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When an individual walks into a group fitness class, they have 3 important psychological needs. Competency, Autonomy, and Relatedness to their leader. When an instructor and program can meet all of these needs for multiple individuals, they can truly make an impact. This blog post is for my fellow instructor friends. How are you doing in meeting these needs? Are there any other needs that you feel should be included? Competency: This is the baseline for a successful program. It is very hard for anyone to feel the full power, energy, and magic that comes from a fitness class if they don't know what the crap is going on and what to do. An instructor doesn't need to be a magic fairy to meet this need. Just tell them what to do and when. It's simple, it's clear, it's consistent, and it comes in plenty of time. I am soooo guilty of getting carried away with the fun and I have distracted myself from delivering the most fundamental and important part of class; to get my class moving. If you are a new instructor, I suggest focusing on just this. There will be magic, personality, connection, and fun, but without a strong foundation in your basic body part movement cues, nothing else that you have planned will land or make any impact. So shorten your verbiage, make it clear, and practice spitting out your cues around 4 counts before it happens. Be so good at this that it comes without thinking. Think: Body part, direction, timing, and move name. This is level one. This skill takes time practice and experience. You might need a friend to watch you and help you identify any gaps you might have. Are your cues consistently coming in advance. Are there too many words being used? Are you team teaching with the music? How's your timing, and technique? What are the barriers keeping you from delivering a clear instruction of what to do, and when to do it? Identifying those things are the first step to improving and taking control over your instructor journey. Autonomy: Members really like to feel like they have choices. It lets them know that they are seen as a person with individual needs. Your class is not a cookie cutter class. It is designed to fit their needs, and they have choices. Choices to modify, challenges specific to their level, and room for them to turn the class into what they want it to be, and what they came hoping to receive. An experienced instructor knows there are so many different types of participants. Some are cautious, some LOVE attention, some want a challenge, some want details. Some want to be left the heck alone! When we honor those needs, we can deliver cuing and formatting that truly meet the specific needs of our participants. It allows us instructors to break the "4th wall" if you will. We are no longer just a robot spouting out base level cues, but we are offering relevant cuing and options to the people in front of us. When we do that tastefully, we are seeing the people in front of us. We are giving them choices so they can take full control of their workout. Oh how people love choices! Give it to them! Relatedness: It doesn't matter how skilled you are in your technique, cuing, coaching, or performance; if you can't connect with the people in your class, you will lose client retention. A class participant wants to feel like they can relate to their leader. Perhaps it's through how you communicate your cues, or the relevance of those cues. It could also be what is happening before and after class. How can you create an atmosphere of belonging? Where the class is a team, or community. There's really no formula to making this happen. It's an art. Have you ever seen a football team joshing around between one another? A good healthy dose of lighthearted banter proves to increase comradery between players and coaches. How can you create comradery in your class? It doesn't happen overnight. It most certainly doesn't happen unless you know who is in your class. Start with their names. Then learn about who they are. In time, memories are made, and the magic of community starts to take form. I hope that some of these insights puts a "why" behind why what we are cuing as group fitness instructors. I also hope it inspires some new thoughts or ideas on how you might better meet the needs of the people coming into your class. Remember that every instructor has different priorities and values than the next instructor. Sometimes they shift and change. It's wonderful that we have so many different kinds of people behind a mic teaching all sorts of classes. We need it that way so we can bring in as many people as we can. Your kind of people will gravitate towards you and your values, as they will to other instructors. If you're looking for more participants to gravitate to your class. Perhaps there's a need that is getting neglected in your class. How are you going to work on that?

A snowball collects snow as it rolls down a hill and grows bigger and bigger. Waves react to outward forces and grow with powerful momentum. Our mind can analyze the smallest things and draw the largest conclusions. I want to talk about and warn about the power of momentum. Everyone. EVERYONE has demons and insecurities. It's part of our genetic makeup, our personality, our upbringing. It's what makes us finely attuned to how we see and react to people and the world. Can I share with you one of my demons? My fear of failure. I am 1 of 12 very successful children. When I was preparing to graduate HS, I struggled with the ACT test and was tortured by this demon in a very profound way. Every single one of my elder siblings was accepted into BYU; a very prestigious and competitive university in my church. I took that test 4 times and didn't get a high enough score to be accepted. I failed dismally. My score wasn't even close. I was the one dumb kid in the dozen. See, I'm already getting ahead of myself. How did I take an instance of a failed test and turn it against me to describe myself as the "dumb kid". Oh how cruel we can be to ourselves. Why do we do that? How do we stop doing that? And if we can't, how can we continue to make progress despite it? I don't have the answers, but I'll share some of my thoughts, and invite you to share yours as well because friends, right now in my life, my demons are yelling loud and clear in my mind. I'm not sitting in a pretty place mentally. 1: Recognize one situation at a time before you try to connect the dots. Momentum occurs when we can take something and piggy back it to something else and make the force greater. It works positively and negatively. I have hit a lot of speed bumps recently. A LOT. If I look back at the past 6 months I could make a pretty hefty list. Why haven't I quit? Because I have to separate my road blocks into individual events. They suck, but there's nobody calling the universe and notifying everyone and everything to go against me too. They are events, not defining characteristics. I can cry about it and take a break to regroup and come up with another path to take. And that's what I do. Recently, I've been set back because I've had quite a few setbacks happen all at once. It's a bit much for me. I'll let you know when I'm ready to try again. 2: Social Media Lies. When I have nothing to show for my hard work, I am very vulnerable and IG and FB is a dangerous place for me; being very motivated and driven by success. I love my friends, but I am guilty of comparing. I'm pretty sure all our brains are conditioned to do just that when we start scrolling. When it gets hard, sometimes I delete my apps until I feel better. Searching for love and validation leaves me empty and wanting for more. You know what else? I feel a pressure to be doing more More MORE! To stay hungry, to keep grinding, keep pushing. It's a loud voice. But in all reality, all the media does is sell us an idea. We get clips and reels pushed onto our feed to do just that, FEED. If you're not in a healthy mental space, it's not good for you. No matter what is being fed. You could be being fed a big mac of positivity that's going to give you atherosclerosis! Our minds are already good at building upon a thought and connecting real life situations and outcomes to whatever conclusion we're trying to prove. I'm not good enough, not smart enough, not rich enough, not successful enough, you get the picture. The more we feed the thought through our news feed, the more we solidify the thought patterns in our brain. Can you see how this pattern of behavior can be so paralyzing? 3: Come up with a plan B. I'm getting used to failing. In fact, I showed up to teach 4 classes this week. I taught one person on Saturday. I'm not complaining. Here's what I did instead. I had a plan B. I know that if I can't be successful in one way, I can be successful in another. How else can you use your time when the world doesn't show up for you in the way you want it to? How can you doctor your failed recipe and make something else out of it? I may not have taught a whole lot of people, but I've created another hour of choreography. Maybe it will grow into something someday. Maybe it won't, but it brought me joy, and in the moment, it redirected my energy so I could spare myself the time I would've spent in my feelings of disappointment and failure. 4: Fall in love with the work. If you love what you are doing, is the lack of income or recognition a failure? I'd say being able to do what you love is winning. I'm trying to move my way of thinking to thoughts of gratitude. I can do that when I get off the social media and look around at the facts. I think I'll list them. Have you ever counted your blessings? I bet if you asked your friends to help you, they could get you started. I think you'd be surprised at how good you have it. What a nice break from the demons. Maybe we can create momentum in a positive direction. I suppose it's worth a try.

We live in a very educated world. Answers to so many questions are easily at our fingertips. We can learn and understand so many aspects of the world around us and ourselves. There are so many variables that come into play when trying to sort out various circumstances, opinions, and viewpoints. If we get into a tricky situation, it is so easy to back up our decisions and our position with data and support. Not only that, but if you want validation for it, you can have it instantly. Receiving validation can set us at ease but does nothing to propel anyone forward. Coming from a person who has unhealthily used social media to seek out value love and self-worth, I can say that it is short lived, and you will find yourself repeating whatever behaviors you can to feed the monster. The monster is lazy and goes nowhere. Sometimes life doesn't pan out. People hurt us. We are victims of terrible TERRIBLE circumstances. I am not a therapist by ANY means, and some of these situations I have no grounds to speak on whatsoever, but if there is anything we can possibly do to better our sorry situations, shouldn't we try? What if we gave all our accusations and explanations and excuses a rest? Can we take extreme ownership of our problems? It may feel unfair or unjust to have to be the one to set something right when it wasn't our fault or responsibility. Waiting around for someone or something else to make it right has a high probability of leaving you waiting around bitter for the rest of your life. If you want something to change, OWN IT. Take the circumstance, the person, the limitations and eliminate it from the combination. I'm not trying to say that excuses setbacks and responsible 3rd parties don't exist, but a victim mentality is also a very real enemy. Choosing to take ownership gives you back some power. You get to choose how you want to move forward. Pointing a finger gets you nowhere. If you're in charge, what's your next move? Is there something that you can change? Can you change your mind? Can you apologize? Is there someone who can help you? Stop pointing fingers at everyone and everything else. Let's get into a new habit of turning the finger around and seeing the truth of what we lack and how we can change for the better.

When I moved to Indiana, my entire fitness schedule was thrown out the window. I had the habit of exercising every day, but the structure was gone. Some days were especially difficult because I just don’t enjoy working out alone. But, I did it anyway. There are things that we can do that set us up for a successful day/week, so we don’t feel like we need a giant surge of motivation to propel us forward every time we have to do things we don’t want to do. Here’s my question: Do you need a buddy? Do you need someone to be accountable to today? What is your intention? Maybe it’s not even for working out. Maybe you have something to accomplish today that you don’t necessarily want to do. Did you know that a lot of times when we talk about self care, we think about manicures, pedicures, spas, vacation, and other luxuries. Self care is taking some extra time to do things for yourself so you are better equipped to handle your future. Yes, having a vacation or a mani/pedi appointment falls under the self care category, but so does prepping your meals, planning your workouts for the week, cleaning, organizing, adulting. Although, it may not be as palatable to do, it also can fall under the category of self care. So who needs some motivation today? Who needs to be accountable? I do! Comment and tell me what you need to do today to put your mind and body in a better place for the future. Writing down your intentions here will encourage accountability and help you be more successful. Go ahead and try me! I will check on you, and expect a full report. So what is it? What can you do to set you up for smoother sailing this week?

Some common things I hear from class members after completing a 55 minute fitness class: "If I could just get my fat out of the way." "I used to be able to do all those things." "I couldn't do all the lunges because of my knees." "I had to take a break in the middle." Fitness is vulnerable. Fitness is hard. Here you are in a body that you're trying to change in tight clothing, in front of other people, learning something you've never done before, at intensities that make it even more difficult. IN FRONT OF PEOPLE. What an extremely vulnerable place to be. No wonder I am hearing comments of longing, regret, embarrassment, or disappointment after class. Not only were you thrust into a class full of complexity and intensity, but you've been trying to manage the inner self critic inside your head! What a workout, say nothing of the actual exercise class. Might I point out a couple of things: 1) You made it through class! 2) You leaned into something that made you uncomfortable! I invite you to breathe for a second and shift your thoughts. Look at what you accomplished by coming! We have just simulated a very vulnerable experience for all involved. You showed up and you leaned in mentally and physically. Your energy and vulnerability added to the experience for everyone and that's the magic of working out together. You've heard the phrase "stronger together"? Well, it's true! That kind of energy is inspiring! It's humbling and motivating! When you see someone working harder, modifying to make it through the last difficult reps, or just laughing at themselves through it; you keep moving too! It's not about comparing size, stamina, or skill. It's about the energy. Take it in and shift your mind to what you are capable of doing when you chose to join in. Every time you take class, you simulate the opportunity to move through your self doubt. You re-train your mind. The more you do it, the stronger you will be when the uncomfortable challenges come your way. In class, we don't just build your muscles, mobility, and coordination. We change the way you think. It's normal to look at the things we want to change or improve on the outside. We want to look better, we want to move better, we want to feel better. Thinking this way is proof that you have just put yourself in a situation that's challenged your patterns of thinking. What better place to train like this, than a safe space with a trainer who will meet you where you're at today. You keep showing up, and you change the way you think. The results will far exceed what you came for.