Working out with Members

As a coach, it can be difficult to workout with your members. Most of your time is spent coaching these people, growing the business, following up with leads, cleaning, or rearranging the dumbbell rack and the slamballs. But, there are times on a day off, team training in between classes, or on the weekend where we get to workout with our members. Same workout, same equipment, same stimulus. I absolutely love working out with my friends. I love doing a partner workout with someone that wants to be pushed, or needs to be pushed. I love looking across the room and acknowledging my friends for their intensity in a workout. I love supporting my partner when he or she is about to finish their last reps on a movement where I’m next. I love looking at the older, much wiser person next to me hustling hard on their burpees. I’m so happy watching a female lift heavy weight and do it again without fear of being judged, or being scrutinized over how they look, and how muscular their shirt presents them. I don’t care whether I am working out with an RX athlete, or a scaled athlete. Fitness is fitness. I am not a competitive athlete. I am someone that loves working out. I am someone that loves THE PROCESS of being the healthiest and fittest that I can be. I can’t tell you how these people may feel about working out with a coach or working out with someone with more experience than them and how it affects their psyche and their performance, but I can tell you how positive of a feeling it is after the workout is finished. High fives, hugs, acknowledgement, encouragement, clapping, and support for one another.

I fully believe in PRACTICING WHAT YOU PREACH as a coach. If you want your members to be eating a certain way, performing a certain way, and working out a certain way, you need to be doing it to. A big part of working out with your members, and coaching your members is leading from the front. You need to be setting your vision, checking back often, and executing. All these people want to do is get a good workout in. They want to walk out of the gym with a smile on their face knowing that they have a group of people they can enjoy fitness with. They want to know that their coach is supportive of their goals, and supportive of their fitness journey. They want you to push them out of their comfort zone even when they look at a workout and they don’t want to do it. They want to be better versions of themselves. They want to achieve positive health. They want to look in the mirror and be proud of their body, and how hard they are working towards their image. They want to be complimented on their performance and how much better they have gotten since they started. They just want to know that we love working out with them, and love being around them. We all have different goals, but we all share a common goal. The goal of being the best that we can be while we are alive.

As a coach, you need to be encouraging people to be the best version of themselves every day. You need be supportive of someone when they are having a bad week, or they’re tired. You need to have empathy for people that are going through a hard time, and let them know you care. As a young coach, I am still learning these things. But, it is important to acknowledge these things so that we can be better people, and better fitness professionals. It doesn’t matter if yesterday was good or bad. It’s over. We have the opportunity to be better and prepare to be better. Some of us live multiple lives. The life we are living, and the unlived life within us. A mission of ours should be to meet halfway. A mission of ours should be to live our life to the fullest. A mission of ours should be to stop wasting time on things that don’t matter, and stop spending money on things that don’t matter. A mission of ours should be to eat more quality food, and value our life that is short. A mission of ours should be to stop living for the weekends, and start living for present moments. A mission of ours should be to form deeper relationships with our peers, and peers that we spend a lot of time with inside the gym. Look around you every once in a while. There are thousands of people in this world that can’t do what you do. They are scared, they are lazy, and they don’t have the same drive and fire in their hearts like you do. They don’t have the mindset to do what you do. They don’t have the hustle to wake up at 4:45am and hit a hard workout that leaves you gasping for air by 6am. They don’t know what that feels like. They don’t know what fitness truly is. Not everybody does, and that’s okay, but you are special. We have one life, let’s do something.