Be entertaining

I feel a bit sad (and confused) whenever I see an Instructor's comment to the effect of; "I'm not interested in entertaining my class." It's usually followed with something like; "my role in class is to coach people through effective exercise." or "people should just be content to ride the bike and not need to be entertained."

So why would anyone be adamantly against entertaining their participants? I'm not sure (which is the confused part), but I do know that my best classes are those where I feel like a polished performer on a stage. It's like a drug to me - that high I feel when I'm really on my game and wanting to experience it over and over again.

Club Business International magazine has a great article this month: The Fun Factor - Valuable tips on how to make exercise entertaining and addictive. I have created a PDF of the article that you can download here and there's a lot of great ideas you can apply to your classes tomorrow.

It begins with this:

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Most people don't enjoy exercising

The brilliant Keeping It Fun concept, from studio owner Karen Casler, is based on the simple (but often ignored) fact that most people don't really enjoy exercising, but nearly everyone enjoys having FUN.

Sure you'll have some self directed athletes that will endure a focused "Real" class, so as not to be stuck riding alone in their basement. But those same folks will also enjoy a FUN class the same as everyone else > and many will adapt to the class in ways that meet their training needs.

My observations are that the most popular Instructors understand this and typically conduct very FUN classes. I'll never forget the advice I was given early in my career, by a MI at Life Time Fitness:

First you need to give them what they want (FUN)... and only then can you give them what they need (specific training)!

John

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