Welcome to the BFit4Life Newsletter
Hiya All,
Thanks for taking the time out to read this months newsletter. With the opening of the new BFit4Life performance centre in the coming weeks I hope you enjoy this months newsletter as it walks you along the first part of my path in the pursuit of one of my dreams to own a world class centre dedicated to Health and Fitness and achieving results.
But success is a journey and not a destination and with the opening of the BFit4Life Performance Centre a new journey will begin. Our centre will be dedicated to excelllence and continous improvement concentrating on educating our employees to ensure our clients receive the best possible advice and direction available to help them achieve their Health & Fitness goals.
The Education of a Strength Coach - Part I
My journey into the world of fitness began as a result of my disillusionment with my then career as a professional footballer.
My experience of bounced cheques and meaningless contracts meant that a career in top flight Irish football would never be economically viable. Not much has changed in the League of Ireland football clubs today. During my football career, I was always keen to gain an edge. I would rise each morning at 6.00am to box and lift weights in an effort to improve my body’s conditioning. It was hard work training every morning while holding down an office job and committing to evening soccer training and matches. I realised then that by improving my body’s conditioning I would also improve my performance not only on the soccer field but also in every aspect of my life.
In my bid to change my body’s conditioning I realised that I knew very little about how to achieve this goal. I did discover that I was hugely interested in finding out a lot more about this aspect of fitness and training. It was a quote from Malcolm Forbes that made me see that this interest could in fact be a rewarding career. He stated that the biggest mistake people can make is not making a living doing what they most enjoy. Inspired by this thought I began an eighteen week exercise and personal training course. This course looked to be the best available. Some of the other courses I investigated promised a personal training certification after a single weekend’s study. I knew already how much I had to learn so this did not make sense.
Course completed and now allegedly an expert at instructing exercise to music and performing weight lifting exercises I began working in a gym. My ideals were high and my goals were even higher. I was going to revolutionise the fitness industry and to educate people to live a fitter and healthier lifestyle! In my naivety I assumed that this was also the mantra of the gym I had chosen to work in. It was not long before those same empty promises that I had experienced during my soccer days would be heard again during my gym career. I would hear the sales teams say anything to prospective new members to close the deal. Contracts it seemed were not worth the paper they were printed on.
The Fitness Industry - Friend or Foe
In my bid to follow my dream not only did I have to deal with long shifts and minimum wage but I also had to deal with the frustration of handing out programs to members that I knew would not inspire them to continue with their training. I could see the look of disappointment in their eyes as I gave them their new standard training program. Training programs consisted of ten minutes on a bike, twenty minutes on a treadmill, followed by ten minutes on a stepper machine. From the members’ reactions I could sense they would never complete that training program and even if they did it would never change their body-shape or get them their desired goals. Weights programs were no different, ten exercises repeated three times made a workout longer than reading a classic novel! Sets of twenty repetitions meant that they were working at 60% training intensity, too many to make anyone strong and change their body shape. Experience would teach me that the best training program is the one that the client will do. From these early experiences in the gym I realised that I still had a lot to learn.
What was to become clear to me very early on was that the Fitness Industry employed gym instructors on minimum wage with minimum qualifications. Large gyms concentrate on ineffective high tech machinery and invest little in their staff and as a result have large staff turnover and poor results. You don’t need skill to switch on a treadmill and the future in fitness seems to be to increase the number of cardiovascular machines whilst reducing the quality of the staff to keep the costs down and the margins high. I firmly believe that you can’t teach members something that you don’t know yourself. I don’t blame the gym instructors for their lack of expertise because gym instructors need to use debt to self finance their education as apprenticeships and often they cannot afford it. There are no training programs in place to improve the education of the gym instructor and little is done to encourage them to better themselves. In the majority of jobs and professions on-going staff training and development is mandatory in an effort to improve products and services for customers. Being second best was never an option for me. If I was to rise to the top in the fitness world I knew then that I had to continue my education.
Identifying the GAP
My desire to be an elite strength coach drove me to start looking into what courses were available in Ireland and the UK. After working in the industry for two years and after completing a number of the courses that were available locally I discovered that not only did I have huge gaps in my knowledge about strength training, but some of the instructors that I was working with who had sports science degrees knew even less. This motivated me even further to educate myself and look further afield as it seemed that in the area of Strength and Conditioning some of the experts were not that expert at all.
About this time I decided to make a return to playing soccer and Gaelic football. As I had some experience as a fitness instructor, I was given the task of conducting fitness sessions and pre training warm-ups. The lads and I would perform a dance based aerobics warm up. There was nothing more unsightly than seeing sixteen and seventeen stone men with no co-ordination doing aerobics and grapevines at 8pm on a Gaelic pitch in winter. This warm up was followed by putting the lads though a running session Forest Gump would be proud of. Armed with four cones and a whistle, I trained the lads the way I was trained before on a Gaelic and soccer pitch. As the bodies piled up with injuries, aches and strains, I had to study injury rehabilitation to put them back together again. I quickly realised I had to search abroad if I was to if I was to have any longevity as a coach of athletes or people in the gym. Ireland wasn’t producing any medallists in sports and our small nation mentality pointed the finger of blame at our low population. Ireland’s universities and fitness courses have produced few coaches that are coaching world class athletes. Those that can are training athletes, those that can’t, teach! The internet would open up my horizons to proven training methods from mentors who have produced athletes that have achieved world class results.
Train To Gain
In my early days as a trainer I believed that if I made people sweat and feel the burn during a training session then I would change their body-shape. Gym members taking part in spinning classes believe the same thing, yet years later, they are left spinning their heels as their body-shape remains the same. I was soon to learn from my new mentors, that if you are not improving or getting stronger by two % each workout in the gym, you are kidding yourself. By quantifying workouts and results we are able to measure our improvements. Many gym goers do not analyse their running times or keep account of the weights to measure improvement. Walking around the gym I would witness the same people on the same machine, running at the same speed. These gym members seemed to be exercising for psychological reasons as they were certainly not training to improve their bodies. In order change their body shape they would have to become uncomfortable during the training program.
When you have such a small level of knowledge you tend to believe 100% of what you read. I don’t regret the material I have read or the courses I have attended. As Thomas Edison said "I have not failed a thousand times, I have simply found a thousand ways that don't work."
Like all good strength coaches who strive to get better I kept looking for new information on strength and conditioning. Tune in to Part II as I continue my journey in fitness training. I have travelled the globe to learn from so called experts uncovering the myths in core training, Swiss-ball training, kettle-bell training and every fad that has entered the industry. They say experience is what you get from making mistakes, I have made a few, but my experiences have made me the coach I am today, one that can guarantee results.