It won’t surprise you to hear this but I am the resident wordsmith around here.
Any blog post, newsletter, email announcement, internal company document and even text message that you receive from us has probably been written by me or, at the very least, come across screen for touch-ups and approval.
It therefore may surprise you that the most important words in our company were not, in fact, written by me. That credit goes to Kyle.
I’m not sure how he came up with them. Honestly, I can’t even remember when he came up with them.
But they’ve become the core part of our philosophy, culture and product that not only make them the 8 most important words in our business, I’d argue they are the 8 most important words in fitness.
We take training seriously. We do what works.
This is what we would have called back in my advertising days a tagline. A nice short summation of what your product or promotion or organization is about. Something that can appropriately live on almost anything you do.
Think different. Like a rock. When it absolutely positively has to be there overnight.
These are examples of once famous taglines.
But what makes our tag special is that I believe it should extend beyond our facilities and staff and client-base and organization. It should be embraced by the fitness community as a whole.
Because if we aren’t taking training seriously and don’t do what works, what is it that we are doing?
You may be asking yourself 1) “Dan, what does taking training seriously and doing what works mean?” 2) “Does any gym really not take training seriously and do what works? They are in the gym business, after all” and 3) “What is this bullshit? We are two hundred words in without even a hint of a Dad joke!”
Fair enough.
As far as number two goes, the perhaps surprising and overly simplified answer is, yes. There are plenty of gyms and facilities that aren’t taking training seriously or using best practices to deliver results.
I’m going to spend the rest of this piece focusing on number one.
But if you are really good and finish your dinner and get to bed on time, I’ll reward you with number three at the end.
It’s a win-win for you really.
Taking training seriously and doing what works is actually the culmination of hundreds of different small things but since your attention is, rightfully so, limited, I’ll stick to the big bricks here.
Programming. This is the one that people think is the most important but, actually would be at the bottom of the list. It’s not that programming isn’t important. It is. But less important than most people think relative to the other things on the list.
Programming should be thoughtful, progressive, meet the needs of the community and follow the basic principles of biomechanics and exercise science. And, when written out like that, it is easy to nod your head in agreement and think that every trainer and facility believes this.
But thoughtful programming is actually the exception, not the rule. I’ll give you some inside information. Half the personal trainers in NYC are making up their program on the subway as they commute into the gym for your exclusive $150 per hour session. Most group exercise classes are completely focused on you “getting your sweat on” so you feel tired and accomplished and want to come back. Not in designing thoughtful programs that actually drive results.
Accountability. As difficult as this is for me to type, not everyone loves training. Shocking and heartbreaking, I know. Some people do it because they’ve had a health scare or are trying to get ahead of one. They are tired of feeling the pain of being overweight or not strong enough to pick up their kids. The motivation for change may be high, but the hours in the gym feel like a grind.
We also know that the number one driver of results is consistency. If you don’t get into the gym regularly, the only weight you are going to lose is the money in your pocket. Anxiously waiting by your laptop for sessions with your favorite instructor to open up for the week or the “sign up as many people as possible and hope they don’t show” models don’t work. Why? Because when you don’t love to do something, you need a personal relationship and people in your corner invested in your progress and in you.
Hero worship and cash grabs aren’t the answer.
Community: Nothing will drive accountability as much as community. Having training partners and coaches that you enjoy being around and have a vested interest in you and your outcomes will make going to the gym and grinding through a set of back squats and a 2k row much more palatable.
No one, and I repeat, no one trains as hard on their own as they do when they are around a group of like-minded, supportive people who are also struggling and suffering and succeeding alongside them.
All the greatest athletes in the world, even if they are in individual sports like tennis or weightlifting or MMA all train together in teams because they know this all too well - everyone goes further when you go together.
Atmosphere. You can have the greatest program, a team of training partners, a solid coach and a huge motivational force driving you. But if you are going to a facility with broken equipment or bad vibes or you have to wait 20 minutes between sets of bench press because it’s Monday night and everyone and their mother wants to bench, you aren’t going to stay motivated for long.
You have to find a place that lets you most effectively and efficiently get your work in. And you have to be happy to be there. I’ve gone to boxing gyms where there was months-old blood splatter in the sink. I’ve been in weightlifting gyms with bars that didn’t spin. As “hardcore” and “I don’t care, I’ll lift anywhere” as my attitude was, that shit got old quickly. Training is hard enough. You need an environment set up to support your goals.
Are these the only things necessary to take training seriously and do what works? No. Things like tracking, assessing your goals, balancing training with recovery and, as I mentioned, a hundred other things can be put in place to optimize your training. But, if you get these four cornerstones correct, a lot of the other factors will also fall into place.
And, once that happens, you’ll have found yourself in a spot worthy of the 8 most important words in fitness.
Congratulations, you are better than 75% of people who never make it to the end of this blog (a statistic I just made up out of thin air) so you will be “rewarded” with a Dad joke.
A grasshopper walks into a bar.
Bartender says, “we’ve got a drink named after you!”
The grasshopper says, “you’ve got a drink named Steve?”