I feel a bit sad (and confused) whenever I see an Instructor's comment to the effect of; “I'm not interested in entertaining my class.” It's usually followed with something like; “my role in class is to coach people through effective exercise.” or “people should just be content to ride the bike and not need to be entertained.”
So why would anyone be adamantly against entertaining their participants? I'm not sure (which is the confused part), but I do know that my best classes are those where I feel like a polished performer on a stage. It's like a drug to me – that high I feel when I'm really on my game and wanting to experience it over and over again.
Club Business International magazine has a great article this month: The Fun Factor – Valuable tips on how to make exercise entertaining and addictive. I have created a PDF of the article that you can download here and there's a lot of great ideas you can apply to your classes tomorrow.
It begins with this:
Most people don't enjoy exercising
The brilliant Keeping It Fun concept, from studio owner Karen Casler, is based on the simple (but often ignored) fact that most people don't really enjoy exercising, but nearly everyone enjoys having FUN.
Sure you'll have some self directed athletes that will endure a focused “Real” class, so as not to be stuck riding alone in their basement. But those same folks will also enjoy a FUN class the same as everyone else > and many will adapt to the class in ways that meet their training needs.
My observations are that the most popular Instructors understand this and typically conduct very FUN classes. I'll never forget the advice I was given early in my career, by a MI at Life Time Fitness:
First you need to give them what they want (FUN)… and only then can you give them what they need (specific training)!
Back when we lived in Minnesota with serious winter storms and consistent below zero (F) temps, Amy and I are were to spend a week on a warm beach. The video below shows the resort, Secrets Wild Orchid in Montego Bay Jamaica, where we went.
As I have said before, Amy and I aren't rich people. We can only afford to go because we teach Group and Indoor Cycling classes in exchange for our all-inclusive stay at this or one of dozens of other Caribbean resorts. Save your frequent flier miles and you can spend a week here for around $500.00 total. Check out our other website where we teach you most of everything you need to take your working fitness vacation. Or you can go here to see if you qualify.
I'm covered for another year of daily automatic file backup.
Did your computer backup automatically last night?
How about yesterday?
As a Best Practice mine does every day. I need to do absolutely nothing. Every night Carbonite looks at my computer and makes a backup copy of any new files + any revised/changed files – I don't even have to remember to renew… Carbonite does that automatically as well. I grabbed the screenshot above, from the email confirmation I received this morning from Carbonite. After multiple failures of my hard drive (where I would have lost EVERYTHING) I consider this is the best $5.00 I spend each and every month.
With all of the valuable files you have on your computer, I can't believe how anyone would risk losing everything, if your computer was lost, stolen or you drop it on the floor like I tend to do 🙁
Just for fun, take a few moments and look through all of the files you have stored on your hard drive; all your local iTunes music files, years of digital pictures, home movies and tax/financial files. Much of my life is stored below this keyboard – I can't afford to lose any of it.
It's super easy to setup and there are options for Mac's and PC's.
P.S. You've no doubt heard about the CRYPTOLOCKER and how it can hijack all of your computer files and hold them for ransom. The only possible solution when this occurs, is to completely reformat your hard drive – wiping out everything and then restoring from a clean backup… if you have one.
ICI/PRO member & Cycle Quest Studio owner Joe Ducosin hosted Olympic Gold Medalist Dara Torres at his studio last week – and the results were a bunch of free local media that promoted his studio.
Dara was in town to promote the new women's specific FitClips headphones she helped design for KOSS Headphones. They also seem to work just fine for men – the pair Dara gave me fit really well, that is after she showed me how to insert them properly.
What was really unique about this promotion was how they used Joe's studio as the place to demonstrate the FitClip headphones to members of the media that included; multiple on-air personalities + a half dozen local bloggers. Each Keiser M3 was wired so each rider could experience the class through their headphones, instead of the studio's sound system.*
I met with Dara in the morning and recorded this short interview.
Then in the afternoon Dara and Joe lead a fun class for all the media folks and a number of Cycle Quest Instructors.
Cycle Quest Instructors with Dara Torres
I waited a few days, before posting this, in order to see how much promotion resulted for KOSS and Cycle Quest. Here's what I've found so far – with a few more stories not yet published.
Would something like this work for your studio? It wouldn't have to feature Dara Torres, I'll bet there's a celebrity who lives near to your studio and they're likely to be connected to some product or service that you could help them promote 🙂
I'm not sure where else KOSS and Dara plan to hold these events (they've done a few already), but I have their contact information and could forward your info on to them if you'd like to be considered. Just leave a comment below.
*This actually reminded me of the very early days of Spinning classes, at the Flagship Athletic Club where Amy taught back around 1995ish. The 25 or so Schwinn built JohnnyG Spinners were set up in a corner, but not a closed room, so music from the class would be disruptive to the other areas of the club. So instead of speakers, we all wore headsets connected to a Walkman /portable radio that was tuned in to an FM station to hear the music and Instructor's cuing. At times this was a real hassle, but riders rarely talked during class and there was something special about having the Instructor's voice right in your head 🙂
I used Epic Planet's video Epic Acadia this morning in a class I subbed. Because these early AM people are very committed and they all understand the value of Threshold based training, I knew I could lead them on a ride that included a 20 minute climb at (or very near) Threshold. The first 30 minutes are a perfect warm up with a number of short climbs I used to bring them to Threshold before we got to the climb. The graphical representation of where you are during the class is the best of any of the DVD creators that I have experienced, although I'm not completely sure what TZ 4-5 means. I assume TZ stands for Training Zone and if we only had a universal standard for what TZ stood for …
ICI/PRO member & 
