagues, clients and members. Because of recent research of mine for a business plan, I decided that the best way to research my competition was to go work for the competition (and in one case, just investigate as a member). Part 1 today, we’ll talk about the veil that’s being pulled over your eyes. I had to break it up because of the amount of information, even though I can fill a library with what I know now!

The Tiffany Box Wrap:
This is a PR concept that centers around branding and social proof. If you take a lump of coal and place it in a Tiffany brand box and wrap it, your perception of the lump of coal elevates it to something of high value. And because it’s Tiffany’s, someone will buy it, which will beget another purchase, and another and so forth, regardless of the quality. That’s social proof: if someone else is doing it, it must be good.

Apply that concept to an expensive gym chain, say, Equinox. While there may be a few good trainers there, your perception of the quality of training you may receive is elevated because they can pump serious dollars into their branding, the amenities of their gym and the very high price of training, something an independent trainer cannot compete with. You’re mostly paying for overhead, while the trainer gets 30% at best. Back in the day, that’s why I chose to train at Bally’s, arguably a less fancy facility, but with better payout per session, meaning the gap between what the client paid and what I was getting was narrower (at the time, since they now have adopted the same policy as their competitors, making it even more difficult to build a business). For a place like Sports Club L.A., you will get a price that is “fair” compared to Equinox, as their facility is very dated, with nasty carpet, but the payout to the trainer is not any better than Equinox. What Equinox and Sports Club offers though is a more affluent clientèle, which means more likely to afford training. And the powers that be know that, so they punk you! So, that $220 session you pay for only gets the veteran trainer (over 3 years) around $50, if the trainer works a full time gig, which is extremely difficult to pull off, considering client cancellations and available hours in the day when people actually DO train. Starting payout is about $23 per hour, the gym makes the difference. Yikes! An average trainer is lucky to get in 15-20 hours a week in this economy, in a corporate gym. Too many other trainers around to fight with. So the hourly incentive is very hard to reach! I just looked at a payroll at Bodies In Motion, and unless those trainers go home to the 1950′s, there is no way they can sustain a living with $169-$224 every 2 weeks. Means they have to get “creative”…

Independent Trainers and Boutique Studios:
Let’s switch tracks a bit and go to your independent trainer or boutique studio. Depending on the location, your boutique-sized training studio will offer a smaller, more personal feel. If it has a few trainers teaching there, they are either staff (and get paid very little to baby-sit a boot camp or circuit class, merely keeping you accountable rather than offering real training advice) or independent trainers who pay rent. Those are the trainers you want to go with (more in part 2). The indie trainer or studio doesn’t have the luxury of pumping cash into branding. Their job is to generate leads and get clients. The cost of getting a client these days is very high, especially with this economy. It takes free sessions (corporate gyms at least pay the trainer around $8/hr for the free session, for new trainers only), mailers, social media tools, health fairs, flyers and more just to get a potential client through the door, then they need to purchase a training package. While the potential for income is greater for the trainer without the cost being hijacked for the buyer, the quality of training usually surpasses that of a corporate gym trainer (the few that do well in corporate chains either have no room for new clients, or simply take their clients away from the gym because their income is peanuts. The client and the trainer both know that and if management was tuned in, they’d pay their trainers better and thus wouldn’t lose revenue from those clients).

How Can I Say Indie Trainers Are Better?
The reason I say training with an independent trainer is usually better (I’ll name chain gyms with good trainers too, though) is because THEY NEED YOU TO SEE RESULTS to stay in business. Keeping a client is easier than getting a new client. They have much more at stake than in a corporate gym environment where member traffic is high, with a potential supply of fresh clients should some of them cancel. Knowledge and skill levels are much higher too. Take me for instance: I spend THOUSANDS yearly on education alone and am not recouping that cost. It only serves as a way to differentiate me from the next guy. I’m the car with all the bells and whistles for the price of a entry level luxury sedan (hey, no one ever said PT is for everyone!) vs. the same car without the options. Few corporate gyms offer the support and growth potential of an independent gym, Gold’s Gym being one of them, recognizing a trainer’s skill level and thoroughly checking their trainers out before hiring them.
While other gyms allege to provide you with the tools to grow, they really want you to follow a cookie-cutter approach to training, whether you are a client or trainer. This “in-the-box” thinking has the quality trainer leave, frustrated by their high qualifications not being put to use. How fun is it for trainers knowing their skills don’t transfer? They start at the bottom, and there will always be someone happy to take their spot, be they good or not. Regardless of your fitness level, background or health issues, they put everyone in the same boat. The client has to go through it, the trainer has to put you through it. The trainer may have greater knowledge, but is not allowed to showcase that knowledge if it doesn’t match the corporate structure. Where do you find that? Equinox and Sports Club L.A.

I don’t know about you, but that kinda takes the “personal” out of personal training, wouldn’t you agree?

In Part 2: What And How Trainers Get Paid I will show you how trainers are duped by management by setting difficult to reach goals, only to be blamed later when management doesn’t offer them the possibility to grow. Learn, as a trainer, which gyms do what and where is the best place to apply for a job as a staff trainer. This affects the buyers too, because it all boils down to money, and if your trainer isn’t making money, they ain’t happy. If they are satisfied, I would seriously question their abilities, because a truly knowledgeable trainer pulling from their vast education, knowledge and experience will not give it away for nothing. How much do you think you’re going to get out of someone making under $20/hr? You need to know what the trainer gets, not what you pay, to truly assess the quality of your training.

Also: Which gyms have trainers without certifications, or advertising trainers with certain skills but are lying about it!

Part 3: Negotiate The Rate will show you how to get the best bang for your buck. Trainers, build value! Buyers: be informed! Plus a list of local gyms I recommend (besides mine of course) based on your budget, where you live and what you want out of your fitness.

Make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed, bookmark this page or visit often, as this is information few are willing to disclose! I might even get in serious trouble for it!

February 21, 2010

Define “Functional”

Filed under: Fitness — Philippe Til @ 9:14 PM

Following along the thought process and training approach of some very respectable colleagues of mine, I wanted to share some of their knowledge with mine, as well as experience and facts.

What is “functional”?
That’s a loaded question. Literally, it means something relating to the way something functions or operates. It’s been a “buzz word” thrown around in the fitness industry because it creates an emotional trigger in your brain making you believe whoever is using the word knows what they are talking about (whether there is an actual functional application to the movement or not). Case in point: how is a side bend holding dumbbells overhead functional in ANYTHING you do in your daily activities? How is doing biceps curls standing on a BOSU ball strengthening your core better than a plank? (“Core”, by the way, is the best friend of the word “functional”. Almost a guarantee for a successful sale of training. Almost, because people are getting smarter, I hope).
People will argue that standing on a BOSU creates imbalances and forces you to work harder at staying upright. Fair enough, it does create a challenge. But how’s that improving your curls? You dissipate your effort and focus staying upright and therefore curl a lighter weight. Go heavy, you WILL go home on a stretcher. Besides, what’s “functional” about curls anyway? Developing the biceps that way only isolates it and when do you EVER curl anything heavy in real life (you don’t, even when you think you do. Email me if you want to argue this)? Work on developing a stronger back with pull-ups or deadlifts, even rows. Your biceps will work throughout these exercises AND you strengthen your core too without trying (try deadlifting a heavy weight with weak abs and back, or without recruiting those muscles. Doesn’t happen!).

How do trainers fool you?
Trainers will conjure up an exercise that will make you “feel” muscles burning through a complicated drill combining (lack of) balance while managing a weight that is “offline”, or deviated from your center of mass. That alleged controlled instability is designed to challenge your proprioception and will be sold to you as “functional”. Again, challenge the drill by trying to apply it to something you do. And here’s the funky thing: if you can’t find a use for the move, you might get a bogus answer like “we need to shock your muscles by doing something unusual, having them do something they don’t normally do so that when you’re caught off-guard, your body will better adapt to the situation”. Again, even I said such things and believed them (in my early days of training).
Here’s an easy way to debunk the funk in “funk-tional”: let’s apply the concept to self-defense tactics. You learn to punch, kick, stab, deflect or break. You never know what an assailant can do to you, yet you practice the drills over and over till they become part of your muscle memory so that in the event of an attack, your reflexes take over and you just react. Under duress, we revert to what we know. If you’ve never practiced any self-defense tactics, your chances are slim under attack. If you do stupid-ass moves in the gym that “burn” but make zero sense in practical applications, your muscles, however shocked, will NOT respond to the challenge appropriately, because they are “confused”.

Muscle Confusion:
Here’s another idiotic concept. “Let’s confuse your muscles to make them respond”. What happens to YOU when you are confused? Do you give smart answers? Do you drive safely? Do you operate quickly or stall/hesitate? The same goes for your muscles. Confusing your muscles yields NO results. You want them to grow strong or big? Lift heavy, or a lot, consistently. The WOD concept (Workout Of the Day) whereby you lift differently so you can adapt to various situations is only still around because the statistics regarding injuries haven’t caught up yet. Those who are successfully gaining results do not factor in the fact that:
A) They are already fit and disciplined.
B) They are consistent in their changes, and actually vary their load, intensity and specificity.

Yes, there are benefits to practicing random acts of training. But that refers to skill development, biofeedback, specialized variety (doing the same drill a variety of ways: light, heavy, bilaterally, unilaterally…), rest/recovery and most importantly fun! What’s the point if you don’t have some fun? (See my previous article)

Implied Knowledge:
When you go see a doctor, lawyer, trainer or any trade person in an arena you are not familiar with, there is an implication that the person you are getting the information from is knowledgeable in their professional field. This goes for trainers receiving education for a certification. Some apply it, some don’t and just want to get it over with to just go work at a club and be allowed to called themselves “certified”. Among those that apply it, few question the source because they implicitly trust their teacher. I used to be one of those people. I even taught things I didn’t quite buy because I learned them from a trusted source, even if it didn’t work. I would do everything by the book, and still, the results would be marginal or the pain remain present (I’m not referring to a client’s lack of accountability, which is a different topic). I’ve acquired a lot of education over the years and am confident to pass on effective knowledge, discarding the wrong, using the right. Basically, I transferred my Ninjutsu training philosophy of “answering before questioned, applying every form of martial art known at that time in History”.

The more I learn, the more I discard, the more I simplify. I don’t complicate things and falsely label something as functional unless it truly is functional. I’m not saying your trainer might be fooling you on purpose, just that they might themselves have fallen prey to misdirected concepts in the attempt to justify the cost of their education. It’s almost like going to see a movie and trying to like it to justify the cost, even if it’s a dud. And for those that train with me or share my knowledge, rest assured that I do not pass on bogus information to you. As a matter of fact, as a coach, I filter through the pile of coals to find the diamond, which I then cut for you, saving you time, money and injuries in the long run. I train in a variety of systems. The good systems uprade, fix bugs and become more efficient. If your coach/trainer doesn’t do that, you’re not making progress either.

February 15, 2010

Tara Wood Wildfitness Interview

Filed under: Environment,Fitness,Health — Tags: , , , , — Philippe Til @ 10:01 AM

Tara Wood is the founder of Wildfitness, a company organizing fitness vacations geared at getting us reconnected with our true nature as human beings. Here’s a brief excerpt taken from the official Wildfitness site: “Tara founded Wildfitness in 2001 as the natural expression of her passion for the outdoors and belief in the potential of the human body. Tara was brought up in Kenya and found that being outdoors, active and eating well can flip your mood and boost your health like no medicine can.
Since this time Tara has been consistently developing the courses with expertise drawn from people at the forefront of the natural and evolutionary fitness field.

Tara Wood, the exuberant founder of Wildfitness

Here’s a recent interview I conducted with her. Read the Vital Juice LA article about me and Wildfitness, as a companion guide and article, as I put their senior editor through a Wildfitness oriented routine.

Philippe Til: Ever since I discovered your company and took part in your Wildfitness Coach training in London in May 2008, I’ve been “preaching the Wildfitness gospel”. Would you mind telling us, in a nutshell, the philosophy behind it and how you came to start it all up?

Tara Wood: The Philosophy in a nutshell: What is true human fitness? Look at tribal humans in nature:
“[Their] bodies are splendid, flexible, nimble, skilful, enduring, resilient and yet they have no other tutor in gymnastics but their lives in nature”. (Georges Hebert)
Wildfitness believes that looking to nature and our evolutionary origins provides the most upstream and useful guide for how to eat, move and live to achieve our natural human physical potential. Unfortunately, many of us have been separated from nature for so long we have lost our understanding of what is ‘natural’ – we no longer know how to eat, move and live in a natural way and as a result our health is suffering.
A Wildfitness course provides the physical experience, expert coaching and time to help modern city dwellers rediscover their true natural physicality and vitality. You’ll learn to choose the right foods among the dizzying array of modern food stuffs, to move skillfully and harness natural forces to get lean, flexible and injury-free and to understand the role that your body’s natural rhythms of rest and recuperation play in achieving health & vitality for life.

I started Wildfitness just after leaving university. There was no question about doing anything else – it was an expression of my passion and belief that nature knows best. Learning to live naturally I have always believed is the most sophisticated health and fitness plan the world knows. I also had the good fortune of having a family house in what I think is the most beautiful place in the world (Watamu, Kenya). Wildfitness was a way of keeping the house and sharing it and its healing qualities with lots of people.

Beach Running in Watamu, Kenya.

Besides the like-minded feeling and connection I had to train with your people, my Wildfitness training also constituted something that is very important to me: continuing education. I learned Pose, natural movement patterns, the “Wild diet” and since have become kettle bell certified (RKC, through Pavel Tsatsouline) after Lee Saxby correctly introduced me to these training systems. How do you expand the breadth of training knowledge in your system? What changes/additions do you bring to keep Wildfitness “sharp”?

Keeping Wildfitness ‘sharp’ is an ongoing process, we will never know all the answers to nature’s mysteries in full, but we get closer all the time. We are in the great position to have the best minds in evolutionary fitness to draw from: Lee Saxby, Dr Nicholas Romanov, Frank Forencich, and Erwan Le Corre. We also have our Wildfitness locations as an actual arena to test out our coaching techniques on real people whose entire experience we create over several weeks. Translating theory into practical coaching is a real art – particularly when you deal with human beings! So we are constantly re-visiting the latest insights into evolutionary wisdom and constantly getting feedback from and evolving our courses. What we find, as we get more understanding and further ‘upstream’ insights into how our bodies and nature work, is that our courses actually get simpler.

What do you look for in terms of locations for your Wildfitness vacations?

Firstly it must be Wild. It must also be accessible and safe, but above all it must be a place to experience pure nature without noise and light pollution. We look for awe-inspiring natural environments where you can challenge yourself in a variety of different ways. We chose simple but comfortable and beautiful accommodation for up to 18 people. We look for places that operate while considering the environment and there needs to be a source of local organic food nearby.
Kettlebells (my favorite)

What are the biggest perceptual challenges your clients face when they start training and discover a way of moving that seems to go against 3 decades of established “gym fitness”?

Some of the biggest perceptual changes that our clients go through are:

- That being fit means so much more than looking slim or muscular. We aim to inspire people towards new fitness goals – instead of focusing on what your body looks like, focus on what it can do. Aim to have a body that is useful, skilful, efficient, resilient and that can perform the wide range of different movements which it was designed to do in nature. Appreciate the beauty of graceful movement itself and you will find a beautiful body is the natural result. The other natural results are energy, health and being able to do all sorts of useful things.

- That fitness is not in reality split into the categories that gyms split it into: speed, endurance, strength, co-ordination, flexibility etc. Natural movement contains elements of all these qualities and by doing a variety of natural movements you gain the ability to be fast, to endure, to be strong, to be skillful and agile all when you need them. Indeed, to do a movement effectively you always need all the elements of fitness at the same time in varying degrees. A good example of this is that your ability to lift something heavy is about your speed, flexibility, co-ordination and speed, more than it is about your muscular strength.

- The other major perceptual change is that moving is fun! If you train in a punishing way, you actually don’t get the results. Rest is the other half of fitness, there isn’t a linear relationship between exertion and how fit you become. Sleep, fun, inspiration, and balance are vital to getting fit. We see many of our clients getting in such good shape (often having failed to before) by building in rest to the day as religiously as building in movement.

Swimming in the turquoise Kenyan sea...

What is perceived as exercise today is actually counterproductive in many ways to how we’re supposed to move, but the media continue to promote the “establishment”. At the same time, at every corner, a new fitness gimmick seems to pop (at least in the USA, I don’t know about the UK). How would you argue that Wildfitness is not an ephemeral trend?

We don't need to buy into more plastic junk!

Are our teachings a fad? Well yes, in a way. Many of the things we do, believe in and live by are temporary. We are continuing to evolve, continuing to understand who we are, where we came from, how we should live. To say we have answered these questions, for anyone to say they have answered these questions is labeling yourself as limited and a bit silly. But I do believe that looking to nature, looking to what we know of our origins is a rich and lasting place to look for these answers. And I also believe that looking to nature and our evolutionary origins is a philosophy that gives a fruitful focus, more so than scientific enquiry that tries to make sense of our physiology and biomechanics outside of this context. Our techniques will change, but what separates us from ‘gimmicks’ is that our philosophy does not. Fundamentally our philosophy is a search for the real nature of ourselves and our world.

Thank you so much for your time! I believe you’re in Kenya right now for a Wildfitness Convention, correct? What’s the best way to get in touch with you or any member of your organization?

Yes, the whole Wildfitness team were out in Kenya at the beginning of the year discussing all things Wild. Contact us on info@wildfitness.com or our website is www.wildfitness.com .

Thanks Philippe – I hope you will come and join the tribe out here again soon! We hope to have a location nearer to the States sometime soon, until then keep spreading the Wild messages over there across the pond. Thanks!

Stretching at Sunset. Peaceful nature...

(All photos were taken from the Wildfitness web site Kenya Gallery. For more pictures and additional Wildfitness locations, please click here. You can also download a free “mini-workout” which acts as a teaser/warmup, but engages your body in one of the many ways to get fit through Wildfitness modalities by visiting Exercise TV.)

February 11, 2010

A river can be dammed by a pebble

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , — Philippe Til @ 9:30 AM

These are strange times we’re living in.

I recently read a great blog about eliminating anything that doesn’t work from a workout program and even philosophized about carrying that over to other aspects of one’s life. Currently, I have planted a bunch of little seeds, but none of them can sprout until the pebble placed atop is removed. The same pebble seems to be holding a flood at bay (a metaphoric flood of energy and activity).

I am busy from dusk till dawn, almost like an undercover reporter, ensconced in corporate mediocrity. I read in a friend of mine’s blog, Josh Hanagarne, about attending the recent GripNRip seminar in Minnesota. While he discusses his struggles, he mentions something that I agree with, even at times placing myself in the same category, that the knowledge of the average trainer is abysmal. Now, I spent tons of money and time making myself a better trainer and still feel there is more to learn and that I will never know enough. But I do spent time applying what I learned and know my limitations. Other trainers rest on their “national certification” laurels and buy iPads, chrome wheels and expensive sneakers.

How does this relate to today’s post?
I have to be creative, cooking up a storm of activity while trying to maintain focus of the essence of what I want to do. The recession has force my clientèle to “recede” a bit. Not that I didn’t see it coming and didn’t prepare, but amidst what I want to do comes what needs to be done. My wife and I have a baby on the way, personal training has taken a secondary place in people’s priorities, though group classes seem to get more focus because of the cost effectiveness.

My friend James Neidlinger, from 5 Rings Fitness claims that in St-Paul, Minnesota, you can throw a rock and hit an RKC instructor. Here in LA, a new boutique opens up every day almost. There is one at every corner like there are bistros in Paris. So I go in and investigate.

What did I witness?
At one chain, your knowledge, years of experience and abilities mean nothing. You cannot train by offering your knowledge. There is no transfer of knowledge and skills, you start at the bottom, like their little bitch and follow a cookie cutter approach, the same for EVERYBODY!
At another, their dismal sales and low membership has them try to recruit top performers at barely above minimum wage for managerial positions, with what they call part time and encourage you to train as well as manage, with a schedule that makes it impossible for any consistent client-trainer work.
One boutique gym is trying to recoup its cost almost right away by charging an astronomical rent from prospective trainers, but is located in a non-visible, hard to access area with a ratio of client to trainer of 1:2!
And, another chain hired such a plethora of trainers that they cannot build their business (but the company cleverly does pay cuts if one doesn’t hit a certain amount of redemption, i.e. sessions trained, per pay period, thus having 20 hours/sessions serviced by 5 trainers instead of having one or two trainers service those hours. How is one supposed to build a business that way? I guess it weeds out the weak.

What’s even worse?
Gyms are now educating their clients in the art of being cheap. Mediocre, inexperienced trainers working for peanuts have become standard fare. 2 corporations I have visited, offering a health club for the employees, have trainers on staff who work for less than double minimum wage AT BEST. It becomes that when one offers a higher level of training at a fair market price, members balk and prefer to pay less and “feel” a burn rather than execute skillful and purposeful movements geared at developing a true sense of fitness. It’s like telling off your accountant because TurboTax is cheaper, or performing your own appendectomy after reading about it on Wikipedia!

Conclusion
Little things count. Details. A knot in your shoulder can mask a big problem. A kink in your chain can stop you from moving forward. Cheap is expensive. In my journey to grow, I find that it is hard to let go of who I am and have my compromises turn to sacrifices. I am not about to lose myself for something I don’t believe in. Do what is relevant. Prevail. Let it flow.

February 4, 2010

Today’s strategy

Filed under: Fitness — Philippe Til @ 8:08 AM

“Slow Preparation,
Fast Execution”.

Ponder it. Apply it!

February 1, 2010

Five Rings

Filed under: Life Coaching and Skills — Tags: , , , , , — Philippe Til @ 12:49 PM

The Winter Olympics are soon to start, and I am only using that as a clever misdirection to get your attention and allow you to find ways to enjoy your life from any vantage point!

Miyamoto Musashi, arguably the greatest Samurai of all time, expert at using 2 katanas (Japanese swords) at once, wrote in his masterpiece The Book of Five Rings (Bushido–The Way of the Warrior)
about 9 principles to follow, which happen to lead to a fully enlightened life.

I’ve learned these principles in Ninjutsu, and have been applying them my whole life. There are many translations, with varying wording, but they essentially mean the same thing. Here they are, slightly out of order (but that’s not what’s important here). You can click on the image also to get the book. Any manager, any martial artist, any businessman or simply anyone can read this series of strategies and essays and enjoy them!

1. Do not think dishonestly.
2. The way is in training.
3. Know the ways of all professions.
4. Become acquainted with every art.
5. Distinguish between gains and losses in worldly matters.
6. Develop intuitive judgment and understanding for everything.
7. Pay attention to trifles.
8. Perceive what cannot be seen.
9. Do nothing which is of no use.

I have these committed to memory. These suggestions come from observation and cover just about any aspect of life. Even if you think it doesn’t, it does. Just look deeper, or harder. The gap may be an inch wide, but it goes a mile deep!

Other fun book like that, though very powerful, that I suggest as a shelf mate is Sun-Tzu’s THE ART OF WAR

And if thinking differently, laterally is your bag, check out my post on Oblique Strategies at Josh Hanagarne’s web site www.worldsstrongestlibrarian.com.

If you like this article, please subscribe to my RSS feed. You can also read more articles, usually strictly fitness oriented (to balance out the kind of fitness I don’t always believe in) on Exercise TV.

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