My guest in this PRO Podcast episode wants to help you develop a 1,000 Watt Presence & express yourself brilliantly. It starts with“taking a personal inventory” of yourself interacting with and teaching your class.
Listen as communication expert Alexa Fischer explains why recording yourself interacting and teaching your class is the first step to making small improvements to how effectively you present to and communicate with your participants.
About Alexa Fischer
There’s nothing like a 1,000 Watt Presence to ignite and inspire everyone you meet. In case you have lost touch with your own star qualities, Alexa Fischer knows how to bring out your inner light. She has transformed normal civilians into confident, dynamic speakers. The results? Less Fear. More FUN. And maybe some fame if you’re a really dedicated student! Alexa is a graduate of Northwestern University, B.S. in Speech, and The Yale School of Drama, M.F.A. in Acting. She has appeared on countless episodes of hit television shows and national commercials. Beyond the television, her audiences include entrepreneurs, non-profits, corporations and teens.
Listen to my interview with Alexa below or you'll find it in the ICI/PRO members only iTunes feed.
Here is a past Podcast that explains an easy way you can record your own class, using your iPhone or Android phone.
Click the image for more information on Alexa's course
I've taught Indoor Cycling classes for about 15 years and thought I understood all of the Do's and Don'ts of delivering music to my classes. Based on the technique offered in this podcast, I'm realizing I still have a lot to learn…
Dennis Mellon is one of those Instructors who really gets music. His understanding of creating great playlist is probably one reason he was voted the top Instructor where he lives in Colorado. In a past interview Dennis introduced us to the concept of Harmonic Mixing – paying attention to the musical key of each track and combining only those tracks that are in complimentary keys.
My initial interest was learning; when does Dennis creates his class playlist? Is it after he's decided on the specific profile? Or does he build his profile around his playlist? Listen below to learn his method – he actually does it both ways.
Then, during our conversation, Dennis casually explains how his simple technique for transitioning between short intervals. “I just hit next.” I've always believed that forcing a change, before a song has finished, was too disruptive. Dennis's view is that the disruption is exactly what he's looking for 🙂
The 8:50 Blue Man Group song (with the silence in the middle) that I refer to is Exhibit 13 – except it isn't available in Spotify 🙁 You can find it in the iTunes music store and it's in Deezer.
Here's the playlist I built to go with the new Epic Planet RAAM video. I started out looking for a 13 minute song to match the long climb that finishes this video. At 13:47, Peter Frampton — Do You Feel Like We Do – Live is a perfect choice. Past experience has shown me that you can go crazy trying to compile a playlist that matches a structured video exactly – better/easier to match up a few of the important sections in the ride.
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.
