1. People who say money doesn’t matter never operated their own business. The only thing that stresses me out on a daily basis is lack of cash. With plenty of cash, you can upgrade equipment, spend money on marketing efforts, add staff, and grow a business.
2. The cheapest way to attract new clients is by delivering above average results to a client and having him tell his friends about you. Unfortunately, it’s also a long cycle. It may take 12 weeks to get noticeable results, so you may have to wait 3–4 months to reap the benefits of word of mouth. The quickest way I’ve found to be effective is by offering some type of free session package to a group of people.
3. For healthy individuals, I still like to perform heavy front squats. I can’t explain the science, but good things happen when you front squat heavy with excellent technique.
4. In my business, we deal with a ton of beginning trainees. Things that we’ve had success with are hammering the basics, getting them to think about what they eat, and teaching them to take care of themselves. In a given training week, we’re doing hundreds of reps of push-ups, pull-ups, body weight and goblet squats, and stability abdominal drills. We’re pushing them to eat more and stressing the importance of nine hours of sleep. With this recipe, we average 12–15-lb gains in a typical 10–12-week period. We’ve also had kids gain 20 lbs.
5. I’d like to come up with a name for the type of circuits we perform. Once per week (more often with general fitness clients), we’ll perform a circuit. One of my favorites is a light, fast sled push followed by something we call a “walking push-up” (stolen from Tony Gentilcore’s blog). This is followed by a heavy goblet squat for five reps and a 25-foot rope climb. We catch our breath and repeat for a number of sets or for a time period. This circuit is also great for inspiring competition with athletes. You just have to stress perfect technique and enforce it as well.
6. For a team of 12–16 athletes training at the same time, a set up of stations works well for us. We go through a traditional warm up and then do some jumping and speed work. Then we set up stations as the athletes rest for a minute or two. Some of my favorite stations are rear foot elevated split squats, rope climbs (or rows for weaker athletes), heavy suitcase carries, 80–100 sprints (tempo run), wheelbarrows for distance, medicine ball slams, push-ups, and sled pushes. Just set up a station and pair up your athletes. One athlete works while the other rests unless you have two of everything. When they finish a station, they move to the next one until they have finished a full round of exercises. Then we rest and repeat as time permits.
7. Sometimes a niche can be a bad thing. My niche has been beginner trainees who play hockey, are 13–15 years old, and live within 8–9 miles of the gym. Summer is gangbusters for business. Fall tapers down a little bit with some athletes choosing fall hockey or a second sport over training. Winter grinds to a slow crawl with a couple of teams training in-season and a couple of individual players training twice a week in-season, and spring begins to pick back up. I must now shift the direction of my business to “building a business for all seasons” (thanks Coach), which includes a full complement of fitness clients and branching out into some other sports. Would lacrosse players benefit from getting brutally strong, faster, and tougher?
8. For my fitness clients who train twice a week, we’re having success using a barefoot dynamic warm up followed by a mini-circuit to drill simple strength followed by a larger circuit with an emphasis on metabolic conditioning. The key to getting all of the things you want to accomplish completed is to build them into the warm up.
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