Speaker 1: Good everyone. Sam Here, we're going to take today's show
Speaker 1: in a slightly different direction. We're absolutely talking to an
Speaker 1: expert in their field, but it was a bit of
Speaker 1: a field trip to do research for today's episode. And
Speaker 1: I might do a bit more of this depending on
Speaker 1: what you guys think. If you like it, I will.
Speaker 2: But I took a little visit to a.
Speaker 1: Fitness experience, a new sort of phenomenon that's come into
Speaker 1: the fitness market, the Fitness Arena, and I visited on Tuesday,
Speaker 1: and I did a workout and it was really challenging,
Speaker 1: but really enjoyable. And today we have in the studio
Speaker 1: the founder of this fitness concept. So many of you
Speaker 1: may have heard I'm sure of pilates, and this turns
Speaker 1: pilarates on its head.
Speaker 2: So stick around.
Speaker 1: We're going to hear from Michael Ramsay, the founder of
Speaker 1: this new pilarates phenomen And then, speaking of Jim's I'm
Speaker 1: going to help all of you out there that have
Speaker 1: been thinking you need to join a gym. You'd like
Speaker 1: to join a gym, but you don't know where to start,
Speaker 1: and you're a bit petrified by the experience, which is
Speaker 1: completely normal, completely natural. I'm going to help you choose
Speaker 1: the right gym, get over those fears and get yourself moving.
Speaker 1: That's all coming up next on the Woodlife. So it's
Speaker 1: nice to be joined in the studio today by not
Speaker 1: only someone that I look up to enormously from a
Speaker 1: business perspective, but someone that I'm proud to call a mate.
Speaker 1: It is Michael Ramsey.
Speaker 2: Now you might not.
Speaker 1: Know Michael by name, but you will know his company
Speaker 1: by name. I would think if you haven't been living
Speaker 1: under a rock here in Australia and other parts of
Speaker 1: the world now. But we'll get into that. Michael is
Speaker 1: the co founder of Strong Pilates. He would have seen
Speaker 1: the big, beautiful branding black with the white writing, awesome logo.
Speaker 1: And I won't tell you what Strong Pilarates is. I'll
Speaker 1: let Rams do that.
Speaker 3: Rams.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the wood Life and congrats on all of your.
Speaker 4: Successte my pleasure, Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 1: Maybe let's start by acting like our listeners don't necessarily
Speaker 1: know what strong Pilarates is. How do you explain it?
Speaker 1: What's your elevator pitch? If someone says, mate, what do
Speaker 1: you do what strong pilarates?
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting because my answer today is very different
Speaker 4: to what it would have been three years ago. It's developed,
Speaker 4: but effectively we are a pilates conditioning hybrid concept, so
Speaker 4: pilarates with cardio. We use a machine called the row Former.
Speaker 2: Which is your concept.
Speaker 4: Actually through a friend of a friend, I've found the
Speaker 4: machine itself in the US on social media, I believe.
Speaker 1: It or not having a scroll one night, Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: this interesting contraption.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my friend came to me and she said, have
Speaker 4: you seen this? At the time, I'd actually broken my ankle.
Speaker 4: I was doing a lot of Reformer pilarates. Really loving
Speaker 4: it as the first workout I think I'd done where
Speaker 4: I felt better leaving the workout, but I always wanted
Speaker 4: a bit more so I wanted to sweat.
Speaker 3: I wanted some conditioning.
Speaker 4: My friend showed me this contraption, the Reformer in the US,
Speaker 4: so it's like stuff. I'm jumping on a fly and
Speaker 4: I'm going to LA I'm going to check it out
Speaker 4: as you do. When and did it, absolutely loved it.
Speaker 4: Probably one of the toughest, most excruciating workouts I'd ever done.
Speaker 4: Just this euphoric feeling post workout of really elevating heart
Speaker 4: rate for getting that all those sort of benefits of pilarates,
Speaker 4: you know, very tough resistance, spring loaded pilarates. So I said, okay,
Speaker 4: I need to turn this into something. At the time,
Speaker 4: I owned a bunch of her forty five franchises, so
Speaker 4: I was enfranchising in the fitness industry. I thought, how
Speaker 4: can I bring this back to Australia. So I end
Speaker 4: up negotiating the rights to this machine now globally and
Speaker 4: it under the Strong brand.
Speaker 3: And now, yeah, so let me just go down that
Speaker 3: rabbit hole.
Speaker 1: So you ain't the Instagram handle at Strong yep, which
Speaker 1: just blows my mind.
Speaker 4: It's like, how on earth did you get that? It
Speaker 4: actually wasn't as tough as you'd think. I started buying
Speaker 4: up one word Instagram names.
Speaker 3: But when about.
Speaker 2: Five or six years ago, before I even had Instagram.
Speaker 4: Yeah, probably, yeah, because I remember I had friends in
Speaker 4: the tech space that were buying one word domains. So say,
Speaker 4: for instance, remember the Choialer dot com the Mattress company.
Speaker 4: They had to acquire Choala dot com for quite a
Speaker 4: lot of money. Like that's just an example of how
Speaker 4: these things can. You can purchase them early on and
Speaker 4: then they're worth a lot of money down the track
Speaker 4: and I don't know if you remember, but I ran
Speaker 4: an event.
Speaker 3: At the Woodshed.
Speaker 4: I do remember, and it was called strong Events, and
Speaker 4: so she still didn't know what you're going to do
Speaker 4: with that exactly. And ironically, when I tried this row format,
Speaker 4: I were thinking, what can we call this concept? And
Speaker 4: it just made the workout just made me feel stronger,
Speaker 4: not only physically. It's such a durable word, but mentally
Speaker 4: as well, because you are you sitting there holding a
Speaker 4: plank under resistance and you've just done a row set,
Speaker 4: so you're out of breath and you mentally have to
Speaker 4: be resilient. So it's it's all encompassing. It's a strong workout,
Speaker 4: and so like, okay, it's called strong Pilarates and that's.
Speaker 3: Sort of how it was born.
Speaker 1: So let's paint a little visual for our listeners, because
Speaker 1: if you haven't done a strong class or seen it
Speaker 1: on social media, we're literally talking about a normal or
Speaker 1: standard or as you'd expect, reformer pilarates bed. You know,
Speaker 1: top of the line, all the springs, all the places
Speaker 1: you put your feet or grab the hand, grab the
Speaker 1: little cables with your handles, with a rowing machine attached
Speaker 1: at the front, of it, So it's all one machine.
Speaker 1: You don't have a rower next to a reformer. It's
Speaker 1: all one long bed and you can jump between your
Speaker 1: core work and your strength work cardio core cardio, cool cardio.
Speaker 1: I'm within a forty five minute window. And I'm not
Speaker 1: just speaking from viewing. I did a class on Tuesday night.
Speaker 1: I was talking to Michael today and absolutely stuffed me.
Speaker 1: But you now have bikes as well. How did that
Speaker 1: evolution happen?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you've got to imagine these things are four
Speaker 4: point one meters in length, so they are massive. And
Speaker 4: after a year or two, I mean we launched just
Speaker 4: pre pandemic, so we're efectfively closed for a year and
Speaker 4: a half anyway, launching your business, Yeah.
Speaker 3: But I mean after a while.
Speaker 4: We work on an unlimited membership, so you pay seventy
Speaker 4: dollars a week, you get unlimited classes, and you've got
Speaker 4: people training in there seven days a week. So if
Speaker 4: you're rowing every day, it's a lot. So I mean, personally,
Speaker 4: I found it to be a little bit monotonous, and
Speaker 4: so we said, okay, how can we continue to diversify
Speaker 4: and innovation is.
Speaker 3: A big part of our business.
Speaker 4: We keep including changing, improving, and then we figured out,
Speaker 4: all right, let's do a bike let's do a bike former.
Speaker 4: And now at the start of the class, the client
Speaker 4: and actually they picked their weapons choice.
Speaker 1: I had about eight bike yeah reformers and eight row
Speaker 1: reformers or reformers.
Speaker 3: Yeah YEAHI the row or you ride.
Speaker 4: It's all along our philosophy of low impact and high intensity.
Speaker 4: So you'll never see your treademill a't strong because of
Speaker 4: the impact of running. You know, one day we may
Speaker 4: bring in a ski urg or something like that. But yeah,
Speaker 4: now you have the option of rowing or riding, and
Speaker 4: it's been brilliant so far.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that because I don't mean this disrespectfully.
Speaker 1: And you're never going to slam hit training because you
Speaker 1: had enormous success with all of your forty five studios.
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts, because I think this is really
Speaker 1: interesting education for our listeners.
Speaker 2: I've got my own opinion. I'm sure you do too.
Speaker 1: People I believe put impact and intensity together in their head.
Speaker 3: They're the same.
Speaker 1: You know, I can't have a hard workout unless it's
Speaker 1: a high impact workout, which is clearly not the case.
Speaker 1: I did a strong workout. It was very low impact.
Speaker 1: I was totally cooked. What is your thought on why
Speaker 1: a high intensity, lower impact workout is such a good
Speaker 1: option for people.
Speaker 2: I think I'm assuming that's what you do think because
Speaker 2: that's what you've.
Speaker 3: Created as a business.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean there's a few points on that.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 4: You know, just seeing our clients come in and hearing
Speaker 4: from them, you know, they've come in with busted saw backs,
Speaker 4: low and sore knees, things like that, and hearing that
Speaker 4: they really have had enough of high impact was sort
Speaker 4: of proof enough for us to persevere with this.
Speaker 3: No more burpy.
Speaker 4: Is not that there's anything wrong. I mean, one thing
Speaker 4: I don't really like in the fitness industry is fear
Speaker 4: mongering workouts because over six percent of austrain.
Speaker 3: Population is overweight. Right, people should be.
Speaker 4: Moving, so that that's that's fine, But longevity is a
Speaker 4: huge piece that we're seeing. You only need to train
Speaker 4: once a week resistance training to show that you know
Speaker 4: we're going to be living longer. There's a lot of
Speaker 4: stays out they're now showing that resistance training proves longevity
Speaker 4: in life. I think if you're going to be training
Speaker 4: for longer, you need to focus on low impact exercise.
Speaker 4: There's no point doing a high impact and getting the bustard.
Speaker 4: It's all loll back or the bad knees or you know,
Speaker 4: the ankles. We want to be training for longer and sustainably, so.
Speaker 2: And this is the thing.
Speaker 1: Forty five and these other hit workouts are getting a
Speaker 1: bit of a bad rap at the moment.
Speaker 2: But they're brilliant for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: They're just not great if you're fifty and have a
Speaker 1: history of ailments, and you know, and you're not warming
Speaker 1: up properly. You know, there's a lot of But you're right,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't fear monger, and we shouldn't tarnish one brand
Speaker 1: or one particular style of workout, good or bad, because
Speaker 1: there are so many other variables of player.
Speaker 2: I do agree with.
Speaker 4: That, yeah, I mean, when I own my forty five's,
Speaker 4: I was probably the fittest I've ever been, but you know,
Speaker 4: I'm not breaking my ankle. I had so many knee
Speaker 4: problems and it's from that impact and jumping and going
Speaker 4: over and over. I think they've since forty five, I particularly,
Speaker 4: have since sort of refined their workouts a little bit more.
Speaker 4: I think this space is getting very educated people know
Speaker 4: now you can't just do touch jumps on the spot
Speaker 4: for two minutes. It's just not sustainable.
Speaker 1: But strong in particular, let's talk about it from a
Speaker 1: physiological perspective. What's the theory behind it, why do you
Speaker 1: love it so much? And who's your customer?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean you can tell with the branding, we're
Speaker 4: completely gender neutral, so very we see men as our
Speaker 4: biggest opportunity. Plarts has traditionally been female dominated, and so
Speaker 4: it's hopefully something that we can change. In terms of
Speaker 4: the workout. It's really interesting because not only have we
Speaker 4: kind of picked apart hit training, but we've also picked
Speaker 4: apart pilates. Now, it's very hard to build muscle when
Speaker 4: you're working aerobically right, you're in your aerobic energy system,
Speaker 4: you haven't rested. Let's say you've been doing a play's
Speaker 4: flow for ten to twelve minutes, it's very hard to
Speaker 4: build muscle. So the way we program we have plays
Speaker 4: component we know plarties is brilliant for us in so
Speaker 4: many different ways. We have a progressive overload component throughout
Speaker 4: the week, dumb bells, even spring loaded tension. I would
Speaker 4: suggest I'd love you to come and do an upper
Speaker 4: body class, a chin up on a reformer gets greater
Speaker 4: activation than say a lap pull down. And then we've
Speaker 4: also got the cardio conditioning component, so we're sort of
Speaker 4: bridging the gap between hit training, reform, polarates, and strength
Speaker 4: and conditioning. And I think because it's this all encompassing workout,
Speaker 4: it's low impact and enables people to train longer with longevity.
Speaker 4: I think that's why it's been so popular. It's just
Speaker 4: really interesting how it's developed because initially, you know, our
Speaker 4: slogan is down for more, and we thought we're more
Speaker 4: than just polarates, so we're going to get all the
Speaker 4: plarties people coming in. But what we're actually seeing is
Speaker 4: we're getting everyone. We're getting people from the functional training
Speaker 4: studios who do spin, people who do yoga, people who run.
Speaker 4: Our biggest consumer right now joining Strong is actually someone
Speaker 4: who just goes to a regular gym, which is really
Speaker 4: interesting data because they.
Speaker 1: Now come to you as well, so they do some
Speaker 1: weight because that's where I'd see it fitting me personally.
Speaker 1: I like doing my weight training. I like to run
Speaker 1: a little bit, but I think doing a strong class
Speaker 1: once or twice a week would be the perfect compliment
Speaker 1: for how I like to train currently, Whereas I totally
Speaker 1: get that the other people that this ticks all the
Speaker 1: boxes for them and they don't need to do anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we get you get a bit of everything.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of people will call them like the
Speaker 4: new age fitness consumer that have two three four gym membership,
Speaker 4: the class class Yeah, the class pass junkie. But yeah,
Speaker 4: I'd say most of our members only do strong. A
Speaker 4: lot of the guys particular, even myself, I still lift
Speaker 4: heavy weights. But if I took you into a today's class,
Speaker 4: which is strength, upper body progressive overload, you wouldn't want
Speaker 4: to do an upper body workout tomorrow. You wouldn't want
Speaker 4: a bench press, you wouldn't want to do any sort
Speaker 4: of one single arm rows anything like that.
Speaker 3: It is enough.
Speaker 4: We're still predominant female, was still sort of in the
Speaker 4: eighty percent mark for female. But we've just recently launched
Speaker 4: with four male ambassadors, which I think is a very.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Trav Bogue, two rugby guys, Nico Hein Shawan Johnson now
Speaker 4: that five the year he won the Brownlow attributes that
Speaker 4: to when he started pilarates. Trav Bok, who's an incredible player.
Speaker 4: He's still, you know, deep into his thirties now I'm playing.
Speaker 4: He attributes his longevity to pilarates. So these guys have
Speaker 4: been incredible ambassadors for us and also breaking down that
Speaker 4: mold of polarates is for women, because it's not for everyone.
Speaker 1: Why do you think pallarates is so popular and not
Speaker 1: even strong? Why do you think polaratees is growing and
Speaker 1: without slamming anyone? Where do you think pallartes can improve?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: What do you think the downside, if any there are
Speaker 1: to pilarates and it doesn't need to be of an uplift.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think pilates is incredible. Again, going back to
Speaker 4: that example of when I broke my ankle and I
Speaker 4: rehabbed my ankle through spring loaded tension and slow movements
Speaker 4: and just getting back to one hundred percent. There's so
Speaker 4: many benefits of pilates you'd be surprised how many people
Speaker 4: aren't activating their core and aren't activating their glutes properly.
Speaker 4: So that's sort of the basis, and I think it's
Speaker 4: been so popular for those reasons. And now people do
Speaker 4: want low impact options, and they do want longevity, and
Speaker 4: they do have banged up bodies after doing high impact
Speaker 4: for you know, periods of time. So I think that's
Speaker 4: a big reason why it's so popular. Where we think
Speaker 4: it can improve, where I think it can improve, just
Speaker 4: see areas that we've kind of included. One of the
Speaker 4: biggest criticisms to pilarates is it's really hard to burn
Speaker 4: body fat, you know, it's hard to elevate heart rate,
Speaker 4: and you get a lot of dynamic poalais concepts now
Speaker 4: where they're trying to elevate heart rate through you know,
Speaker 4: jump boxes and things like that.
Speaker 3: So now we're just.
Speaker 4: Spike the heart rate on the roller or the bike,
Speaker 4: go back. We actually don't do any dynamic work, so
Speaker 4: it's always heavy spring loaded tension four seconds now and
Speaker 4: four seconds up.
Speaker 2: The slow control movement.
Speaker 1: The time under tension was severe, like what you were
Speaker 1: just on ten squads.
Speaker 3: You're doing ten squads, yes, yeah, for minutes.
Speaker 4: And then and then you go back and you spike
Speaker 4: your heart rate again, and because you're holding resistance under tension,
Speaker 4: your heart rates elevated the entire time, so you end
Speaker 4: up burning you know, huge amount of calories, which is
Speaker 4: one of the big goals and one of the big
Speaker 4: criticisms of pilates is you know, I haven't been dropping
Speaker 4: body fat and I want to get a sweat on.
Speaker 4: So yeah, I mean the other one is, and I
Speaker 4: spoke about it before, is that sort of if you
Speaker 4: want to build muscle, you probably need to stop rest
Speaker 4: work in your anaerobic energy system, lift a little bit heavier.
Speaker 4: And it's it is tough to do in a in
Speaker 4: a Pilarates flow as such, and there're a genuinely.
Speaker 1: Heavy weights there, Like you've got twenty twenty big heavy
Speaker 1: you know in each hand. You know you do on
Speaker 1: squat some forty kilos on a reformer bed trying not
Speaker 1: to do the split like it's it's a really proper
Speaker 1: strength workout. The other thing that I think you do
Speaker 1: that I've never seen in a polarate space the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: the music, the lights, the headset like it was it
Speaker 1: was soul cycle.
Speaker 2: It was energy.
Speaker 1: It was like it was awesome. You know, it's contagious
Speaker 1: in a space like that. You feed off the energy
Speaker 1: of the instructor, You feed off the energy of the people.
Speaker 2: On your right and on your left.
Speaker 1: And I don't think historically that and pilarates have gone
Speaker 1: hand in hand.
Speaker 3: I don't think the traditionalists like us too much.
Speaker 2: Disrupted, shake things up.
Speaker 3: It's good. It is.
Speaker 4: It's literally you know you're doing R and B when
Speaker 4: you're on the strength side, and then you're rowing and
Speaker 4: it goes to deep house and the lights come down.
Speaker 4: That's blasting the instructor terms of music up. And you
Speaker 4: know when you finish your workout, you get a tower
Speaker 4: that's cold and being soaked in eucalyptus, all that your
Speaker 4: face and you know the lockers have phone charges. And
Speaker 4: we even created a scent. We play a lot of
Speaker 4: jay Z, so we put Konyak in the scent. The
Speaker 4: number one reason females left gyms in one year on
Speaker 4: a survey with cleln, So we put saffron in the scent,
Speaker 4: which sort of smells like a chlorine. And it's the
Speaker 4: best thing about doing your own concept is you can
Speaker 4: be ultra creative for.
Speaker 1: Someone who's got their fingers so close to the pulse.
Speaker 1: In the fitness industry, where are there any breakout innovations
Speaker 1: or directions that you think the fitness industry is going to?
Speaker 2: You know, where do you see the fitness industry going?
Speaker 1: Almost taking your strong hat off to answer this question,
Speaker 1: where do you see the fitness industry going in the
Speaker 1: next three to five years.
Speaker 4: We saw some we got some data from class pass
Speaker 4: last year actually that polarateis is now the fastest growing
Speaker 4: genre in Australia. There's an increased by two hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty percent in terms of class bookings year on year,
Speaker 4: which is huge. So that's bigger than strength boxing all
Speaker 4: different classes. So this is a space that we're really
Speaker 4: happy and feel very privileged to be in. But in
Speaker 4: terms of I think where it's going, I don't know.
Speaker 4: I feel like tech is going to be integrated somewhat
Speaker 4: into every studio or even home workout. There has to
Speaker 4: be some element of heart rate or gamification going in there.
Speaker 4: So yeah, we're going to all these conference theres, we're
Speaker 4: doing all the fun things, seeing what's out there, but
Speaker 4: eventually we're going to have to consider a big tech
Speaker 4: investment that we can incorporate into our concept.
Speaker 2: Do you mean that where it complements what they do
Speaker 2: at home with what they do in the studio.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 4: So right now we're working on a napp where you're
Speaker 4: doing a thirty day challenge and you tick off your
Speaker 4: if you've had your seven to nine hours of sleep
Speaker 4: if you've had three to more.
Speaker 1: Approach, yeah, which I totally agree that that's where wellness is.
Speaker 1: It's just it's not fitness anymore. It's what it's your nutrition,
Speaker 1: what's your recovery, what's your stress, what's your mental health.
Speaker 1: It really is all encompassing, isn't it.
Speaker 4: I totally agree, And it has to be for someone
Speaker 4: who's paying seventy dollars a week to train with us.
Speaker 4: We need to deliver more than just an in studio experience.
Speaker 4: So I mean, mate, you would know this back to front.
Speaker 4: I mean with what you guys do. There's so much
Speaker 4: there that defines how we're healthy. And it's everything.
Speaker 1: That's the beauty of tech, because I think that's what
Speaker 1: gyms and personal trainers and anyone else that's in that
Speaker 1: face to face bricks and water space doesn't typically do
Speaker 1: very well, and you do it absolutely well already.
Speaker 2: But I really care about you.
Speaker 1: For the three hours that you're in my studio, you're
Speaker 1: my best friend, and you get the red carpet rolled out.
Speaker 1: But for the other one hundred and sixty five hours,
Speaker 1: I leave you to your own devices, and there's no support,
Speaker 1: there's no nutrition, there's no sleep, there's no little check in,
Speaker 1: there's no accountability. And if someone's great for three hours
Speaker 1: a week but they're not leading a healthy lifestyle for
Speaker 1: the rest, they're never going to get any results.
Speaker 2: And you see that.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 4: But there is a big difference between our best operators
Speaker 4: and you know, our sort of lower performing ones, and
Speaker 4: the best ones are always the ones that are in
Speaker 4: the communities, working the businesses. They know their clients by name,
Speaker 4: they know what their client's dog name is, they know
Speaker 4: what they did on what they did on the weekend,
Speaker 4: and they know.
Speaker 1: You know, if you're training for a run, I know
Speaker 1: you're training for a run. If you're trying to get
Speaker 1: in check for your wedding, I know that. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's important you know that.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 4: It's not rocket science, is it?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 4: It hasn't really changed that much in how long. I mean,
Speaker 4: you've got the tech and the innovation and everything like that,
Speaker 4: but really it's a care factor, isn't it exactly?
Speaker 1: And I wish you the best of luck, mate, You
Speaker 1: deserve everything that comes away. And thanks for coming on
Speaker 1: the podcast today.
Speaker 3: Thanks mate, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: So there we go a bit of a different discussion.
Speaker 1: For the Woodlife we normally talk with a technical expert
Speaker 1: rather than a business expert, but I just think the
Speaker 1: I think the technical grounding of why you would combine
Speaker 1: pilates with strength and cardio is really interesting, as we're
Speaker 1: always talking about the different and best options to get
Speaker 1: yourself in shape on the show. And I also think
Speaker 1: there's something really powerful about knowing the story behind the story,
Speaker 1: or behind the brand or behind the product. So I
Speaker 1: thoroughly enjoyed that, and I hope you did too, And
Speaker 1: if you did like it, let us know. We're going
Speaker 1: to move away from business now and we're going to
Speaker 1: get into some technical advice.
Speaker 2: It's an area that I'm really passionate about.
Speaker 1: I often say with my twenty eight program, the thing
Speaker 1: I'm most proud of.
Speaker 2: Is we're not here to get fit people fitter. We're
Speaker 2: here to.
Speaker 1: Get someone that's a one out of ten or a
Speaker 1: three out of ten to a six out of ten
Speaker 1: and a seven out of ten and really get themselves going.
Speaker 1: So our next question from one of our Woodlife listeners
Speaker 1: is about gym beginners, and that's something next. So recently
Speaker 1: we received a message on our wood Life Instagram page
Speaker 1: and The question was, and I'm paraphrasing, but as a
Speaker 1: beginner who steps into the gym, never been to the
Speaker 1: gym before, how do I do that without looking clueless?
Speaker 1: And I just thought, I love this question because I
Speaker 1: bet it's what thousands of other people are thinking, and
Speaker 1: isn't it Isn't it a shame when the thing that
Speaker 1: will stop you taking care of yourself is the fear
Speaker 1: of the unknown, or the fear of the embarrassment, or
Speaker 1: the anxiety that you get because we've got this perception
Speaker 1: and it's partly based on truth that everyone else knows
Speaker 1: what they're doing, because gyms typically have a huge percentage
Speaker 1: of people who have been for years and go seven
Speaker 1: times a week, so they do.
Speaker 2: Know they're doing.
Speaker 1: If you walk in and they're clicky, you know, I
Speaker 1: know even when I go into gyms that I've been
Speaker 1: in before. When I travel, you can tell the guys
Speaker 1: and girls that know each other and they're there at
Speaker 1: the same time on the same day every week, and
Speaker 1: it can be a lot. I think there's a few
Speaker 1: bits of advice. The first is you've just got to go.
Speaker 1: You've got to get past your fear of not going
Speaker 1: because you're driving past that gym probably twice a day
Speaker 1: for seventeen years, and telling yourself one day unfortunately isn't
Speaker 1: going to get you any fitter, any healthier, any stronger
Speaker 1: take care of yourself. So you do have to jump
Speaker 1: in the deep end a little bit, get uncomfortable. The
Speaker 1: second bit of advice I would say is honest is
Speaker 1: the best policy. I think going in there and pretending
Speaker 1: you know what you're doing, or being too scared to
Speaker 1: ask for help or too scared to be vulnerable, and
Speaker 1: tell them this.
Speaker 2: Is actually the first I know.
Speaker 1: I'm forty seven, but this is the first time I've
Speaker 1: ever been in a gym.
Speaker 2: I'm shit scared and I don't know what I'm doing.
Speaker 2: That's okay, that's the best. You need to be honest.
Speaker 1: You're not going to get the support and the help
Speaker 1: and the advice and the program that you need if
Speaker 1: you pretend that you kind of know what you're doing
Speaker 1: and you can be left to your own devices. So
Speaker 1: you've got to be open. You've got to be honest
Speaker 1: about it. That's I think the most important. Don't assume
Speaker 1: that the first gym you walk into is going to
Speaker 1: be the right one for you. I think different gyms
Speaker 1: are for different people. I think you will know based
Speaker 1: on the people, based on the field, based on the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: based on the amount of.
Speaker 3: Help that you get.
Speaker 1: There's a myriad of things that are important to different people,
Speaker 1: and everyone has their own sort of list or hierarchy
Speaker 1: to what's most important to them. And every gym says
Speaker 1: the same thing. Fantastic trainers, stay to the art equipment,
Speaker 1: you know, like wonderful facilities, you know, great bathrooms like
Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah. Like you know, it's very hard
Speaker 1: to distinguish what's good and what's not. Everyone says the
Speaker 1: same stuff. It's almost the intangibles. That person remembered my name,
Speaker 1: They genuinely cared about it. They didn't talk about the gym.
Speaker 1: They talked about me. I think the best people at
Speaker 1: gym's don't care about.
Speaker 2: Their own gym.
Speaker 1: On look at the you know, fast Runner seven thousand,
Speaker 1: it's our new treadmill.
Speaker 2: Who cares treadmill is a treadmill? Really?
Speaker 1: You want someone who says, sally, tell me about you.
Speaker 1: Why have you never been into a gym? How do
Speaker 1: we make sure we get past those barriers? What are
Speaker 1: you trying to achieve? Physically, What are you trying to
Speaker 1: achieve mentally? How much time do you have, do you
Speaker 1: have kids? What do you do for a job. How
Speaker 1: often can you train a week? How long can you
Speaker 1: come in for Do you like waights?
Speaker 2: Do you like place?
Speaker 1: You want someone who genuinely cares about you. That's a
Speaker 1: massive tick for me. All of the other stuff they're kind.
Speaker 2: Of much of a muchness.
Speaker 1: The other thing I think that's really important is geography.
Speaker 1: There are stats that say if the gym is not
Speaker 1: within five minutes drive of either your home or your
Speaker 1: route home, so you don't have to make more than
Speaker 1: a five minute detour, if it's from work to home,
Speaker 1: then you will not go, and eventually you will cancel
Speaker 1: that membership. You've got a great percentage of canceling. They're
Speaker 1: not cancling. I think it's seventy two or seventy four
Speaker 1: percent or something like that. So convenience and location are
Speaker 1: paramount in long term success. It might be the best
Speaker 1: gym in the world you've seen on Instagram and it's
Speaker 1: ninety minutes away, Do not join? All right, go there
Speaker 1: once for fun on a weekend and see if you
Speaker 1: can get a one session pass. That's not going to
Speaker 1: be the answer for you. So don't just sign up
Speaker 1: to the first gym you walk into. It's your money,
Speaker 1: it's your body, it's your journey. You have a right
Speaker 1: to be picky, but make sure they notice and make
Speaker 1: sure they care.
Speaker 2: All right, there you go.
Speaker 1: So after today's episode, every gym is going to hate me,
Speaker 1: except for perhaps strong gyms who were given them a
Speaker 1: good plug today.
Speaker 2: But rightfully so. And I was only jagging.
Speaker 1: Not every gym hates me, but I think it's good
Speaker 1: to just keep them on their toes, keep the industry strong.
Speaker 1: Have a fantastic week. Everybody.
Speaker 2: Have loved chatting to you today.
Speaker 1: As always, send in your questions, send in your eye is.
Speaker 1: If there's any other fitness concepts you'd like me to
Speaker 1: get out there and check out, or speak to the
Speaker 1: founder or speak to a trainer from that particular space,
Speaker 1: I'd love to. I think it's really interesting. There's so
Speaker 1: many interesting concepts popping up in the fitness industry all
Speaker 1: of the time.
Speaker 2: Until next week, I'll see you there.