Hi and welcome to another week,
Great – but very tough – week of classes last week. The body weight circuit in Tuesday’s class was a real challenge, Wednesday was one of the toughest classes I can remember (all those tricep pushups – urgh!) and the 1-minute rounds on Thursday just seemed ‘HARD’…or maybe it was hard because I was sore and tired from Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…who knows???
I have been planning on writing for some time on ‘how Round 1 started’ – given last Friday was my 40th birthday (thanks everyone for your kind wishes and gifts!) and I am in somewhat of a reflective mood, here goes.
Whilst living in Melbourne in 2007, I was beginning to get quite jaded with corporate life. The travel requirements of my role (Solutions Architect for a large, US-based outsourcing company) were getting out of hand – the hours of work had long been out of hand – and whilst I was well paid for my efforts, I felt like I spent most of my time at work achieving very little…we spent a lot of time talking about doing things and comparatively little time actually ‘doing’ them.
When I was working in the US during that year, I went to a gym when I was working in San Diego (here is the link: http://laboxing.com/ranchopenasquitos/gyms/virtual-gym/). I had a great time doing a class there – and just remember thinking to myself, why can’t I find anything like this in Melbourne….and soon after returning to Melbourne, I did find something ‘similar’ which had just opened not far from our house – BoxingFit. (Again, here is the link: http://www.boxingfit.com.au/). I really enjoyed my training at BoxingFit – though I didn’t go anywhere near as often as I should have – and as with most things I come across, thought it could be done a lot ‘better’. How? By adding some more – a lot more variety to the program! Every class at BoxingFit was basically the same class -3-minute rounds, rotating between Skipping, heavy bag, speed ball, steps, floor-to-ceiling ball, light bags and combo bags – add in a 3 minute warm-up and 3 minutes of abs at the end – that was the class! Oddly enough, different classes had different ‘names’ but we always seemed to do the same ‘stuff’. Of course, I had visions of adding in some weights, some bikes and doing a lot more bodyweight work (power ropes and kettlebells weren’t really my thing way back then!).
The family and I were planning on returning to Perth at the start of 2008 – and I was spending my weekends working on a business plan for my own version of a fitness boxing gym – so long I.T. and fruitless hours in front of a screen…hello focus mitts and strong vocal chords! So, if this all started in 2007 why didn’t we open until mid-2010?
Well, as it turns out, starting up a business is quite hard. The planning is one thing – moving forward with lease agreements, council approvals (single biggest hurdle), finance etc – it really seemed like it would never end. In the meantime I had transitioned out of outsourcing and moved back to work in the I.T. team at BankWest (not the same travel requirements with a WA-focussed company but no drop off in hours), continuing to work on the plan (which was mostly time wasted as it turned out), spending countless hours dealing with the council and legal aspects of the venture and getting everything ready to go.
We finally opened late in March of 2010 and numbers have steadily grown to where we are now with approximately 300 members as I type this today. Is it meeting my expectations? Well, I think the gym is better than I had imagined – I wanted variety in the classes but never really imagined the whole ‘new circuit every day’ mantra we now have – and I really do believe we do a great job of challenging people to push themselves every day. From a Round 1 Fitness business perspective, things are still quite a way away from where they need to be…but I am working on that!
What is next? Automated check-in system, small group classes, technique specific sessions, (hopefully) the development of a focussed personal training group, in-house massage, new and improved apparel, car-park lighting…there is a lot bubbling away already and quite a bit of other ‘stuff’ moving from the ideas phase into the plan. Round 1 will continue to evolve and improve and I hope you all stay with us as it does!
Congratulations to everyone who had a go at the September Challenge – and double congratulations to everyone who had a few goes at it and managed to improve their time. There were a few names up on board (Selena, Gavin, Emma…) who had 3, 4 and even 5 attempts at getting better – terrific stuff and I am sure you will be closer to meeting your targets now than you were at the start of last month.
I have been pleased to see so many people grab a sheet of ‘goals’ for the October challenge and start trying to ‘plan out’ their attempt to ‘get to 25’. With those goals, remember – you have signed for them so you need to be accountable for them – hit your targets. For anyone wondering, mine are:
Wish me luck!
Just to let everyone know I am a fair way down the track with some class scheduling changes…full details next week, but some highlights are:
The timetable changes are planned to take effect as at October 31st (a Monday) so nothing immediate to stress about.
Gym Nazi stuff:
Just repeating last weeks note that there is a bit of an issue with the ‘Members kits’ at the moment – actually, there are a couple of issues:
I have ordered the new kits as promised last week – manufacture is now under way.
A lot of comments on the Facebook site last week – not as many links and things though. If you missed it, you might get something out of this cardio workout (which uses the rings) showing what you can achieve in just a short period of time:
There was a lot of talk about the changes people have gone through since committing to their training, too much banter about my birthday, some farewells from Elan who is returning home to Canada after 4-years in Perth (Shayne is leaving too, but will be back with us for the month of November!) and a lot of banter and comment about the classes. Great to see a few different people commenting and sharing this week.
As I have mentioned it is a great daily reminder about your training and WILL help keep you on track. So have a look at the group (HERE) and get involved in the conversations.
I know this was on Facebook, but I still want it to be our ‘Link of the Week’:
Droptober is all about committing to lose 2kgs during the month of October. The reasons to do it?
Go to the website, sign yourself up and let’s all ‘Drop 2kg’ this month.
Anyway, that is it from me for another week.
See you in the gym!
Michael.
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