Fun pic from Julie's facebook.com/TheWallCyclingStudio
Hi John,
My name is Julie and I am the owner of a cycling studio in Philadlphia, PA called “The wall cycling studio.”
This past weekend I had a couple instructors over and after a little time we somehow got on the discussion of how one of my biggest dreams to live is to show up to a spin class while on vacation, the instructor not show up and for me to be able to jump up and say “I'm certified and ready with a playlist!”
My friend then sent me the most recent email from you about traveling instructors. I think it is amazing and a great way for places to be able to offer quality classes!
Could you let me know some more info? This would be a dream trip for my husband and I!
Thanks again and I look forward to listening to your pod cast!
Julie we've helped hundreds of Indoor Cycling Instructors make this fantasy a reality – except for the part about the absent Instructor – unless it's you who's supposed to teach, but you're asleep in a hammock, on the beach 🙁
My wife Amy and I have been teaching group fitness classes, at All-Inclusive resorts in the Caribbean, pretty much every year since the mid 90's. Every trip has been a dream and we could not have afforded to travel as often as we have, without the assistance of our (now friends) at Fit Bodies, Inc.
We have a separate site devoted to these teaching fitness vacations – and the process is super simple. Here are the basics:
About Fit Bodies, Inc.
Fit Bodies, Inc. has been offering international leisure travel for the fitness instructor since 1992. FitnessProTravel.com is home of the Fit Bodies teaching vacation program.
Instructors offer a couple hours of teaching to resort guests daily and in exchange you and companion(s) stay at luxury all-inclusive resort with accommodations and amenities provided just like a full paying guests. You wine and dine, enjoying an all-inclusive vacation usually costing thousands of dollars for a fraction of the price.
How does it work?
With the Fit Bodies, Inc. program you do not pay the hotel for your stay. You pay a fee for each week you travel, it’s roughly $500 for you and a companion (family resorts include two kids 12 or younger as well) to stay at the resort with all-inclusive everything for seven nights. The resorts are 4-5 star all-inclusive luxury destinations. Teach one or two indoor cycle classes on your non-travel days. It is a WIN WIN! You get a low cost vacation and guests have a great fitness experience! There are even more opportunities to the cycle instructors who also offer group exercise formats.
The details are instructors’ pay for flights and sometimes airport transfer costs (to and from hotel). All resorts participate in the GIFT FUND where we keep the hotel’s activities and sports department up to date with items or money contribution. The gift fund has a value of $150 at most hotels so that is part of your expenses.
There is no cost or obligation when you apply but I encourage you to apply by completing an online account with us at FitnessProTravel.com. The account gives you real time booking availability at all the resorts you qualify to teach at. So then you can choose when and where to travel, book it online with us, and be quickly confirmed with permission to buy flights.
Once you are online at FitnessProTravel.com and going through the app process you will come across membership levels. I know it’s explained on the site but want to elaborate here- With the BASIC (free) membership you can view complete availability but with your free membership you only have access to book 15 resorts. By upgrading to any premium account (including TRAVEL) you will then have booking access to every resort you qualify to teach at. You can view resort details without even having an account by clicking on “TRAVEL SPOTS” on the FitnessProTravel.com home site.
Fitness Connect from IDEA is something I feel all of us Group Fitness Professionals and Fitness Studio owners need to jump on soon. I'm scheduling an interview with IDEA's head of business development for a future Podcast. In the mean time if you are an Indoor Cycling Instructor with a Spinning® or other certification, Group Fitness Instructor, Personal Trainer or you own or manage a Fitness Club or Studio here are a few thoughts about why I feel you need a profile there.
1) Rise above the noise and be found by standing on IDEA's shoulders. The internet is an enormous place. Search engines sift through billions of web pages in their effort to deliver a relevant result to what could become your next client, member or student. Your profile on Fitness Connect has a much better chance of being displayed because www.ideafit.com is seen as a respected source by Google and other search engines.
Want to use your iPhone or Android based device to schedule your next Indoor Cycling class?
There's an App for that® 🙂
I added the ® because Apple has trademarked that phrase.
Studio owner Bill Pryor has created an App for his customers at Spynergy Wellesley, Bill's Indoor Cycling Studio outside of Boston Mass. Spynergy customers can download the App for free, quickly review the class schedule and easily signup for a future class. The part I love most is how it adds the event your calendar, so there's no excuse for missing the class.
The App is made by TempoXSports and they can build a custom App for your Club or Studio if you're using MINDBODY Online to manage registrations – which is about everyone as far as I can tell.
Here's more about it:
The app your clients see will be similar in feel to what they are used to from booking through their browser-based systems. Your app will let clients easily perform the following critical tasks from their phones
Sign-in to their MINDBODY existing account
Set up an account if they are new
View your schedule
Sign-up / reserve spots (reservations auto-posted to calendar / ical)
Read teacher and class descriptions
Check their account (visits, schedule, attendance, purchases)
Purchase any packages you are selling through MINDBODY
Our Cycling Studio Owners will want to check this out ASAP…
For years we've promoted Working Fitness Vacations – where you, the Instructor, teache a few fitness classes in exchange for a very low cost, Caribbean vacation. Hundreds of Instructors have followed our recommendations and have really enjoyed their all inclusive vacations.
Now there's TripTribe.com. They specialize in assisting fitness professionals who want to take a group of clients (your tribe) on a fitness retreat. For leading these trips you, the Instructor, will be paid as the Trip Tribe Ambassador!
To learn the actual scoop on these trips, I asked the marketing representative at Trip Tribe if she'd connect me with an Ambassador that I could interview…
Coach Kelly McCormack owns Club Inhale Exhale in Billerica, Massachusetts. This past May she traveled with a group of her clients to a ranch in the mountains of Costa Rica. It sounds like everyone had a great time and best of all, the check TripTribe.com sent her at the conclusion of the trip paid all of her expenses🙂
Listen to my interview with Kelly to learn if this would be something you could do with your tribe.
TripTribe.com offers dozens of exotic locations across the world, in a wide range of pricing, including;
Go here and create a free profile. Spend some time working with their retreat planning wizard to get an understanding of the possibilities. Then I'd encourage you to call and discuss your ideas for a group trip with one of their advisors.
Would a few of these recumbents make your class more inclusive?
Would you agree that Indoor Cycles are a poor method/modality of exercise – for some populations?
There's a long list of people who would never consider participating in our classes, or even riding an indoor cycle alone at home. There's a bunch of reasons:
Physical limitations
Obese/overweight
Existing injury
Just plain afraid of that skinny, little, bicycle saddle 🙁
So, would it make sense to add a few recumbent cycles to your studio?
The reason I'm asking is because I met a great guy at this past IHRSA convention. John Kennedy's company, Cascade Health and Fitness, manufactures that recumbent cycle pictured above. He shared his idea to incorporate recumbent indoor cycles, into a traditional indoor cycling class, to accommodate people who won't or can't ride a conventional Indoor Cycle. I'll admit, at first it sounded like a crazy idea to me. But the more I thought about the potential to make our classes more accessible I got excited.
That would mean more butts-in-seats = people exercising. I'm all for that!
The first place I can see recumbents making a positive impact is in Parkinson's Cycling Classes. Parkinson's Cycling Coach Kathy Helmuth has taught me that many people suffering with PD have physical limitations.
The symptomatic relief that comes from cycling isn't available to someone who can't ride a typical cycle. A recumbent is completely different; a big comfy seat that sits low and a step-through frame that anyone who can stand should be able to mount. I think this could be a way to make PD cycling classes more inclusive. Awesome!
What about your run-of-the-mill cycling class? Would a recumbent work there too?
I've got no idea, so let's find out!
We're conducting an experiment
We're looking for two studios to participate in a trial to see what happens when you add a few recumbents to a cycling studio. John has offered two of their recumbents at no cost + you'll keep them in the end.
In exchange they're asking that you:
Install the recumbents in your studio and make them available in as many classes as possible.
Experiment with different class formats, profiles, cuing, etc. You'll be charting new territory here and I'm happy to help you as much as possible.
Actively promote this new accommodation to your customers – running the trial to see what happens for two months.
At the end of the trial you will be interviewed by me on my podcast We will explore what worked and what didn't, your ideas for improvements, etc…
You'll provide a few short video interviews, where you discuss these classes with your actual participants.
About 10 days after hitting a SoulCycle class on a recent day off, Barry’s Bootcamp owner Joey Gonzalez got a phone call. It was a lawyer for the mega-popular cycling brand issuing a message: don’t come back.
“He essentially said we have a policy at SoulCycle where instructors at other group fitness studios are not allowed to take class,” Gonzalez says. “He seemed half embarrassed.” We reached out to SoulCycle’s public relations team for comment on the policy but did not hear back.
Gonzalez took to Facebook with the news, and his post went viral. (At time of this writing, it had 158 comments and 14 shares.) Other popular fitness instructors, like Natalie Uhling, Darryl Gaines, and Lindsey Clayton weighed in to say the same thing had happened to them. Flywheel instructors jumped in to invite trainers from other studios to come take their classes (“#team”), and tons of people weighed in to rail against the lack of “soul” the policy stood for.
Then I dug in to this story a bit more. The article references this post from rateyourburn.com addressing the same issue. They begin with listing a few reasons why it maybe OK to limit the access of Instructors from competing fitness clubs. I see it as incomplete… in fact, I feel they are missing the real concerns of Soul Cycle completely.
IS IT OKAY FOR FITNESS STUDIOS TO BAN INSTRUCTORS WHO WORK FOR THE COMPETITION?
Why do studios ban instructors employed by competitors?
Trade secrets. We suppose the primary reason studios do this is to prevent competitors from coming in and spying on their ways of business, copying them or stealing their methods.
Exclusivity. Perhaps some studios want to create a country club bubble, where only approved members are allowed within their establishment.
To ward off studio-bombing. On rare occasions, people do show up just to cause trouble. In our opinion, bad behavior is the only justifiable reason to ban a paying client.
Limiting access to your “Tribe”
Paul Harmeling from Full Psycle Studio really opened my eyes about what makes Soul Cycle so successful – how good they are at cultivating a “team” or “tribe” of passionate people who are united by their participation in class. This sense of community isn't just between the customers and Soul Cycle or the Instructor. There are a lot of relationships, both personal and professional, being made between the riders.
You've probably seen this at your club. It's no secret that common interests and activities build trust between people. That trust can lead to relationships that extend beyond the club. Over the years my family and I have chosen to do business with people we've gotten to know at our club;
Claudia is Amy and my financial planner – she's also been a longtime regular in our classes.
Amy first met Craig at the club. He later hired her and we've been friends of Craig and his wife Julie for 15 years.
Morry (another regular) arranged for daughter Abby's interview, which resulted in her current job.
Richard is an Instructor at our club. He's also a C level employee at a company where younger daughter Carly would like to have a summer internship…
I can easily understand why Soul Cycle (or your club for that mater) would want to limit access to their Tribe of passionate, fitness minded people who have the financial wherewithal to pay for premium classes.
Wouldn't these same people be prospective customers for any fitness business – especially a competitor located near by?
Soul Cycle's “Tribe” is really their brand, the “special sauce” that makes them unique and profitable. Using attorneys to protect a brand from competitors isn't really any different from how Mad Dogg Athletic will do the same thing to protect the Spinning® brand from improper use.
I don't know anymore than what's been written, but I would venture this guess; Soul Cycle was concerned that Mr. Gonzalez was recruiting customers for his boot camp business. Neither of the articles, nor the Facebook post, explains how Soul Cycle's attorney would know Gonzalez was an Instructor… unless someone (maybe a class participant?) informed management.
