I’ve always considered myself a smart person. I did well in school, was on the honor roll, took advanced classes. I still spend a lot of time working on getting smarter: taking courses, reading scientific studies, learning from other professionals. I want to be the smartest coach around — except when I’m actually coaching someone.
I’ve learned over the years that I’m the most effective for my clients when I’m not the smart coach but the good coach.…
I come from a community of gym owners who are go-getter, type-A, do-it-yourselfers. We gladly trade hours of our own time for measly dollars saved because the work is fun and satisfying. We look at problems that stop many people in their tracks and find a way over, around, or through — all by ourselves. We have an innate sense that if something needs doing, it’s best done by us.…
Time and again, I have seen gyms get to a certain size and then plateau. For CrossFit and CrossFit-style gyms, this is around the eighty- to 100-member mark. For the longest time I wondered what was causing this.
At first I though this phenomenon was caused by a lack of systems. When all businesses get to a certain size, the difficulties they encounter start to change.…
Are you a coach or trainer considering running a nutrition challenge for your clients? Before you do, there are some things you should take into consideration to increase your clients’ success rates and keep them safe.
1. Research, and Preparation Pay OffThere are a lot of nutrition and lifestyle challenges out there right now and before diving in headfirst it is important to do your research:
In the early days of CrossFit, many people and gyms trained simply by following the CrossFit main site programming. As the time went on, though, more and more people took an interest in the programming behind their results. Now, there are thousands of different programs available.
Many of the successful and well-known gyms have made their programs available online for free, like The Outlaw Way, Competitors Training, CrossFit Invictus, and OPEX Fitness.…
You own a gym. You focus most of your time and efforts helping other people get fit and healthy. It’s not a bad way to make a living. In fact, one might say it’s quite an honorable profession.
But somehow, even though you own a gym, it’s easy to let your own well-being take a backseat. It’s like the proverbial mechanic not attending to her car.…
At the Whole Life Challenge, we engage in revenue sharing. When our Partners sign up to lead a Team, they receive a portion of every dollar we collect from their Team Members.
This has the obvious benefit of immediately incentivizing all parties: when our Partners engage as many people as possible, it allows us to create an exceptional Challenge environment for the Players while keeping the lights on at Whole Life headquarters.…
You have a half-dozen social media tools for reaching your members: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, your email list, the “power tools” of reaching far and wide.
It would be tempting to think that leveraging these tools is your best shot for throwing a successful event (but it’s not).
In a world dominated by social media, your best tool for getting your members to participate in special events is still a pen and piece of paper. …
You just finished up the CrossFit Games Open, along with over 250,000 people around the world. It’s a great time to consider getting something new and fresh for your community on your schedule. The Whole Life Challenge.
Check out the site. Then take the 17 minutes you’ll need to register your official team. The upside for you and your community is huge.…
Each week, we are all entrusted with an irreplaceable fund of hours…168, to be exact. How you spend these hours is entirely up to you. You can putter around, watching hours and hours of Law & Order reruns. Or you can set about to change your community, or maybe even the entire world.
It just depends on how you choose to spend your fund of hours.…
About ten years ago, I had a client, Hannah, who was 25 or so at the time. As we were going through the initial intake, she told me that she felt tired all of the time. No matter what time she went to bed, she felt exhausted. Everyday chores, like getting off the couch to go to the grocery store, felt overwhelming.…
Note: Heather McKearnan is the program director and co-owner of Undisputed Fitness, which is a CrossFit affiliate in Santa Fe, New Mexico. This is the story she tells about her affiliate’s experience with the Whole Life Challenge.
Undisputed Fitness (CrossFit Santa Fe) adds three or four new members to its client list each time it participates in a Whole Life Challenge, but that’s hardly important considering everything else that happens.…
