It's been a while....
I'm going to try and use my blog as a sounding board and way to record some of my ideas as I go through the coming months.
Over the last year I've realised that Health and Fitness has started to totally lose it's way.
I'm not entirely sure where or when this happened but I've been getting more and more insights as the days, weeks and months have been moving on.
Friends, colleagues and people I meet on the train or at different meet ups are making the same observations.
So what do I think is happening?
For many years right up to 2008 we had a lot of innovators out there blazing the way, and creating new products and spaces to address the needs and problems people were facing.
I started doing this with my classes way back in 1998. periodising them, and creating a annual path for my clients to grow, improve and evolve. Each year I would add to the knowledge, intelligence and feedback from the previous classes and year's work.
Then somewhere around 2008, with the credit crunch we entered a period of about 8-9 years where the stead cautious risk adverse types were deemed the 'experts' of the time, and what was needed. Rather than innovate and grow our way out of a problems, austerity was seen as the right solution.
The problem with this type is they don't play well with others, and very few are actually any good at managing people.
What do they do? They employ exactly the same types of people as themselves or look for people that won't threaten their positions. They know how to say no to everything, and love sapping the fun out of everything. Worst of all, they know exactly what you need and feel it's only right that they establish and impose their views on you, to prevent you from doing yourself any more harm.
Basically stopping any type of growth dead.
....and this has been going on for almost 9 years.
But something has happened with Brexit and Trump winning. The optimists, the dreamers, and the can-doers are starting to return, they feel people have had enough and anything is possible now.
They're looking to use new technologies to create innovative and complex solutions to the problems that have been swept under the carpet for the last decade.
Gym design pisses me off majorly. I designed the early concepts to what we have been seeing since 2009-2011. I conceived these gyms on the back of a survey I did in 1999, which highlighted that gym goers wanted one of three things: Look better, feel better or perform better.
So I designed a gym like that.
But it wasn't meant to remain static, it was meant to evolve and each year as a client went through another annual cycle we were meant to deepen their knowledge, reiterate the process and bring in more and more complexity and create something new from the evolution. The gym was meant to evolve into something world class. Instead the life was sucked out of it.
Instead what did we get?
I got sanctioned for doing multi-planar, single leg balance work, and was told this had a substantial risk of serious injury. On a building site this level of danger would be the equivalent of drilling into a wall where there is a gas main but we're not sure where? Really???!
I've taught close to 100,000 man hours of exercise over 30 years and had less than 4 injuries in that time, none of which occurred in any of my training sessions. Falls from horses, motorbikes and ski accidents are usually the cause.
So today's questions is how do we take back control from these so called experts?
First of all anyone who sits in an office for the majority of their day and hasn't given more than 10 hours of exercise instruction for more than a year, is no longer current, and to me, you're not 'fitness'. Fitness is delivered by the girls and boys on the ground floor who deliver sessions, either classes, pts, or any kind of one to one session. The only exceptions to this are the very few managers that choose to workout themselves, and every one these has fallen into my 'Good manager' category.
So our industry is heading down a one way street which most of us know to be wrong. The wrong people are continually being promoted over far more talented and people orientated individuals.
Why can't people see this?
In my career I've had a tiny tiny number of good managers. Most are horrendous.
What's the difference?
The best managers I've ever had, treat you like a person. They actually say thank you for your input and work. They're balanced and fair. They are their word. They have openness and authenticity. If there's a problem or they make a mistake, they acknowledge it, and you respect them for it. They understand that a team requires different skills, different types of personality and characters and each has an important role to play within a team.
So where is this leading?
I'm going to tell a little story I was told this morning to finish off.
A construction company is building a skyscraper in Abu Dhabi. They've built the start of the first 5 floors when someone notices that the bedrock beneath the skyscraper is only 30m thick, which I was told is plenty, but a building's width away the bedrock is 60m thick.
They stopped work. Should they take down the building? Or continue building?
They decided to use the 5 stories as a buttress to the big skyscraper which they built on the thicker bedrock, because it was the right thing to do.
Just because we are a long way down this rabbit hole doesn't mean we're going in the right direction. Maybe we should use this knowledge to inform and redirect our efforts in the future.
Consider the last 10 years the buttress and now build the skyscraper.
But let's build it with integrity, health, vitality and most important of all, a sense of fun.
Over the last year I've realised that Health and Fitness has started to totally lose it's way.
I'm not entirely sure where or when this happened but I've been getting more and more insights as the days, weeks and months have been moving on.
Friends, colleagues and people I meet on the train or at different meet ups are making the same observations.
So what do I think is happening?
For many years right up to 2008 we had a lot of innovators out there blazing the way, and creating new products and spaces to address the needs and problems people were facing.
I started doing this with my classes way back in 1998. periodising them, and creating a annual path for my clients to grow, improve and evolve. Each year I would add to the knowledge, intelligence and feedback from the previous classes and year's work.
Then somewhere around 2008, with the credit crunch we entered a period of about 8-9 years where the stead cautious risk adverse types were deemed the 'experts' of the time, and what was needed. Rather than innovate and grow our way out of a problems, austerity was seen as the right solution.
The problem with this type is they don't play well with others, and very few are actually any good at managing people.
What do they do? They employ exactly the same types of people as themselves or look for people that won't threaten their positions. They know how to say no to everything, and love sapping the fun out of everything. Worst of all, they know exactly what you need and feel it's only right that they establish and impose their views on you, to prevent you from doing yourself any more harm.
Basically stopping any type of growth dead.
....and this has been going on for almost 9 years.
But something has happened with Brexit and Trump winning. The optimists, the dreamers, and the can-doers are starting to return, they feel people have had enough and anything is possible now.
They're looking to use new technologies to create innovative and complex solutions to the problems that have been swept under the carpet for the last decade.
Gym design pisses me off majorly. I designed the early concepts to what we have been seeing since 2009-2011. I conceived these gyms on the back of a survey I did in 1999, which highlighted that gym goers wanted one of three things: Look better, feel better or perform better.
So I designed a gym like that.
But it wasn't meant to remain static, it was meant to evolve and each year as a client went through another annual cycle we were meant to deepen their knowledge, reiterate the process and bring in more and more complexity and create something new from the evolution. The gym was meant to evolve into something world class. Instead the life was sucked out of it.
Instead what did we get?
I got sanctioned for doing multi-planar, single leg balance work, and was told this had a substantial risk of serious injury. On a building site this level of danger would be the equivalent of drilling into a wall where there is a gas main but we're not sure where? Really???!
I've taught close to 100,000 man hours of exercise over 30 years and had less than 4 injuries in that time, none of which occurred in any of my training sessions. Falls from horses, motorbikes and ski accidents are usually the cause.
So today's questions is how do we take back control from these so called experts?
First of all anyone who sits in an office for the majority of their day and hasn't given more than 10 hours of exercise instruction for more than a year, is no longer current, and to me, you're not 'fitness'. Fitness is delivered by the girls and boys on the ground floor who deliver sessions, either classes, pts, or any kind of one to one session. The only exceptions to this are the very few managers that choose to workout themselves, and every one these has fallen into my 'Good manager' category.
So our industry is heading down a one way street which most of us know to be wrong. The wrong people are continually being promoted over far more talented and people orientated individuals.
Why can't people see this?
In my career I've had a tiny tiny number of good managers. Most are horrendous.
What's the difference?
The best managers I've ever had, treat you like a person. They actually say thank you for your input and work. They're balanced and fair. They are their word. They have openness and authenticity. If there's a problem or they make a mistake, they acknowledge it, and you respect them for it. They understand that a team requires different skills, different types of personality and characters and each has an important role to play within a team.
So where is this leading?
I'm going to tell a little story I was told this morning to finish off.
A construction company is building a skyscraper in Abu Dhabi. They've built the start of the first 5 floors when someone notices that the bedrock beneath the skyscraper is only 30m thick, which I was told is plenty, but a building's width away the bedrock is 60m thick.
They stopped work. Should they take down the building? Or continue building?
They decided to use the 5 stories as a buttress to the big skyscraper which they built on the thicker bedrock, because it was the right thing to do.
Just because we are a long way down this rabbit hole doesn't mean we're going in the right direction. Maybe we should use this knowledge to inform and redirect our efforts in the future.
Consider the last 10 years the buttress and now build the skyscraper.
But let's build it with integrity, health, vitality and most important of all, a sense of fun.
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