Hey Team,

Thanks for another awesome week.  It’s been a bit of a tumultuous time behind the scenes because we have/have had all of the following going on:

-Alex leaving

-Leon on leave (his brother’s wedding up in Geraldton)

-John starting

-Hayden starting next week

-Emma preparing to leave on her European sojourn.

-Each coach preparing their ‘Summer Bodies’ programming/program.

It really has been a challenging couple of weeks and – honestly – the staff on-boarding stuff is really tricky.  Because we kind of do things differently to most other facilities – and further given  all of the education services available for people today prepares them to work in a ‘globo-gym’ style environment where they will be (pretty much exclusively) working with clients using strength and cardio machines one-on-one and we really don’t do that at all…well…anyway, we’re going to get there! 

I wanted to talk a little bit this week about how the gym is ‘for everyone’ and whilst that is a good thing it does also mean that your ‘dream’ workout might not be scheduled to happen at the exact time that you are looking for it.  For example, if you show up for Boxing at 5am Thursday (great session this week btw) then you will be doing a BoxFit class.  If you WANTED “Body Work” – well, that’s 7am Friday.  If you wanted “BoxPlus45” – well, that’s on a LOT – just wait an hour for example!  If you wanted ANYTHING else – well, group training is a ‘time and place’ opportunity and 5am Thursday that opportunity is BoxFIT!.  Further to that, if you wanted BoxPLUS but had hoped not to do what is called the ‘Push-Push-Punch’ drill…well, again, you’re going to be out of luck because that was part of the plan…And that’s how group training works.

We KNOW that not everyone can go at 100-miles-per-hour every day.  We KNOW that.  And in the strength gym, we program the ‘effort’ in cycles.  For example, right now we are doing a cycle that revolves around tempo lifts and lighter weights because the NEXT cycle is going to be really heavy weights as we move into a 6-week long, 5-3-1 ‘Wendler-style’ cycle.  And because we know that, the weights are lower this month (but the time under tension is high) as we try to keep building the ‘base’ in preparation for what is to come.  In boxing of course it’s a little harder to ‘CYCLE’ the workouts – so assessing what each athlete is ‘up for’ each day really does come down to the coach…but they aren’t MIND READERS – so if there is a reason you need to take it a little easier on a given day, be sure to COMMUNICATE

Now – all of that said, I get it that some-days you come into the gym and really just want to ‘go through the motions’ – move and have some fun.  But at the same time you do need to understand that your ‘fun’ session – let’s say it’s your 5th one of the week – might be the same class as another member who has raced out of the house in a desperate attempt to at least get TWO sessions done this week…and this is the ONLY TIME they can come.  So the last thing they want to do is go through the motions – they are at the gym to train and with the week they have ahead don’t know WHEN they will be able to get back in.  Thoughts of ‘move and fun’?  Yeah…Nah.  They are hoping to get as MUCH done as they can.

For a while now – I’m going to say a solid 6-months – we have worked our programming in the strength gym on a 6-day week with Sunday as an over-flow day.  What this has meant is that we have a lift/workout cycle from Monday to Saturday, then each Sunday we give everyone the chance to ‘CHOOSE’ (hence the “Choose-Day’ moniker) one of 3x upper-body lifts and one of 3x lower-body lifts on a 4-week schedule then follow it with a pretty relaxed 20-minute ‘workout’ designed to get the heart-rate up but be a bit more ‘sedate’/’lower pressure’ than the Monday to Saturday stuff.  Now I do understand that there are people who want the ‘low-pressure’ day in the Strength gym to be Saturday rather than Sunday…but given overall attendance on Sunday is approx 50% of what we see on Saturday it’s pretty clear that a lot of people see their Saturday session as a ‘key part’ of their training week whereas Sunday is a ‘yeah, maybe’ session and people will attend based on what time they wake up, what they may have done the previous day/night etc.

Like I said – the gym is for EVERYONE.  Trying to set things up to make everyone happy – honestly, it keeps me awake nights (and has for more than 13-years now…remember when we had to completely reconfigure the gym and programming etc due to COVID???) but as I am often reminded, trying to make everyone happy all of the time is genuinely a fool’s errand.  I mean, of COURSE I want to have scheduled YOUR perfect class for the day that YOU want it – but I have to consider what 500-odd other people are looking for as well.  I’m ALWAYS happy for an email – but would prefer a chat – to discuss where the current programming is at, what the focus points are etc – remember, I’m here to help and WANT to help.

See you in the gym,

Michael