Don't depend on BCC email getting through to your athletes.
“Sure John – I'll email everyone on my list about your up-coming classes.”
My buddy Randy Erwin is a “Connector”. One of those awesome people who makes the effort to plan events (like outdoor rides) and get-togethers. Randy is the team captain of our Subaru MS 150 team and his love/passion for coordinating group rides lead to him being recruited to be the area Life Time Fitness Cycle lead.
Last night I talked to Randy and he told me he was excited for the FTP assessment I had planned for this morning and that he had emailed everyone three times, so he felt that we'd have a bunch of cyclist from his list.
Except most of them didn't show this morning 🙁
A couple of them did show up for the 9:00 am class that follows mine. Confused looks at those of us there who were cooling down; “Wait, was there an earlier class… why wasn't I told?”
I hadn't received (and neither had many others) any emails from Randy this week. Neither did Amy – we're both on his list. So when I got home this morning I checked and found one of Randy's emails in my SPAM folder, which I rarely check on my laptop and never on my iPhone. Note to self to check there more frequently.
I called and asked; Randy…how many names are on your list? . About 200 was his response. Send a BCC email to a large of a list of email addresses must have triggered something in Gmail to think his email was SPAM = very few of us saw it.
So what to do?
It drives me crazy when I receive mass CC emails – typically I see them as sub requests. They are a total violation of email privacy and if one of the recipients have their email hacked, we all get the spam emails.
So if I want to email a list of athletes who take my class, I should use the BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) feature… right?
For a few people, sure that's OK. But once you have a large number (20+) of recipients, then No. At least not if you want to be sure your email doesn't end up in a SPAM folder and everyone will receive your latest class/event announcement.
Use a White-Listed Email Provider.
White-Listed just means trusted source… as in we don't allow any SPAM emails sent from our accounts Ms. AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, etc. so you can confidently deliver it to your customer. The two most popular are Constant Contact and my favorite MailChimp for a bunch of reasons. The biggest reason for you is that it's completely free until you go over 2,000 subscribers or send over 12,000 individual emails a month. So if Randy used MailChimp he could send 60 emails a month to is list of 200 subscriber each month at no charge. Fabulous deal – they don't even ask for a credit card.
Click to Subscribe
At one point you subscribed to the ICI/PRO Newsletter, by clicking a link and adding your name and email address. Using MailChimp you'll have the same ability to post a Subscribe Here link on your Facebook or Instructor blog = no manual entries!
You need their permission first
I decided that I would like to have all of Randy's contacts in a MailChimp account so I could email them > and know they are getting through. Except Randy doesn't have permission to give me the list, from the people on it, so he can't just give it to me. The solution is to:
Create a MailChimp account – here's the link.
Create a specific list
Have Randy send out my Subscribe Here link in an email. I'll suggest that he brake up the list into 20-30 address at a time and send the email with the link 2-3 times.
I already have a MailChimp account – so all I needed to was to create a new list. Here's the link to my list if you'd like to see it – http://eepurl.com/LQ_2P The Default in MailChimp is to collect First & Last Name + email address, which is normally plenty to start with. It's beyond the scope of this post, but the signup form can be easily modified to include pretty much anything. Please understand that you can ask for too much and they'll not subscribe.
Class sign-in list
I'm also collected emails at the start of each class using a hand written sign-in legal pad.
Instructor Tip: When adding emails to MailChimp from a sign in sheet, it's not uncommon to end up with a few you can't read. My tip is to do a quick search in Google using what you CAN read and search for the rest.
First and Last + the word “email” will many times display the correct email. You might need to add a state (MN, CA,FL, etc.) or city for common names. Google knows everything.
I will frequently check the domain alone – @XYZcompany.com or the domain + first/last name
Would you like additional info or help with this or other methods of marketing your class?
Many of us get near ZERO help from our club/studio > so it's up to all of us to grow our classes.
My Colonoscopy is scheduled for February 27th > if you're over 50, have you had yours?
After some not-so-gentle prodding from the Senior Group Fitness Instructor in our family, I agreed to have a physical before we left for Jamaica. I'm in excellent health by the way. A note from the doctor expressed; “Your lipid panel shows a fabulous HDL!” I'll attribute that to all of the oatmeal I eat, nearly every day.
One of my “directives” was to schedule a (to use the euphemism) “procedure” – which I did. My “procedure” is scheduled for Thursday 2/27 @ 8:00 AM and I couldn't be more excited 🙂
Ok, I'm lying to you. I'm secretly dreading this. Not the actual “procedure” as much as the preparation that leads up to the “procedure”, which I've come to learn is a rather unpleasant experience. Kind of like making a major change to your website.
And no, I won't be recording a Podcast, Tweeting, or live blogging while experiencing my “procedure”.
That would be silly. Besides they told me that I get some of those “Happy Drugs”. There would be no telling what I would say or type.
Which ends my PSA for Men's health… speaking of which I also had one of those (very low #) so carry on unless you've been putting this off. In that case it's time to make the call.
If you run high-intensity trainings in your classes — and I’m guessing most of us do — you may have had a participant experience extreme difficulty during or just after a hard bout of work. In such cases, I’ve seen the skin turn absolutely white or ashen — or, alternatively, bright red and tinged with blue around the cheeks. Either way, the student doesn’t feel well and may be lightheaded, nauseated, shaky, and extremely fatigued.
It’s likely you’ve seen these signs, along with a variety of treatments offered: walking slowly around the room, sitting with the head between the knees, or just lying flat on the floor. These methods often don’t seem to help and may even make things worse.
Keeping in mind something I learned from my major professor in grad school, I developed a “trick” that has proven helpful in such circumstances. It can bring someone back to feeling better quickly and can frequently eliminate the need for stronger emergency measures.
As soon as possible, get the person off the bike and onto the floor. For the sake of comfort, an exercise mat is ideal. If no mat is available, fold a towel to cushion the head. DO NOT elevate the head — we all know from CPR classes that will close off the airway. Speed is more important than comfort, though, so if a towel or a mat isn’t available, just get your student on the floor.
Start the student on his back, with knees bent and feet on the floor. Instruct the student to keep the legs relaxed as she gently lifts one knee toward the chest for a moment and returns the leg to the starting position. Do the same on the other side. If the student is too confused to understand and follow your instructions, just ask him to relax and tell him that you’ll be lifting his legs.
This process typically needs to continue for several minutes. Keep watching the student and giving instructions. Most of them will stop after only one or two repetitions. Be prepared to move the legs manually if the student stops due to fatigue.
A few things not to let the student do:
– Don’t let her grab the knee and hold the leg up. What makes this procedure work is the rhythmic up-and-down action.
– Don’t let him do this quickly and turn it into a forceful exercise. Again, the gentle, rhythmic action of the leg moving up and down is the key.
– Don’t let her lift the second leg while the first one is still in the air. At least one foot should be flat on the floor during the entire procedure.
Like the rest of you, I’ve taken many CPR re-certs. They don’t cover anything like this, but it’s highly effective. The color of the face returns to normal fairly quickly, and the nausea tends to go away quickly, as well.
For better or worse, I’ve had many occasions to use this. When Jim Karanas was teaching his Performance Max program, more than a few participants experienced severe symptoms after max efforts (especially when rowing). Fortunately, the procedure was quite effective, as mentioned above.
Yet long before PMax existed, the “seal of approval” came from Dr. Campbell, my major professor, himself. In our exercise physiology lab one day, a student experienced exactly the symptoms described above — she was sick to her stomach, shaky and white as a sheet. I immediately asked if she’d be willing to do something that I thought would help her. From the floor, her color came back after several knee “pumps” and she was fine.
Tough as he was to impress, Dr. Campbell said nothing, watched closely, and finally made eye contact with me and nodded his approval. This expert in cardiovascular dynamics apparently saw it as an appropriate treatment method.
You might want to practice the technique so you’ll remember it. Then let’s hope we never have to use it.
RateYourBurn.com is a review site for fitness instructors who teach in select US cities. RateYourBurn founder Gillian Casten joins me to discuss her vision for this popular Instructor review site + shares a few of her observations and potential strategies you can use to improve as an Instructor.
In a previous interview, Studio owner Jessica Bashelor @ the Handle Bar explains how she recruited her Instructor team based on the the reviews she found on rateyourburn.com
I'd suggest maximizing your rateyourburn.com Instructor profile and start asking your participants to post reviews.Clearly a recommended Best Practice for you as a fitness professional.
Listen to my interview with Gillian below – and please to either leave us a review or subscribe to our free Podcast.
If you haven't yet, I would encourage you to listen to our latest Podcast that features 26 year old Cycling Studio owner Jessica Bashelor. If you're short on time, you really only need to hear the lead in where she describes her vision for her studio.
I knew that I wanted to have a really strong brand, that was based on; work and fun and music. And those are things that I sort of live by myself as a 26 year old.
Something about this interview has been bugging me until this morning. While riding in Amy's class it hit me. Jessica's brand doesn't include anything about education – zero. Just work/fun/music. Oh, and she throws in; taking life a little less seriously 🙂
Aren't studios supposed to be all about; coaching and purpose and threshold heart rate training and power training and weight loss and healthful living and fitness knowledge and, and, and?
Obviously not for Jessica or the rider's (I'd guess she'd never consider calling them “Students”) who pack her studio.
My generation wasn't any different.
I was 18 years old in 1979 when Pink Floyd — The Wall dominated the the charts and captivated me and many of my friends. The album's most popular track Another Brick In The Wall, Pt. 2 spoke to me as a teenager; we don't need no education… we don't want no thought control…
http://youtu.be/zcevYuG3j7M
I didn't want anyone, telling me anything… I wanted to be heard and understood at 18, and this hasn't changed much now that I'm 52.
The Wall is a story about how we build metaphorical/emotional walls around ourselves. As a young person, or old for that matter, one way we build walls is we learn to tune-out people like our parents/spouses/bosses or teachers, when they talk at us, instead of communicate with us. As the father of two daughters, I know all about how ineffective it can be to try and “educate” them about what I wanted them to know and accept. It almost never worked. Often it had the opposite reaction and it wasn't hard to see them constructing their own wall to shut me out.
Sometimes the walls we create are small.
Have you ever had someone tell you; “I just answered that ten minutes ago” ? Chances are you created your own “wall” and it prevented you from hearing what could be plainly heard by others.
I was in a class last week where the Instructor talked nearly nonstop. While he rattled on about mitochondria and slow twitch muscle fibers, I found myself in my own little world – missing many of his cues. I'd come back to reality and find myself down when everyone was up or surprised when he announced the end of an interval, that I hadn't even realized we were doing. As I watched the rest of the class in the mirror it was obvious I wasn't the only one with a wall around me and my bike 🙁
John it just disappeared. It showed up fine on my computer and I'll swear it was on my Droid before I left to teach. But as I was ready to launch into a long threshold effort, Spotify skipped past a track, completely messing up my class.
Amy is the official Android user here in our home, me and the girls all have iPhones. Which is helpful when people rely on you to help them understand the little idiosyncrasies of a particular music software app like Spotify.
I'll admit that, although I had seen that chain icon before… I had no idea what it meant or represented. I do now 🙂
That chain icon indicates; the specific song you dragged into your playlist isn't available in that exact place, so Spotify has conveniently linked to to the actual location of the track in their database. Perfect if everything works as planned. Which, unfortunately wasn't the case with Ms. Amy today, at her noon class at CycleQuest Studio. I've never had an issue with this on my iphone, but you can never be too careful when it comes to your class music. I'd recommend checking for any any “linked” tracks and see if you can replace them.
Click the “chain” icon and Spotify will take you to the linked location. Select and drag that track into your playlist. Open the playlist and position the track next to the linked track, and then delete it.
So while we're on the topic, what do those other, funny little icons represent?
The square box with the music note symbol indicates a local track, probably from iTunes, that Spotify can't connect to its database. If you see this in your playlist be sure that you set “offline mode” while both your computer and portable devise are on the same WiFi network.
I'm still trying to understand the pinkish square with the lighting bolt. Supposedly they're tracks that Spotify had found once, but can no longer find. Funny – songs with that icon still sync to my iPhone and play both on my computer and iPhone.
Seeing this icon next to a local file means that the link (or path) to your local file is broken or not found. Perhaps iTunes moved the local file to a different folder. You can try to import the file again by browsing to the actual file and dragging it into Spotify’s Local Files pane. The broken rectangle link also shows up if a song is protected by digital rights management (DRM), so it can’t be played outside of iTunes. A notification bar appears if this is the case, and you’re prompted to remove all DRM-protected tracks from the Local Files pane.
Which doesn't make sense to me – all three tracks from the image above play and sync without any trouble.
Hotmail, etc. so you can confidently deliver it to your customer. The two most popular are Constant Contact and my favorite MailChimp for a bunch of reasons. The biggest reason for you is that it's completely free until you go over 2,000 subscribers or send over 12,000 individual emails a month. So if Randy used MailChimp he could send 60 emails a month to is list of 200 subscriber each month at no charge. Fabulous deal – they don't even ask for a credit card. 
