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.
Got slammed in the parking lot at Google by a guy speeding between lanes of parked cars. I screamed, swerved and braked so that I got hit by a glancing blow. It was like in slow motion. I got hit by the left front fender, thrown to the wind shield and then I was fly through the air doing a double axle landing 50 feet away on my hip. Good thing I knew to just roll with rather than try to stop.
911 Google police and EMT got me to emergency. couple of cracked ribs, bruises and scrapes. Over all I'm very lucky to seen this guy before I got T-Boned.
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?
I’ll switch gears from my recent posts on using public speaking techniques to enhance our teaching to talk about what we say. In The Art of Cueing, I discussed the use of cues to bring depth to the class and make it more than just a workout. Cues concerning the science, the music, the video, your personal experience, even philosophy can make your class more interesting and more impactful.
Philosophical cues are the most difficult to incorporate. Instructors don’t typically cover philosophy when they teach because they don’t think people want to hear it, or they don’t feel comfortable talking about it. Someone who doesn’t teach might say the first is true. But maybe that person hasn’t yet heard a well-delivered philosophical message and is just uninformed.
I understand not feeling comfortable talking about it and will address that later.
Adding philosophy to a class so it doesn’t sound like preaching is what I call “messaging.” A class without messaging is just a workout. It might even be a good one. But the instructor’s power will weaken over time, just like playing the same workout video over and over. It diminishes with no message. All the public speaking techniques in the world can’t compensate for a class that lacks substance.
Unforgettable lyrics are unforgettable because they send a message. A public address goes viral on YouTube when it sends a message. Messaging will touch a person’s life beyond the great workout you just delivered and compel him/her to come back to your class again and again.
What’s a message? Any life concept that you bring to the class and that can be experienced in the class as result of the training you’re providing. A couple of examples:
Focus
Coaches often tell you to “stay focused” but rarely tell you how. Focus is not simply directing your attention to what you’re doing. That leads to thinking. Thinking will weaken focus. Focus is complete engagement in what you’re doing. A focused mind pays no attention to distractions. Fast descending takes focus. If you’re not 100% engaged and non-reactive to distractions, you might crash. How do you train yourself to be this way — not just during a dangerous descent, but right now, so you get the most from your workout? That’s the essence of our class today.
Motivation
Something that happens outside of you that you consider “motivating” is not a strong incentive. You might see someone overcome great adversity or hear a story that strikes a personal chord with you and feel filled with motivating energy. These external motivations work temporarily, but have far less impact than motivation you generate by yourself. I want you to look at motivation as something personal. Then you have the ability to train and get better at it. You can train yourself to be motivated the way you train anything else.
When you understand how to do this, motivation is endless, limitless. The only time you won’t feel motivated is when it’s a personal choice, and you’ll recognize it as such. You’ll no longer look to me or to anyone else to motivate you to train. You’ll rise to the occasion again and again because you’ve trained yourself to do so. I’ll show you how to do this in today’s workout.
As an instructor, all you have to do now is deliver a physical practice (the day’s ride) that delivers the results you just promised to deliver in your message. If I’ve enticed you, and you want to learn how to focus or be consistently motivated, the solution is simple: Come to my class. That’s the power of good messaging.
The messages you can deliver are many: how to engage fully, how to sense meaning, how to expand your concept of what you can do, how to sense your life energy, how to direct it, how not to react to adversity, how to develop discipline, how to go beyond hope and fear, and on and on.
How do you, as an instructor, learn to deliver these messages, both verbally and physically? First, you must want to. Second, you must become a student of philosophy. You study and you ride, and you bring the lessons that you learn from your study to the bike, and then to class.
I have a small library of what I call my “Life Books”. These are about 10 books that I have found extremely helpful. I’ve read each of them dozens of times. A good philosophical book is one you immediately realize you need to reread. My first Life Book was Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives. It was the first book to encourage me to approach my training from a conscious perspective. I have several copies with dog-eared pages and many handwritten notes throughout.
Physical movement has been part of spiritual training for thousands of years. It was not meant to provide exercise. Daily activity was supposed to do that. Keep a conscious attitude, go beyond the workout, and deliver a message every time you teach.
I know that whenever I'm feeling the need to get more creative, I'll attend someone else's cycling class. Typically Amy's Saturday morning Evolution class at Fife Time. Not having to focus on delivering the class myself, after about 15 minutes I tend to zone-out and new ideas just start coming to me. I know I'm not the only person who experiences this – actually I feel it's pretty common amongst endurance athletes.
I describe pedaling along, blissfully oblivious to what's happening around you (inside or outdoors) as JRA – Just Riding Along. You might call it being in a state of Zen, or in-the-zone or your “happy place”. If you've ever felt you were in a place where time seems to both stand still and fly by, you know what I'm talking about.
Last year I talked about how you, as the Instructor, can distract your participants who are enjoying their time JRA by calling out the equivalent of SQUIRREL.
It turns out that there's a bunch of neuroscience that goes on while we are aerobic. You'll learn a lot about the science of what's happening to your brain during exercise from this video that feature neuroscientist/group fitness instructor Dr. Wendy Suzuki.
Creativity Indoor Cycling?
So if our riders are already benefiting from the mental/creative stimulation that comes from participating our our classes, why not promote this benefit? Better yet, why not structure classes to actually enhance the experience?
The long, steady efforts are magical in their ability to bring on JRA 🙂 If you really want people to zone out and get into their own heads, this 15 minute track from the ZENDURANCE profile is nearly guaranteed to do the trick.
Next I'm thinking I would create a slideshow of random images of interesting geometric shapes and colors. Maybe cool architecture, bridges & buildings, flowers & plants, etc… I don't think I'd include pictures of people or animals that could trigger emotional responses – that's at least my initial idea.
The important part would be that riders wouldn't need to maintain their attention, like you do when you're watching a video. Maybe instead of class > Keeping it Fun, you offer > Keeping it Interesting?
Cuing would be the real challenge. Maybe you don't cue anything beyond the introduction. Or, you might offer a word problem or show a series of brain exercises from Lumosity.com or other online resourse with each song changes.
What ever you come up with, it will be important to properly identify the class format and include its description on your class schedule.
Brainstorming sessions?
Your Creativity Indoor Classes could potentially have value to a local company looking to solve a problem or develop a new product. Bring in a big white board and then team up with a moderator who writes down all the new ideas, while you guide the class. The possibilities are endless and structured properly, could be a very profitable class you could offer.
Kathy Ehrlich-Scheffer with Barbara Hoots at the ICI/PRO Conference
One of the coolest things about our community here at indoorcycleinstructor.com is how helpful and encouraging many of you are. ICI/PRO Barbara Hoots is one of those people. I can't help but smile when I see her name come up on my caller I.D. knowing that she will have something of value she wants to share with all of us. I would like to public thank her for her efforts at creating the new Top 210 Indoor Cycling Songs list, as well as the previous Top 161 Songs list.
If you appreciate her as well, I would encourage you to leave a comment below 🙂
We have sent this list of 210 songs to all of our subscribers. Click here to subscribe and get the list.
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']
It was the first book to encourage me to approach my training from a conscious perspective. I have several copies with dog-eared pages and many handwritten notes throughout.
