“So Joel, how do you know who to listen to and who to shut out?”
“I try to only listen to those whom I’m confident are on my crew…”
My question came during a conversation I was having during coffee with Joel Johnson, the pastor of my church. Joel had recently officiated the wedding between Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries- the Humphries family are long time members of the church and his parents were at one time frequent participants in my Indoor Cycling Classes, until switching locations.
If you follow the tabloid’s you know that the marriage was dissolved, almost before Kim’s bouquet of flowers had wilted, with Kim profiting to the tune of $17.9 million. As you can imagine, the drama surrounding the whole event within our church was immense and the criticisms of Joel were brutal. Lots of “I told you so”, “you should have never done the wedding” plus no shortage of destructive gossip going on between church members.
“We were getting so many calls and emails that I had to seclude myself and only engage with the people who continued to demonstrate that they were on my crew.”
“I’m not sure exactly what you mean by; on my crew?” I told him.
“Let me show you…”
Joel grabbed a napkin and drew this simple diagram.
And then he explained to me that you can assign the people in your life/church/business/community/etc… into one of the four quadrants, each being similar to the roles of the people you would find on a seagoing ship.
Your Crew
Your Passengers
Pirates
Stow Aways
Joel then described his drawing (which he told me he learned from someone else, but I can’t remember who) and how it identifies:
Involvement — is the person directly involved in your enterprise, Yes or No?
Vision — does the person believe in your vision for the enterprise, Yes or No?
Placed in the context of your Fitness Business:
Your Crew – Involved and believe in your Vision. The loyal Instructors, employees and vendors who work for you. Ever faithful, the people on your Crew are actively (and selflessly) involved in helping you create and maintain a successful business. As the term “Crew” conveys, these people are Team Players, the “life blood” of your business, embracing your Vision and demonstrating it toward your customers and the other members of your Crew. They are the people you can count on. The person who jumps in when something needs to be done or when an emergency sub is needed. Crew members put the needs of the team ahead of their own, working continuously to promote the studio and other Instructor's classes.
Your Passengers — Not Involved, but believe in your Vision. Satisfied, regular customers who believe in your Vision and participate in fair exchange with your business*. They bring their friends and speak positively about you to others — while communicating concerns directly to you. Passengers add value to your business both financially and through the positive energy they bring to class. *Fair Exchange is a concept I learned from Dr Shannon years ago, where two people exchange value for something. As long as each feels the exchange is “Fair” then it's all good 🙂
Pirates — Involved, but don't believe in your Vision. Trouble makers who use the word “ME”, instead of “WE”, demonstrating a belief that it’s “all about them”, instead of your Team. Pirates can be Involved in your business as Instructors or employees. They contribute to your business, while promoting their own agendas, instead of (or at the expense of) your Vision. They may try to encourage your customer's to attend classes they teach at other locations and may be heard cutting down another Instructor's class. They may be so bold as to sell merchandise out of the trunk of their car. Pirates think nothing of showing up late, being unprepared or calling in sick on short notice. Pirates are very selective of which classes they would consider subbing and will use the opportunity to promote themselves.
Stow Aways — Not Involved nor believe in your Vision. The customers who take advantage of your good will. They insist on free/discounted classes and complain frequently. Stow Aways are the participants who show up late, do their own thing (complete with iPod/earbuds), disrupt class or may even be disrespectful to your Instructors.
“Joel, what do you do with the Pirates and Stow Aways once you identify them?”
“You need to decide if they are worth keeping around. And if not, I bless them, thank them and say good bye.”
He is after all a Pastor.
____________________________________
What prompted me to write this post was an episode of Kitchen Nightmares , a show I love and feel teaches some valuable lessons that you can apply to your Indoor Cycling Class and/or Fitness Business. The story line had the head chef (a Pirate) ruining the restaurant's reputation and yet the owners felt powerless to fire him, because they didn't think they could survive without him. I've seen (and heard of) similar situations at studios with a prima donna Instructor. Very popular with clients, the Pirate's destructive behavior may have you questioning whether or not you should keep them on your Instructor team.
Have you experienced Pirates or Stow Aways at your studio?
“Do one thing, every day that scares you”. Words for today and our Friday Favorite. A good cool down…something to leave our class with, is a very effective way to wrap things up. This is a favorite of mine. I first heard it from our national director and she never said a word while cooling us down, rather, she just used visual cues. That is how I prefer to use this as well. This is not a new tune, in fact it is from the ‘90’s, but still true and useful. So….today, do that thing that scares you- make the phone call, send the email, see that person, go in front of the camera on live TV or submit your entry to the Ultimate Instructor Class Profile contest!
If you are using any free email service; Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc… please go in and change the password NOW!
I've posted about all the SPAM emails, from hacked email accounts, I receive in past posts. I get so many because my email address is in the contact lists of thousands of Instructors receiving our email newsletter.
My request isn't about me… although I am getting tired of responding to dozens of these every week. I feel it's my responsibility to “Reply to All”, alerting the owner of the email address and everyone who was contacted with the hacked email.
This is about protecting you! If your email is hacked they know everything about you 🙁 Where you work, where you bank, what stores you have accounts, everything.
And about protecting your friends who, seeing what looks like an innocent email from you, click the link and install some malicious software on their computer.
That software could potentially lead to the theft of your friend's identity or worse, the stealing of their bank passwords which will allow a hacker to withdraw all their money.
It's also about protecting the future deliverability of emails sent by you. All the big email providers work to prevent SPAM. Having your email address identified as one connected with SPAM is a quick path to email purgatory (SPAM folder) and your important message never getting read.
OK John, but what should I change it to?
There has been lots discussions around what makes the perfect password. But I'm going to guess that the passwords of the nine hacked emails I saw today were simply one word… so even a small change will make a huge improvement in preventing it's discovery.
I realize that the frustration of remembering your passwords are in large part the reason why people use simple, easy to remember words.
A suggestion is to take your existing password (if it has 8 or more letters) and add one capital letter and two special characters.
So “password” would be greatly improved by changing it to “@Password!”
Another option would be to combine three easy to remember words, separated by special characters. The three girls in my life are Amy, Abby and Carly so a reasonably secure password could be Amy&Abby&Carly. You can use your first name, your dog's name and your city or any other three words and special character combination.
One more suggestion – You may have heard you should have a different password for every website – unrealistic. But I personally use a few different passwords, depending on the type of website where I have a user name.
One simple password for sites that don't matter (No email or financial data) Here's where you can use “password” 🙂
One password for important sites (No financial data)
A complex password for each website that has financial, medical or credit data. Create a prefix password and add the name of the institution at the end like; @Password!=visa or @Password!=bank or @Password!=401k
The objective is to prevent a hacker, who's gained access to your hotmail account from cleaning out your checking account because you used the same password in both places.
It's really a big deal so stop everything and change your email password NOW – before you get an email from me saying it's too late, followed by an overdraft (email) notice from your bank.
If you’ve read the prior blogs (my hats off to you — I couldn’t get through them without nodding off), you know that the first place to start is with a review of the existing literature. Whatever you can find on the internet and/or conversations with other experienced cycling instructors and coaches should be thoroughly reviewed before beginning your first project.
Solve a Problem, Meet an Objective, But Be Specific
However, even the literature review is jumping the gun a bit. First and foremost you need to state the problem or objective you are trying to solve or achieve. For example, some of your students want to overcome a specific problem or limitation, or achieve a specific objective. You’ll have to dig deep to define exactly what to target in your Evidence Based Cycling (EBC) research.
For example, they might be complaining that the hills are always their “nemesis”, and that they must find a way to get better at handling the hills.
As stated, this problem is still so broad, it would not lend itself to any scientific process of investigation or discovery, so this is where you can begin using one of several types of research methodology — that of simple Exploration. Those students who are interested in taking the EBC journey with you will need to make their own observations and report them back to you. This process of reporting will do two things, it will help them begin to articulate more clearly what their perception of the problem is, and as these self reports are compared from one rider to another, patterns or common elements will begin to emerge.
The long and short of this step is to arrive at a statement of that is clear and specific enough that it can be applied to the basic steps of the scientific method of research. Here are those basic steps compliments of The Science Buddies:
Source: The Science Buddies - http://www.sciencebuddies.org
Rather than continue with a hypothetical example, let’s turn this blog into a collaborative EBC project. For those of you reading along, you are obviously already interested and are thus the most likely to be willing to participate and provide useful information. So this is what we are going to do:
Select/recruit 2 to 4 CompleteRiders (those who ride inside and out and value the benefits of both environments) who wish to improve their outdoor climbing
Ask them to select one of their most variable climbing routes (the route with the most variety of climbs) and to collect both objective and subjective data for each significant climb on that route. A significant climb is any that is at least 4% grade or more, and lasts 1 minute or more)
Ask them to ride the route making sure to lap their heart monitor at the beginning and end of each hill.
In addition, they should make subjective observations or notes at the end of each route — yes that means stopping after completing each ascent and writing or if they have a smartphone they can simply voice record their thoughts and transcribe them later.
Once collected, send the objective data to me, and we will look for the most common themes, and create our initial first step for an EBC project — an articulation of our question, or a definition of our problem that we can get started with. Email your questions as well to gene at cyclingfusion dot com.
Amy makes her TV Debut this afternoon on ShopNBC! She starts her new role as the product spokesperson for Bay Area facial cosmetic surgeon, Stanley Jacobs M.D.
And get this… Dr. Jacobs offered her the position after first meeting Amy and taking her Indoor Cycling Class at CycleQuest Studio, which is just a few blocks away from the ShopNBC production studios 🙂
I'll let her tell the whole story, but what happened is this. Dr. Jacobs was here in Minneapolis to promote his Visco-Elastic Transforming Serum, appearing on a number of live segments shown on ShopNBC throughout the day. With a number of hours in between segments, he came to my Monday noon class at CycleQuest – except I wasn't there. Amy was subbing for me that day.
I can easily imagine what happened next…
Amy did, what Amy normally does, which leads to a whole lot of people leaving her class feeling celebrated and valued.
They may be miles away, and not even know that you are there. They may find their way to your class, or maybe they will not. Regardless, YOU will be there with your best performance when they do! They need YOU to show up! Why?
Because you are one who is celebrated. You are the one they have literally been dying to meet because you celebrate people (this includes YOU). And they know that if they can just get near you, they too will feel significant.
So you may be thinking, “Yeah, right…if I were a celebrity…it would be easy to have a packed class every week, but I am NOT!”
If you go back to the definition of celebrity, you will see that in fact, you can be. Celebrate you and you will be celebrated. Celebrate others and they will celebrate you!
So go out and teach some great classes this week… you never know who'll be there 🙂
And if you're one of the approximately 75 million cable and satellite households that have ShopNBC, Amy is scheduled to appear in the 5:00 and 6:00 hours – Central Time.
“Making News” in the March 2012 IDEA Fitness Journal reminded me of something I investigated years ago, of interest to indoor cycling instructors. The article was “Endurance Exercise Linked to Heart Damage Risk.”
In 2006, prior to my first ultra-distance bicycle race, the Furnace Creek 508, my coach asked me to have a full physical, including an echocardiogram. It turned out that I had an enlarged left ventricle as a result of rigorous endurance training over 35 years, and two heart murmurs (leaky valves). I was in the best physical condition of my life. I completed the 508 and qualified for RAAM, although I decided not to pursue RAAM for several reasons. One was growing evidence that rigorous endurance training might negatively impact heart health.
A muscle enlarges (hypertrophies) with specific training. When weight lifters train for strength, muscle may hypertrophy. When body builders train, they seek hypertrophy specifically. An endurance athlete’s heart naturally hypertrophies because of the demand placed on it to supply blood and oxygen to working muscles.
My cardiologist agreed that my condition was not dangerous or abnormal, but should be watched.
“Endurance Cycling Tied to Lasting Heart Damage” by Nathan Seppa was published in Science News in 2005. It claimed that people who compete in grueling long-distance bicycle races could harm their hearts. Blood samples revealed the cyclists had over twice as much B-type natriuretic peptide (BNP), a natural compound that identifies risk for heart failure, as a control group of golfers who were healthy but hadn’t done competitive cycling.
BNP is a 32-amino-acid polypeptide secreted by the ventricles in response to excessive stretching of the heart muscle. BNP is elevated in patients with abnormal left ventricle function and correlates with congestive heart disease.
I found several studies correlating BNP with left ventricle hypertrophy in hypertensive patients. One study found that cycling athletes had significantly larger left ventricles than hypertensive patients without elevated BNP. The researchers concluded that BNP is elevated only in patients with enlarged left ventricles due to hypertension, not intense cardio exercise.
I discussed this with several indoor-cycling instructors, including my colleague Joan Kent. Almost immediately, Joan suggested that BNP might be nothing more than a marker of hypertrophy, regardless of cause — heart damage, hypertension, or high-volume, high-intensity endurance training. Since the heart can hypertrophy for more than one reason, it’s over-extrapolation to assume that the association of BNP with both good and bad factors necessarily links the factors. (Yes, she actually talks that way.)
I kept researching. Several studies confirmed elevated BNP in endurance athletes, although exercise-induced BNP increases are poorly understood. These studies correlated increased BNP with levels of cardiac troponins, another indicator of heart disease, specifically associated with muscle damage.
The studies confirmed increased BNP in a majority of healthy athletes after prolonged strenuous exercise, although BNP may increase not from myocardial damage, but as a protective or growth-regulating mechanism. They stated that exercise-induced increases in BNP are not the same as elevated BNP associated with heart disease. Joan countered that, again, it’s the same BNP, but may just be associated with hypertrophy, rather than disease.
The best study was “Competitive Exercise in Professional Road Cyclists” in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise (2003). The study questioned conclusions of heart damage in apparently healthy endurance athletes. It investigated myocardial stress in professional endurance athletes after strenuous, competitive physical exercise by looking at BNP, cardiac troponins, and EKGs.
None of the athletes showed pathology upon cardiac examination. BNP was elevated, but, based on troponins and EKGs, strenuous endurance exercise in professional road cyclists was not found to result in structural myocardial damage.
The study cited in IDEA Fitness Journal was published in the European Heart Journal in 2011. Investigators uncovered evidence that some athletes who participate in extreme endurance sports (alpine cycling, ultra-triathlons, marathons) might damage the right ventricle of the heart. Notice this article said right ventricle, which pumps blood to the lungs, not left ventricle, which pumps blood to the body and was examined in other studies.
What does this mean to the indoor-cycling instructor?
Perhaps nothing. Scientific findings vary with new hypotheses. The fact that the subject continues to come up, however, suggests that we should pay attention to it.
As a fitness professional, my concern is the unbalanced view given to people we train. We have all experienced our students unlocking their potential through their indoor-cycling experience. We may need to stress adequate recovery, not turning every class into a max effort, the benefits of cross-training, and/or using cycling to enhance balance.
Case in point: The “Triple Crown” is a coveted California jersey given to amateur cyclists who complete three double-centuries in a season. In 2011, one of my students got it. I congratulated her and asked about her recovery plans. She told me she was going for the “1000-mile club” (first time I’d heard of it) and planned to do five before the year was over.
As a 58-year old endurance athlete with an enlarged left ventricle, two heart murmurs and a tendency to train too much without proper recovery, I’ll continue to stay informed and share my findings with you.
