Aug 11
30
Hey, hope you’re doing awesome and have been taking lots of action?
Set those business ‘rules’ yet?
Anyway, I have a SUPERB guest post for you today.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there’s a lot of copycats in the fitness industry.
In fact i sometimes get accused of trying to be like my mate, Steve Hochman. Which is retarded!
Sure i use some of his strategies- cuz they work! But i think you’ll agree i’m pretty unique.
So i was talking to Zack Cahill, one of my first ever mentoring students and Zack is one of the smartest trainers i know and has some really cool insights on the industry.. in fact, he has one of the coolest sites on training around at http://itsgunday.com/ I visit it regularly because- 1- the info is cool and 2- it makes me laugh!
So here’s Zack
As fit pro’s it’s our job to be a positive presence in our clients lives. But we don’t always keep it positive when it comes to dealing with colleagues within the industry. In fact it sometimes feels like we spend more time bashing other trainers and methods than we do developing our own careers.
People tend to want to be part of a tribe. Fitpros are no different in this respect. within our little industry we have enough sub groups to completely baffle the outside observer, from crossfitters to the functional crowd to kettlebell lovers the list goes on.
SERIOUSLY?!?! WTF!!?
Each camp contains passionate followers who believe that theirs is the one true way, wether we’re talking about training techniques, nutritional approaches or even business models.
Passion is great, but the dark side of our passion for what we do is when it spills over into negativity towards others. This can also lead to doubt in our own abilities and the path we have chosen.
My advice is to opt out of the negativity, and here are 3 tools to help with this.
1- Have a set of principles – This applies to your business, to programme design, to nutrition, to pretty much everything. The decisions you make in your business should be based on principles that resonate with you, not with what’s currently trendy in the fitness industry. This will prevent you getting drawn into pointless arguments about the latest fads. You can simply decide if that idea is congruent with your principles or not. Fads will come and go, but principles are forever.
some of my principles from a training point of view are -
- Constantly look for ways to get your clients to do more work without exceeding their capacity to recover
- Be shit hot at the fundamentals
- Look for ways to build health reinforcing habits into your clients lifestyle
(notice there’s nothing here like “if you don’t squat ass to grass on a 4010 tempo you’re a dork,” that’s not a principle)
And for business some examples would be-
- Know who you are for, and who you are not for.
- Build your business around what you are most passionate about and best at, not what is currently hot or apparently profitable.
- Ask yourself every day what else you can do to solve your clients problems.
When the decisions you make in your business and services are guided by principles that are true to you, you will feel an enormous amount of security and confidence in them. There is nobody in this industry I would feel intimidated by or shy away from debating with, for the simple reason that my own beliefs are founded on such principles.
Food for thought; if you are getting angry with someone for disagreeing with you, perhaps you simply aren’t that sure of you’re own position.
2- Focus on the crossover, not the differences. Look for cooperation, not competition- Even a vegan, bosu-ball loving, aerobics enthusiast (about as different from me as it gets) will have something to teach me. More importantly, that person is essentially looking to achieve the same thing with their clients. They are trying to get them to eat a more natural diet of higher quality foods, and to do more physical work in order to improve body composition and performance. Sure we can debate the methods and its healthy to do so.
In fact I will cheerfully tear some training methods apart and have the same done to mine, but that is not the same as attacking the person
.
zack?
Rather than looking at every other trainer as inferior, or as competition, I believe it is far more beneficial to the industry as a whole to look at ways to help each other out.
Wether its a joint venture or teaching each other new skills and sharing ideas I think its a far more helpful mindset. I don’t care if you work next door to me, if you ask for help I’ll do my best. In fact, one of my best mates has a studio 5 minutes from mine and we share ideas all the time. This ties in with the “abundance” versus “scarcity” mindset.
There are a tonne of studios near where I am based, if I saw them all as enemies trying to steal food from my table, or constantly got frustrated or jealous at their success I’d never sleep! But the fact is no one does what I do, the way I do it, for the market I serve. So competition is not an issue. There are enough clients on one floor of one office block in my city to make me very wealthy indeed. When your service is good enough, there’s more than enough work to go round!
3- Be the best you.
I realise that is the sappiest sounding cliche but bear with me. I recently had a phone conversation with a trainer who was looking for ways to get his career moving. I asked him where he saw himself ultimately and his response was that he wanted to be the new *insert well known fitness professional here*
Now, its vital to have professionals within your industry to look up to, to model and to mentor with, but I’m going to suggest that aiming to “be” that person is not the most helpful attitude in the world. If you put all your effort into being the next Paul Mort, Dax Moy or Charles Poliquin, the best you could ever hope to be is a second rate Paul Mort, Dax Moy or Charles Poliquin. you’ll never be seen as a leader because you’ll always be taking your cues form someone who has been there first.
It troubles me when someone goes on a course and takes every single thing they’ve learned as gospel and starts slagging off other fitpro’s for not sharing the exact same beliefs as them. This is quite common, and is an example of someone who has gone on a course and said “great, here are all the answers, now I never have to think again!” The trouble is, if you scratch below the surface a little there isn’t much behind these new beliefs because they are simply repeating something they heard on a course. It goes back to filtering everything through those guiding principles and values, and exercising a bit of critical thinking.
The other issue with trying to be a carbon copy of someone else is, really, what are the chances that you share the exact same values, passions and natural talents as them? Sure there will be crossover, but we mustn’t forget that we all will have our own unique voice and set of talents.
Realising what your unique skills and talents are and being true to them in how you communicate and structure your business is a fast way to be seen as a leader in your field.
Instead of being the “new” somebody else, I’d rather be the old Zack Cahill, just the best, most successful version of him I can be!
As a fitness professional, you’re lucky enough to be in the tiny minority of people on the planet who gets up every morning and does the one thing you’re most passionate about in the world. For a living!
Follow the advice I’ve given and we can make the industry even more fulfilling, and fun to be a part of for all of us.
Zack Cahill
Zack is running a one day seminar on the 24th of September with Maximuscle competition winner and fitness model Jay Benedetti. It will cover how to combine training for performance with training for aesthetics to get in cover model shape while being a strong, powerful badass, and will be half practical half theory. Spaces are limited to 20. If you have the testicular fortitude, contact zack@aegistraining.co.uk
