As Instructors, our riders will often asked us questions about: insert topic here.
Where we can get into trouble is by launching into a short/long/epic dissertation on the subject, often without fully understanding the whole question.
My first sales job out of school was selling motorcycles. For someone like me, who at 22 couldn't be around them enough, it was the perfect job. Being the new guy, I asked a bunch of questions to the other salespeople (there wasn't any real training) and I was told to study up on all the different models. That year Honda had 52 different bikes – we had decks of playing cards with a different model on each card. I was very familiar with many of the models – I had put myself through school working as a motorcycle mechanic, so I felt like I could answer just about any question anyone would ask. I was ready to hit the sales floor and show everyone I was a born salesman.
Does this bike have a really powerful engine?
I've forgotten many of the details, but I'll never forget the gentleman's question or my response. He was looking over a new model Honda and after our introductions he asked; Does this bike have a really powerful engine? I couldn't believe my luck. I knew every conceivable specification and had nearly memorized the latest magazine test results.
Sir, you're looking at the most powerful motorcycle in its category.I told him proudly. Then (I'm sure I was trying to impress him with all my product knowledge) I launched into what had to be a 10 minute explanation of the 0-100 mph times, rev limits, performance tires, how it will smoke any other bike on a race track, etc… The man stood and listened politely until I came up for air. He then thanked me and walked out the door.
I saw the man later in the week. He was taking delivery of his new motorcycle – a much less powerful model than I had shown him. After he drove out I grabbed the other salesman and asked what had happened. I showed him a new Interceptor, what's he doing with that low powered bike? You idiot, you completely missed his question! Was his response. We're lucky he came back here at all… he bought that bike for his 17 year old son. He didn't want anything with too much power. Lesson learned.
Have you ever been in a situation like that? You're considering making a major purchase (or need personal advise) and were at first a bit nervous, anxious or guarded? So the question you asked was an abbreviated version, one that didn't exactly communicate your specific question?
What would you want to hear next?
Let me see if I understand your question…
Each of the The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People can beapplied to our fitness profession. Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood rings the loudest for me.
Use empathic listening to be genuinely influenced by a person, which compels them to reciprocate the listening and take an open mind to being influenced by you. This creates an atmosphere of caring, and positive problem solving.
It doesn't matter if you're selling motorcycles, toasters or advising members about fitness, people want to feel like they've been heard & understood before communicating openly. The simple act of reflecting a question back conveys empathy and will go a long way to build trust.
Imagine if I had reflected back the question in the opening example; Are you looking for a very powerful motorcycle? My potential customer would have instantly responded; NO! This is for my 17 year old son. Then we would have been communicating and I could have made the sale.
Who knows. Maybe some day you'll be asked a question where you resist the temptation to educating and instead reflect back to them in the form of a question. Can you see how you might gain their trust and gather a better understanding of what's being asked? Wouldn't you be surprised to hear the unguarded response; I'm really hoping this class will build up my skinny chicken legs 🙂
I want to share this email exchange I had with ICI/PRO member Julie Zweck-Bronner.
Hi John,
You have said you teach at a facility that has the Freemotion bikes. I was wondering if that facility uses the pedals that came with the bikes or different pedals. We will get 40 Freemotion bikes in May and are wondering how to accommodate our riders that have LOOK cleats. Should we spend the money to switch out to all Schwinn Triple Link pedals like on our Star Trac bikes we currently have? There was some talk about using the Triple Link Pedals off the old bikes to save money, but I worry they are too worn to put on brand new bikes. Do you also find that many riders wearing bike shoes do not like the basket/cage staying on the underside of the pedal as they ride?? Thanks for your insight.
You're going to have so much fun Julie.
If you are getting the S11.9 I think they come with a good two sided pedal with SPD/shoe basket. Where I'm teaching they switch out everything for triple links as that's just what they do.
If it was my studio I would work toward getting everyone to switch to SPD. Look doesn't make the traditional “LOOK pedal” anymore. Now they have the KEO which looks like it should work – but it doesn't.
I would swap the best 10 triplelinks onto the new bikes and leave the rest.
Unless of course you normally have 30 cyclists with LOOK cleats every class, then you already know what to do 🙂
Can I have your permission to create a post about your question?
Thanks John, yes you can post and thanks for your insight. Do you think avid bikers who wear bike shoes prefer the triple link because the can remove the cage/basket on the flip side of the pedal unlike the pedal that comes with the FreeMotion bike? That has the spd on one side and the fixed/permanent cage on the flip side. Sounds kind of anal but want to address all concerns. Thanks again, Julie ZB
Julie LOOK pedals were the most popular for years (but are no longer) and cyclists wanted to use their shoes – I don't think they care if the basket is there or not.
SPD is rarely used by road cyclists (they were first used by mountain bikers) but are best for indoor because they work on a recessed shoe = easy to walk in and safer – road shoes were never meant to walk in and are very slippery on any polished surface.
Rather than speculate, I suggest you ask your students and act accordingly.
Thanks John we will take a poll!
I haven't heard the results of Julie's poll, but I have conducted one myself at the two clubs where I teach that use the Triple Link pedal with some interesting (yet very unscientific) results:
About half of the riders using LOOKs had purchased their shoes/cleats specifically for indoor use.
Another 25% originally had LOOK cleats on their road bike = their shoes just happened to fit the pedals we used indoors.
Almost no one was using the original LOOKs on their road bikes anymore.
Almost everyone had multiple pairs of shoes.
I feel it's very important to be as accommodating to cyclists, but times are changing. If you're looking at an equipment upgrade a simple email poll using Survey Monkey will tell you a lot + identify those few participants you will need to accommodate if/when you make a change.
The question I asked was “how many of you are training for something?”
Over 80%, of a full class with 50 bikes this morning, raised their hands indicating that they were training for something… I wasn't specific as to what, only are you training? Even though this wasn't my class (I was the Sub for a Sub) I know many of them and know that they are all telling the truth. For each of them, what they're “Training” for is a little different:
Steve is scheduled for his first Ironman in June. Steve's “Training” is to find the time he needs to develop his fitness, while balancing the needs of his family and work.
Susan plans to ride her first Minnesota Ironman. It's not a Triathlon, but a large charity ride on the last Sunday of April each year. The weather is normally not pleasant – it's typically miserable 🙁 Susan is new to riding outdoors and she is “Training” to have enough endurance to finish with her girl friends, who have much more experience than she does.
Neal is excited for a week cycling through France with 9 of his friends. Neal's “Training” is focused on dropping the 30 pounds he gained after foot surgery.
Randy is determined to hear a “nice pull” as he rotates off the front of the “A” group this summer. Randy's “Training” is to demonstrate that he has the fitness to stay with the “A” group, even though he is 63 years old.
Are you talking to your class as training endurance athletes?
My favorite is to say to my class “I came here believing you all are training endurance athletes…. It's up to you to prove that I'm wrong.”
What words and actions do you use during your class that communicate your belief in them?
Meet Spinning® Instructor/Personal Trainer and Fitness blogger Darcy Knoblich!
Darcy is doing a fabulous job connecting with participants and other instructors, while promoting herself online through her websitedarcyknoblich.com.
I really enjoyed interviewing Darcy and I hope you enjoy listening to her passion for helping others 🙂
Our goal for this Podcast was to help motivate Instructors (that could be you) to get active online. There are multiple online tools available that are free and easy to use, like the blogging platform WordPress.com or Blogger.com.
UPDATE: A great promotional tool you could should leverage is creating your Instructor profile on indoorcyclinginstructorjobs.com where you can post your resume. Wouldn't it be awesome to get a call from an interested studio owner?
Your website may just include some info about you, your class format and your scheduled classes. Or you could really get into it and post your playlists, training information, feature some of your favorite participants or one of the Instructors on your team!
During our conversation I mentioned that I had started a blog back in 2008 – it was actually Spring of 2007. I checked and it's still there indoorcycletraining.blogspot.com/
Listen to Darcy's interview below or and never miss an episode.
Are you annoying some of your current (or potential) participants? You know, rubbing those folks who are of a different/opposite personality type than yours the wrong way?
I recently came to the conclusions that there's a good chance that I do at times – please let me know if any of this makes sense to you…
Yesterday I gave a presentation to our sold-out group of studio owners and Instructors at the Full Psycle/PRO PIQ workshop entitled:
Selling Power – The success of your studio depends on it!
We've got all of this fancy technology in our studios; bikes with consoles, display training systems, results emails and online user profiles that record all of your previous class data. So (to me) it should follow that persuading (Selling) participants that Training with Power is worthwhile becomes supercritical to building a loyal following = a profitable fitness business.
The core concept of my talk was how you need to understand how the four different personality types; Director, Socializer, Relater and Thinker need to be “Sold” to differently.
The personality matrix is constructed like this:[wlm_private ‘PRO-Platinum|PRO-Monthly|PRO-Gratis|PRO-Seasonal|Platinum-trial|Monthly-trial|PRO-Military|30-Days-of-PRO|90 Day PRO|Stages-Instructor|Schwinn-Instructor|Instructor-Bonus|28 Day Challenge']
Then I went on to describe the common personality traits of each type.
Teach an early AM class? I'll bet it's filled with “A” type Directors.
I am a Director > my kids will attest to me sometimes being a bit harsh 🙁
These social folks will pay your overhead if you can attract and retain them.
I explained how it was my belief that attracting Socializers is the key to a successful/profitable Indoor Cycling Studio. Everything I observed at SoulCycle appeared to be designed to attract this type of people and who can argue with their success?
You're a Relater if you include the word “safe” in your class description.
When we first began promoting Performance IQ there was some initial pushback from Instructors; “we need to keep competition out of our classes!” > which I realize now came from Relaters who were concerned about weaker riders not being able to keep up. NOTE: that's been fix… now you can run PIQ competitions between riders that are handicapped for weight/gender or Team based challenges are awesome for including everyone.
Thinkers spend a lot of time discussing the “Science” of training with anyone who will listen.
At the risk of sounding harsh (I'm a Director… we do stuff like that!)…
I feel we are wasting our time, when we focus our attention on Thinkers.
Many (maybe most) dedicated endurance athletes/cyclists fall into the Thinker group. Don't get me wrong – I know hundreds of them and they're a bunch of nice people. If I had a technical product or service to sell I would devote nearly all of my attention on these data junkies. But Thinkers are very individualistic* (loners) ≠the type of people who add value to a group fitness class. Not to mention they disappear from your class on the first nice spring day.
While typing this I remembered an article from Stages Indoor Cycling's Cameron Chinatti about not focusing on the Squeaky Wheels in your classes. Cameron doesn't call out Thinkers directly, but I see it all the time where Instructors get sucked into esoteric debates about the science of training on Facebook or with the guy in a full kit, who sat in the front row, doing his own thing.
Little, if any, of the “science” of training is of interest to Socializers. So while you're caught up with the wannabe pro cyclist/Thinker, debating the pro's and con's of Training Zone 5B > the Socializer (who has many hundreds of friends) who wanted to thank you for recognizing them during class, leaves feeling like you don't really care… and never comes back.
So Who annoys Who?
I got a lot of heads nodding “YES” when we discussed who annoys who during my presentation.
All of this is strictly anecdotal > just my 53 years of observation and my own personal feelings.
Thinkers and Socialisers can get under each other's skin.
As a Director, Relaters can bug the crap out of me and they see me a uncaring 🙁
We discussed a number of examples of how we need first need to identify our “type” and then be careful not to annoy our opposites, during the presentation of our classes.
Directors need to recognise a Relater's concerns for the safety of others – even if we think it's unfounded.
Relaters need to understand that not everyone shares their concerns and encourage the Directors in class to take a risk.
Thinkers need to minimize the “science lessons” or they'll quickly lose Socializers.
Socializers – it can't be all passion and cheerleading. Throw your Thinkers a few technical “bones” to satiate their need for concrete data.
[/wlm_private]I'm kicking myself for not recording this complete session. There was a lot of excellent comments and feedback. We're planning more of these Full Psycle/PRO workshops and I won't make the same mistake twice.
*Yes, cyclists go on group rides, with other cyclists. But these rides are rarely social events – especially for men. More like a group of individuals riding near each other, all going in the same direction and using each other's draft.
Anyone who knew Jim, loved him. He was a very influential part of creation of what all of us recognise as Indoor Cycling today. Jim's knowledge of training was unequaled, as was his wisdom and understanding of what Instructors needed to do, to truly meet the physical and emotional needs and expectations of their participants.
All of us here at ICI/PRO benefitted immensely from Jim's insightful articles and Podcasts. This post of his profoundly changed my perception of my role as an Indoor Cycling Instructor. Three simple concepts that began the slow process of opening my eyes and accepting both the appeal and value of non-traditional forms of Indoor Cycling…
Who am I to decide?
If a workout session has to produce a result, you have a paradigm for unhappiness. Instead, my current approach is to create a training session that allows a person to get whatever he/she needs from the workout without interference on my part.
Just present the opportunity
As an instructor/trainer, my job is to create a situation and an environment in which members can experience the benefits of physical exercise, and nothing more. Which benefits these are will vary with the individual, and it’s important that I never assume what they could or should be.
Then accept their choice without judgement
I offer suggestions but recognize that this is their path. I can't overshadow it with what I think they should do with, or gain from, their training. That’s not my job and would be a misuse of the trainer role.
Shortly before we lost Jim, he wrote Non-Authentic Indoor Cycling. If you haven't read it please take a moment and do so, because it describes his progressive vision for Indoor Cycling and what he felt would be our roles as Fitness Professionals.
If non-authentic IC is going to make a mark, why not embrace it for what it is — a way to train on the bike that makes (some) people fit and happy?
…
Why shouldn’t any and every indoor cycling program be taught by those who are truly qualified to teach indoor cycling? That would be the likes of us. We know indoor cycling best. We could create a program — inauthentic fluff, if you will — that’s still authentic in its safety, structure and cardiovascular benefit. Why not?
Interested in being part of a group of Instructors who believe like Jim did?
The personality matrix is constructed like this:[wlm_private ‘PRO-Platinum|PRO-Monthly|PRO-Gratis|PRO-Seasonal|Platinum-trial|Monthly-trial|PRO-Military|30-Days-of-PRO|90 Day PRO|Stages-Instructor|Schwinn-Instructor|Instructor-Bonus|28 Day Challenge']
