Looks like a beautiful city. Image from paxgaea.com
Helping prospective Indoor Cycling studio owners with their business planning is part of my Instructor Employment Initiative – encouraging the formation of new studios… which creates more places for Instructors to teach and will (at least I'm hearing) create upwards pressure on class pay rates!
ICI/PRO member Rowan Platel contacted me recently with questions about a future cycling studio he is planning.
Thanks John.
I am looking for as much help and guidance as I can get, so I will let you know my plans and see if you have any words of wisdom (outside of all of the information I will be reading from ICI.
Basically, Indoor cycling centres in Perth WA don't exist yet, but the spinning community is there through fitness centres, and the cycling community is large. My goal is to open an indoor cycling centre that is funky, but very up to date from a technology standpoint, and bringing in the best instructors/coaches I can. I want to give the users the ability to set and exceed their goals through data driven results, combining the best instructors, with the best principles and training methodologies, and the best technology.
There are a few good examples on the east coast of Australia, but none here.
I really want to cater for all indoor cyclists, whether they are “spinners” looking at more fitness goals, or cyclists looking at performance goals.
Absolute key for me is User Experience. I think your website will help a lot there. I want to make this addictive, fun, yet high performance.
Currently, I am looking at Wattbikes and using their group software and user App based software for real-time data.
I suppose what I am asking for is any guidance or thoughts you have on this. If this isn't the right forum to ask this, please feel free to ignore this email.
I am very keen on finalising the tech specs, so I can start to plan a fitout and get cracking!!!
Cheers
Rowan
When time allows, I try to be available for a call to discuss whenever I get well thought out questions from ICI/PRO members. My response:
I've done a fair bit of consulting with new cycling studio owners – often acting as a sounding board to bounce ideas off + I can be helpful by questioning your assumptions, so you don't end up with an empty studio.
Skype sometime?
John
Rowan and I connected via Skype. Turns out that Perth WA is on the exact opposite side of the earth, so my 8:30am was his 8:30pm 🙂 With his permission I recorded our call to share with you!
Listen below or subscribe to our free Podcast with iTunes or Stitcher
During the call I mentioned that we have two excellent Podcasts that deal with the introduction of Power/Technology.
Do you feel completely in touch with your hunger? Do you know exactly when you’re hungry? Or when you stop being hungry? And what to do with that info?
This short post is about an exercise for getting in touch with your hunger.
Why Is That Important?
Let’s cut to the chase. Every client who has completed this exercise ends up feeling absolutely clear about when she’s hungry and when she’s not, feeling completely in control of her appetite and her eating — and feeling great about herself.
Please don’t think hunger is obvious to everyone. I’ve heard clients say, “Well, I ate breakfast at 7:00 am and now it’s 1:00 pm, so I must be hungry.” Obviously, that’s a thought process, not hunger.
One client began to cry when I suggested the exercise because she thought she’d have to starve all day long.
Another client got angry because she thought she’d have to eat “diet foods” all day. I’m not even sure which foods she meant, or how she got that idea. The subject of diet foods had never come up in our nutrition appointments.
Okay, What’s This Amazing Exercise?
I read about this exercise years ago in a book that I simply can’t remember. As a PhD, I like to cite my sources and would be happy to give credit if I could. If anyone knows who created the exercise, please let me know.
That said, here it is:
– Pick a day when you have a light schedule. Your goal is to get hungry as often as possible during the day.
– As soon as you feel hungry, eat. But eat small amounts of food — just enough to take away the hunger. This will ensure many hunger experiences over the course of the day. If you follow these instructions, you might sometimes feel hungry within, say, 15 to 20 minutes after the last time you ate. (That’s the convenience of a lightly scheduled day.)
– Move away from your usual eating habits. Instead of eating first thing in the morning, for example, check in with your stomach to see if you’re hungry. If you’re not, wait until you are. Then eat.
– Avoid “preventative eating.” Don’t eat extra food now to prevent hunger later. As soon as you’re hungry later, you get to eat again.
– Don’t ignore your hunger signals and try to “tough it out” as long as you can. The idea is to cement the relationship between hunger and eating.
The natural hunger cycle is as primal as it gets: Hunger means eat. When hunger ends, stop eating. When hunger returns, eat. Repeat and repeat.
What This Exercise Is Not
Some mistakenly view this exercise as a weight-loss trick. It’s not meant to be. As explained, it’s designed to put you in touch with your hunger so there’s no question about how hunger feels, how much food is necessary to end the hunger, how it feels when it returns, and so on.
Still, eating in tune with your hunger may, over time, help with weight loss. Of course, you may want to increase the size of your portions to reach a point of “gentle fullness” so you don’t have to experience hunger so often throughout the day.
So What’s the Point?
Without a natural starting point for eating, we have no natural stopping point.
I’m convinced this hunger exercise is the most effective way for clients who lack awareness of their hunger and fullness to discover the wholesome, healthy connection between hunger and eating.
Whenever I’ve used this with a client, the result has always been an increase in the client’s confidence — no more confusion about when to start eating, when to stop, or even how much food to have.
Would you like help with normalizing your appetite and your food preferences? That’s what I help clients do — make painless food changes. Why not visit www.FoodAddictionSolutions.com/Coaching and request a Food Freedom session, absolutely free? Find out just how easy it can be to get your eating patterns on track — effectively and without struggle — so you feel fantastic.
Our apologies for the disruption yesterday. Despite our best efforts we had a little “glitch” – the technical term is actually SNAFU – that our IT dept fought through last night.
ICG, the manufacture of the IC7 Indoor Cycle, Myride+ video system and privately labeled Indoor Cycles, has announced the sale of their company to Life Fitness's parent company Brunswick Corp.
Life Fitness, the global leader in commercial fitness equipment, today announced that its parent company, Brunswick Corporation (NYSE: BC), has signed an agreement to acquire Germany's Indoor Cycling Group (ICG), a leading provider of indoor cycling equipment. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory review and approval by the German competition authority. The approval is anticipated during the third quarter.
Upon completion of the transaction, ICG will become the latest acquisition to join the Company's leading health, fitness and well-being brand portfolio. The addition of ICG will further diversify the Life Fitness product offering, and further augment the company's diverse group exercise category.
“With ICG's innovative technology, expertise in cycling and talented team, we will be well-positioned to advance in the indoor cycling and group exercise categories,” said Life Fitness President Chris Clawson.
“As the supplier of Life Fitness' existing group cycling bike, we have had a strong relationship with ICG for the past five years. Through this relationship we know that ICG's culture of innovation and customer-focused approach are a great fit for our team. We look forward to having the ICG group join the Life Fitness family,” Clawson added.
Meet Stephanie (Steph) Cohen – owner of Ride Revolution Cycling Studios in Northvale, NJ!
Steph is a member of our Cycling Studio Owners Advisory Group. In this episode of the Podcast, we discuss some of her most valuable lessons learned from running her successful studio for three years.
Name of Studio: Ride Revolution Cycling Studios, LLC Location of Studio: Northvale, NJ Phone: 201-259-7221 email: Steph@Ride-Revolution.com Owner Name: Steph Cohen Owner Title: Owner Years in Operation: 3 Years Size of studio: 2,000 Sq. Feet Number of members/clients: 2,400 Unique Visitors since opening
If you were advising somebody whose dream is to open a fitness studio — what would be your primary nuggets of advice?
Make sure the financial picture makes sense. The market where you are may not actually be able to hold your initial price per session. What are your earning projections if the price per session is a lower amount than originally offered?
Ensure you have a strong marketing budget. Too many studios forget this part or put it last on their budget list. While you are building your new place you need to begin the online and print advertising so that once you open locals will already recognize your name.
Have a clear mission — the “why” you opened your studio — and have that set the tone for all of your marketing and outreach. Make sure that your employees have the same vision in mind at all times as well.
In addition to having great instructors playing fabulous music, learn your client’s names and remember their unique stories. That is what will make them want to come back again and again.
Be prepared to do EVERYTHING yourself for the first few years. I am the front desk, marketing coordinator, instructor manager AND I wash the towels every few days! No task is too big or too small for the owner to actually do for the studio.
Download all 16 of Steph Cohen's Most Valuable Lessons Learned here – right click > save as.
We’ve finally moved past fat-phobia, and it’s now common knowledge that sugar is bad news. Because of that, I’ve noticed people no longer seem interested in sugar as a topic.
But obesity is epidemic, so it is worth looking at eating triggers.
Sugar is definitely an eating trigger — and not just for more sugar, although that does happen. It can make us want to eat more food in general, and that’s obviously not good.
In fact, sugar may trigger full-scale binge eating episodes.
This post is not about binge-eating disorder, detailed in the DSM-5. Instead, it’s about binge eating, which can, and does, occur without the frequency or emotional aspects of the disorder. This post will focus on binges that involve eating large amounts of food, even when not hungry.
How Can Sugar Make Me Binge Eat?
Sugar can make you binge in several ways. This post will cover three of them.
Sugar triggers brain release of endorphins (beta-endorphin). Endorphins affect the part of the brain that signals satiety — the feeling that we’ve had enough food and don’t need to eat more.
Satiety goes beyond just ending a meal at a certain point. After the meal is over, it keeps us from wanting to go back for more food. The part of the brain that houses the satiety center is the VMH (ventromedial hypothalamus, for the curious).
Endorphins stop the VMH from producing the feeling of satiety. So sugar may cause the meal to go on and on — and may also start the next meal much sooner than it otherwise would.
Does Sugar Affect Everyone That Way?
Sugar’s effect on satiety is common to most of us, but some people are more susceptible to the brain effects of sugar. That might include folks with a personal or family history of alcoholism or other addiction, depression or other mood disorders, or a personal history of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).
Someone with one or more of these factors in his/her background may release more endorphins (beta-endorphin) when eating sugar. That could prevent the VMH from performing its satiety function for an extended time.
Then There Are Food Preferences
Endorphins change food preferences, making us want foods that trigger more endorphins. Those would be fats and more sugars.
Some explanations center on the “palatability” of sugars and fats, and that’s logical. Sugars and fats taste great.
But it’s the change in the brain because of the endorphins that makes us want different foods — and those foods further encourage binge eating.
The next post will cover another way sugar might make you binge.
