There are great Instructors and then there are those who are IMO really awesome! Not necessarily because of how or where they teach, but how they make a positive impact in lives of others.
Meet ICI/PRO member Michelle Parolini from Allison Park, PA. Michelle quit her day job as a commercial real estate broker to become the CEO | Head Coach & Mentor of Park Journeys, Inc.
Park Journeys, Inc. is a youth development organization which seeks to educate, energize, and empower urban and rural youth through exploration, wellness and civic engagement.
Park Journeys, Inc. is a National youth development organization providing an out of the classroom learning experience for our nation’s rural and urban teens. We do this through a purposefully intense direct experience in one of America’s National Parks.
In addition to the week-long trip to foster learning in geology, wildlife management, and conservation, the 12-16 week Park Journeys program is structured to include outdoor hiking and activity team building, trip preparation, mentoring, and engage their communities through Civic Engagement presentations and exhibitions.
Headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania PJI serves youth across the country and has most recently been the recipient of the North Face Explore Fund Grant and the National Park Foundation’s Americas Best Idea Grant.
You can learn more about the fantastic impact Michelle and her team at Park Journeys, Inc are having on disadvantaged kids in this video.
I told long time friend and sponsor Suzelle Snowden from Fit Bodies, Inc about the work Michelle's doing with Park Journeys, Inc. Suzelle's response was to graciously offer a $500.00 certificate that Michelle and a guest can use toward an All-Inclusive Teaching Vacation at any one of 60 beautiful resorts in the Caribbean 🙂 You can learn more about participating in these trips here.
Listen to my interview with Michelle where she shares how rewarding this experience has been for her below or subscribe through.
RateYourBurn.com is a review site for fitness instructors who teach in select US cities. RateYourBurn founder Gillian Casten joins me to discuss her vision for this popular Instructor review site + shares a few of her observations and potential strategies you can use to improve as an Instructor.
In a previous interview, Studio owner Jessica Bashelor @ the Handle Bar explains how she recruited her Instructor team based on the the reviews she found on rateyourburn.com
I'd suggest maximizing your rateyourburn.com Instructor profile and start asking your participants to post reviews.Clearly a recommended Best Practice for you as a fitness professional.
Listen to my interview with Gillian below – and please to either leave us a review or subscribe to our free Podcast.
Studio owner Paul Harmeling joins me to discuss Full Psycle Indoor Cycling Studio that he owns with his two other partners (Shelly Scott & Kris Pennell) in Orange County, CA.
I observed two classes when I visited and was very impressed by the diversity of the participants in attendance; from a bunch of teenage girls to professional athletes. Fantastic!
Paul Harmeling is a Co-Founder, Instructor and the President of FULL PSYCLE. If the number of fights breaking out at front desks over admission to classes is correlated with popularity, Paul is one of Orange County’s most popular cycling instructors. With a genetic predisposition for group exercise gained from his mom Kathy, a prodigious aerobics and step instructor, and a life-long love of exercise and coaching, Paul made the move from the back of the cycling studio to the front in 2008. The upbeat, motivating music and intense, endless energy in Paul's class most resemble those commonly encountered at a Vegas pool party, with bikes and sports bras supplanting bottle service and bikinis. His class will take you to the brink of collapse and leave you in a state of euphoria. Paul has taught previously at Equinox and 24 Hour Fitness, and in 2012 was one of six instructors in Southern California selected to instruct at the Challenged Athletes Foundation’s Tour de Cove. Paul has a degree in Biology from UCSD and Masters Degrees in Engineering and Business from MIT and UC Irvine, respectively.
Studio details:
FULL PSYCLE 230 E 17th St., #100 Costa Mesa, CA 92627
Phone: (949) 631-2222 Email: info@fullpsycle.com
Indoor Cycles: Spinner® Blade Ion
In class display system of rider performance metrics: Performance IQ
Listen to Paul's interview below (Free or ICI/PRO Registration Required) — Click Here. Opens in a new tab.
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Peloton Cycle recently raised $307,332 through a Kickstarter project to help fund the design and manufacture their new Peloton Indoor Cycle. Awesome on its own, but they also have plans to live-stream digital classes directly to the user's home from the new Peloton Cycling Studio they're building in New York City.
And not just your garden variety Indoor Cycling classes. Nope. Their plans are to employee the very best Instructors on the planet and to recruit them, they're willing to pay these Rock Star Instructors up to $500.00 for each class they teach.
Sound interesting? You can visit their Instructor's Wanted page to learn more.
Here's the promo video they did for their Kickstarter project that explains everything.
Listen to my interview with Peloton's COO & Co founder Tom Cortese below and if you haven't yet, please .
Now that StarTrac is shipping Spinner® Blade Ion Indoor Cycles with Power, there's a bunch of Instructors who need to be educated on how to effectively use this new training “tool” in their classes.
Spinning's new education program is called the SpinPowerâ„¢ program. It was developed by well known Power Training expert Angie Sturtevant who's the Director of Power-Based Training.
When ICI/PRO member Dennis Mellon told me that his club in Greenwood Village Colorado would be hosting a SpinPower training, I asked if he would be willing to share his experiences with our listeners.
Dennis Mellon is one of those smart, talented people we love to have on the Podcast. Here's his bio…
Dennis Mellon has been working in the Fitness Industry since 1992. He's a Certified Personal Trainer/Performance Enhancement Specialist through the National Academy of Sports Medicine as well as being a certified Spinning, Energy Zone and Indo-Row Instructor. He has a Bachelors Degree in Physical Education and a Minor in Coaching from the State University of New York College at Cortland. He spends most of his time at Greenwood Athletic and Tennis Club in Greenwood Village Colorado where he is a Personal Trainer, Masters Swim Team Coach, Indoor Cycling and CardioVascular Intervals instructor. Dennis was voted the Mountain West's top Spinning Instructor by Competitor Magazine in 2012. He has completed 8 Ironman distance triathlons, ultra distance mountain bike events, marathons and numerous shorter distance events.
Listen to the Podcast below or to subscribe to the free show in iTunes.
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If you're anything like me, good ideas are easy to come by – especially when it comes to “ideas” about how to improve my class, changes (desperately) needed at our studio and new formats / programming we should be introducing as new classes.
But unfortunately many of those fabulous ideas of mine are never realized… and it's typically my fault.
Why?
Because I hadn't invested the effort to really think through everything and then formally present my “idea” as an actual “plan” to management. In the past I've figured that my “idea” was so good, that I could just throw it at my Dept Head and she'd run with it. Doesn't work that way.
The person you report to (Manager/Dept Head/Owner) also has a boss, or at the very least a partner. They need to be well armed with the details of your plan, before they will even consider discussing your “idea” with upper management.
ICI/PRO member and Zoning Specialist Kay Mamo successfully worked through this process and was rewarded with her very-own new class on the schedule. Kay and I discuss the steps she took in this episode of the Indoor Cycle Instructor Podcast.
Kay has provided a template you can use to bring detail to your idea. You can download it here.NOTE: Kay's plan is specific to the introduction of a Boot Camp that include a Zoning 30 minute cardio session. Feel free to change it up to reflect your dream class 🙂
