Hey Everyone,

Welcome to another week.  Thanks to everyone who came and trained with us during the week – and an extra special thanks to everyone who came along to the beach day this morning.

The beach day is a bit of a funny one and I have to admit that I am not the biggest fan.  I don’t like closing the gym (like, EVER) but when we tried running a beach session alongside the ‘normal’ program a couple of years back, we ended up with 2x pretty average sessions in terms of attendance and the ‘fun factor’.  Add to that lugging tyres, kettlebells, ropes, tennis balls, frisbees etc around…it is just what feels like a lot of extra effort for not much result.  Today though was – I thought – pretty awesome.  We had great numbers.  Everyone brought along a great attitude which enabled us to do some ‘different’ stuff.  The weather was a bit windy I suppose but not too hot…in short, it was a pretty perfect day!

I guess the overwhelming point I want to make on this is that it is pretty much OK to have some fun with your training – not everything has to be ‘100% effort, 100% of the time’.  Or at the very least, there has to be an element of fun in every session.  Now some people get THEIR fun doing repeat bike sprints.  For others, well, they need some ‘different’ stuff in order to keep them smiling and interested…that’s what today was about and based on all the laughter, well, mission accomplished.

Challenge peeps, we are nearly 1/3 of the way (tomorrow is Day 10 and we are working a 28-Day-Countdown)…hopefully you are going well, hopefully the sugar headaches have settled and the energy has returned…hopefully you aren’t too stressed out…and hopefully you are on your way to a great outcome.  So far I have managed 5x classes and 5x extras (one of each) and I have to say doing the ‘Hi-Lo Challenge’ after last Wednesday’s boxing class (aka “the bloodbath” aka “the toughest class in 10 years”) was a particularly bad time.  Remember, if you are battling, well, TALK to someone about it.  Get a bit of help/inspiration…let’s all get to the end and achieve some awesome results together.

Lastly, I just wanted to go through the responses to our “What can we do more of” off-the-cuff InstaGram survey last week.  Usually when we do surveys they are a bit more formal than this but we were just hoping to get a quick ‘check of the pulse’ to see if any common themes developed.  So here goes:

Comment from @asylum_years:  “RACOONS”

Answer:  Well, this is the joy of doing surveys via Social Media!

Comment from @jessica_maree:  “Hip Hop Music”

Answer:  So.  We play music from the FitRadio app as they release new mixes every week.  You can see what is available by going to https://fitradio.com/.  Now we select mixes from either the ‘High Energy’ category and try to randomise it so we aren’t listening to the same mix over and over…we also choose this category as it includes a selection of music from different genres.  The problem with selecting a genre based theme (such as Hip Hop or EDM) is that for every person who loves it, there are 3 (or 4) who are actively ‘against it’…I guarantee that everytime someone asks to ‘change the music’ that only 30-secs previously someone else has said ‘Great playlist today’…So yeah.  Hip Hop is ‘YES’.  When it is on the playlist on the High Energy channel on Fit Radio.

Comment from @jessica_maree:  “Alana needs to wipe her sweat off the bikes”

Answer:  It is great to know that Alana is working hard in the classes and getting a bit of a sweat up – great work.  But maybe she could benefit from reading my Gym Hygeine post from a couple of weeks back:  https://round1fitness.com.au/gym-hygiene-are-you-doing-your-bit/

Comment from @jessica_maree:  “A 6:05am class so I’m never late.”

Answer:  Somehow, I suspect if the class was 6.05am then the people who are late to 6am would continue to be late to the 6.05am.  Getting to the gym early and getting your warm-up done is IMPORTANT.  It is part of our duty of care as trainers to make sure that people have warmed up before they commence a group training session…when we used to make everyone warm-up together, people were getting cranky as they were missing out on their warm-up and just wanted to get on with it.  So we added in the warm-up boards and pre-class warm-ups…they are IMPORTANT.  My advice to @jessica_maree is to arrange with your training buddy to meet at the gym at 5:50am and do your warm-up…after all, you are getting married soon and you have some goals you are currently working towards.

Comment from @taylajasson:  “Weights on the boxing side!  And maybe yoga classes.”

Answer:  Yoga starts this week and you can book into the classes here:

https://www.musclefocusmassage.com.au/book-online

With the weights stuff, well, the following equipment is available on the boxing side (upstairs weights room):

Dumbbells 1kg=> 40kg.  Fixed barbells to 50kg.  600kg of plates for use on the smith machine and Olympic Bars (including ezycurl bar).  Cable machine, Multi-Press (chest press, incline press, Shoulder press), Leg Curl/Leg Extension, Lat Pull-down/Seated Row, Rear Delt/Pec Fly.  So I guess what I am saying is that the boxing people have access to the basics.  Now, I agree that there is a LOT more on the strength gym – including a pretty amazing Hammer Strength plate loaded machines fit-out – BUT that is called the ‘STRENGTH GYM’ for a reason.  And when we upgraded and took over the second unit, we really did focus on building a ‘best of breed’ strength facility and we installed premium Australian Barbell Company and Hammer Strength equipment at a pretty massive cost (over $300K – closer to $400k in fact) and it is available for everyone to use for just $17 extra per fortnight…a price that also includes all of the Functional Fitness classes – and NOW all of the SPARTA classes – as well. 

I guess we are trying to provide ‘everything’ but at the same time we do need to try to at least cover some of our investments.

Comment from @celeryjasmine:  “Not more but less of the bike challenge”

Answer:  Yeah – Based on the last two weeks I think that this is fair enough.  We intend to run them twice every 7-9 weeks (usually in the same week) but there was a bit of an oversight in last weeks programming and (my fault) an extra two challenges were included.  I cant say it will never happen again, but it wasn’t the intent to conduct 4x bike challenges in 2-weeks.

Comment from @skylarose:  “Fans”

Answer:  Well, there wont be any more fans in the Boxing gym (though the broken one will be replaced this week).  The fans will be installed in the strength gym over the next couple of weeks.

Comment from @kizzy_98_brown:  “More competitive challenges in dap”

Answer:  Well, DAP isn’t really supposed to be a competition – DAP is supposed to be about each athlete pushing to become stronger and faster in order to become better at their competitive sport of choice.  I know what you are saying but often the main focus of DAP is trying to slow people down in order to get them to do it PROPERLY and encouraging young athletes to ‘RACE’ is really the antithesis of the programming.

Comment from @staceymiller1:  “Less bike challenges with bikes as a station as well”

Answer:  Yeah, well.  They are very (very) hard.  This I can’t promise we wont do them again but I will acknowledge that the class last Wednesday that featured the 4-minute Bike challenge was completely disgusting.

Comment from @mre_ses:  “Rolling thunders”

Answer:  LOL.  Please don’t mention the war!!!  People either love or hate Rolling Thunder.  Whilst it is great that you like it, not everyone does and I think the ‘balance’ is pretty good right now between days with set classes and Rolling Thunder days.  Happy to debate it and I understand that most Rolling Thunder ‘lovers’ don’t get why others don’t love it/appreciate the convenience but please trust me when I say that some people much prefer the idea of a ‘contained’ class that starts and ends.

Comment from @barbarabuxmann:  “1. More treadmills (especially in winter months they are high in demand).  2.  Sun AM earlier class.

Answer:  Taking your points in order, we are not really a treadmill gym.  We have them to provide a little bit of ‘extra’ work before and post class…not for entire workouts (though I acknowledge some people do this).  At AUD$15000+ per unit (not including maintenance) there is simply not enough demand for us to spend that sort of cash.  There was a time when we had 6x treadmills and they all just sat their idle… 

Earlier classes on Sunday??  That isn’t in the plans in the short-term – certainly not for 2020.  F-45 (just down the road from Round 1) currently offer 5x classes per day Mon-Thurs, 3x classes on Fri, 2x classes on Sat and 0x (yep, ZERO) classes on Sunday for just on $55/week…or almost exactly double a Round 1 Strength membership (and well more than double a boxing membership).  Their gym is CLOSED between class times – we are OPEN and you can (and people do) come in and work-out then.  I wont bore you with how many classes we do, but when they are running 5x sessions tomorrow (Monday), we will be running 17x.  You can work the rest of the numbers out all by yourself.  What we are looking at doing is an earlier Functional class each Sunday but 8:15am will remain the first class of the day.

Comment from @monique_chiropractor:  “Yoga Recovery Sessions”

Answer:  You can book in for yoga classes here:  https://www.musclefocusmassage.com.au/book-online

Comment from @jess_vg:  “Stretching posters ”

Answer:  Well, there is an entire stretching booklet that we put together approximately 3-years ago…it sits over where the foam rollers etc are.  I don’t actually think I have ever seen anyone use it.  With things like this, it really is on a ‘wants’ basis…the most comment I ever get from people about stretching is during a challenge – and it is people complaining because we wont sign off their sheet before the stretches are done!

Comment from @lmp308:  “Yoga”

Answer:  You can book in for yoga classes here:  https://www.musclefocusmassage.com.au/book-online

That’s it for another week.  As always, if you do have feedback I am always happy to hear it…at the same time, I am not always going to say ‘YES’ to everything that you are hoping for.

Don’t forget, our SPARTA sessions are ROLLING now – 4pm Tue/Thurs and 8am Saturday and expanding the timetable/offering is dependent on those sessions being supported…the testing phase is over and the ‘training block’ starts this week.  Get excited (and get ready to suffer just a bit!).  Outside of that, can’t wait to get into the week.

See you in the gym,

Michael.