Oct 11
21
A guest post from a killer niche
Earlier this year a spent a couple of weeks in thailand with some of the top fitpros in the UK- this is where i created bootcamp empire of course!
Anyway, whilst there i managed to spend a lot of time with Maggie Ayre, who is THE person to turn to when it comes to teenage girls and fitness.
Now you know how important it is to niche right?
Well this particular demographic is HUGE. The potential of cleaning up in your local area putting on a bootcamp for teenage girls is massive too!
Anyway, maggie send me this post to let us know the deal when it comes to keeping the girls entertained- I’ve actually taught teenage fitness sessions before and i can tell you, those girls are easily distracted…
Here’s Maggie:
Imagine this. It’s week one of a twelve week course. Just you and 34 teenage girls that are going to be fit, healthy and above all having fun for the next twelve weeks.
What do you do?
You’ve got to get the girls talking about the session before you even get there. They need to be feeling exited with their imaginations aroused before you even walk in the room. So how do you do it?
You go for the most popular exercise craze of the moment, the one the magazines are talking about, the one all the celebrities are doing and the one that is just far too cool for school….. nope Paul, I’m afraid you don’t go for Fat Loss Bootcamp….. you go for ZUMBA!
This was the position I was in 4 weeks ago as I launched the pilot for the 3G Program.
I developed the 3G Program on Dax Moy’s Thailand Supercamp. In a nut shell it’s a term long course for teenage girls which incorporates fitness, nutrition, goal setting, homework videos and a supportive forum.
The aim of the 3G Program is to get every teen girl active and then to keep them active.
We achieve this by introducing the girls to lots of different activities so that (1) it’s different to traditional PE
(2) it introduces them to activities available in the community outside of school
(3) it gets them used to the idea of organising their own exercise – through the use of 10 minute bodyweight sessions.
We do Zumba, Bootcamp, Yoga, Boxercise, Circuit Training, Navy Seals Training, Aquarobics, Street Dance – a whole load of different stuff – all backed up with sound nutrition and thought provoking goal setting.
I had been warned that the girls at the school were a tough bunch and that if I didn’t get it right from the word go they’d be standing with their hands on their hips telling me “this is sooooo boring!” before I’d even had the chance to tell them my name. (This is what used to happen to me, Paul)
But, Zumba was a hit. The wonderful Sassi Page came and led a 30 minute energy infused session for me and we had 34 girls aged between 12 and 17 shaking their thing on the dance floor at 4pm on a Monday afternoon.
Then they all came back again at 3pm on Thursday and this time I hit them with DAVE!
For three days they’d been wondering about Dave. Who was this Dave, what sort of workout was it going to be?
Do you know Dave?
I’m sure Paul’s got a blog post on here introducing you to Dave; a hard core accumulator workout designed to strengthen muscles whilst burning fat. ( here’s the link to the workout that made me famous- http://www.bootcampking.com/2011/05/26/the-workout-that-made-me-famous-sort-of/)
I modified Dave slightly for my audience. The first set was traditional exercises; star jumps, sky and ground squats, push ups, split squats and a plank, but the second set the girls worked in pairs; alternate burpees, front kick, alternate crunches, reverse lunges, push up claps and plank with high-5s.
(Have you ever noticed that people tend to decide star jumps are OK after all once you’ve got them doing burpees?)
It was a tough workout but the girls handled it fantastically and finished the session with phrases such as;
“That was great! But I’ve never worked so hard in my life!”
BOOM! My work is done.
How do you think the girls would’ve reacted had we launched week 1 of the 3G Program with Dave?
I’m guessing it may well have been too hard core for a first session but now that they’ve done Dave they expect every session to be hard work.
By starting with Zumba and then straight into Dave the girls are kept on their toes. They don’t know quite what to expect but they know every session with be fun, hard work and very effective for meeting, and surpassing, their fitness goals.
Maggie Ayre is the UKs Leading Fitness Coach for Teen Girls. She has recently developed the 3G Program which will go live in schools in January 2012. She is also running a FREE workshop for all Personal Trainers and Fitness Instructors who are interested in working with teen girls on Saturday 5th November. For more details on the FREE workshop go to www.maggieayre.com/seminar.html .
