In Conversation with Luke Carlson: The Biggest Mistake When Selling Exercise and How to Avoid It
Luke Carlson is a familiar face to many in the world of high intensity training, CEO of Discover Strength, the main man behind the Resistance Exercise Conference and the instructor behind HITuni’s The Art of Selling HIT course. In this article we go behind the scenes to reveal more about Luke, his perspective on the current state of the fitness industry and some top tips for successful selling. Discovering ‘intelligent exercise’ Luke grew up around exercise, he recalls being aged three or four when his police officer father started taking him and his brothers to a gym above …
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15 Protocols to Make your HIT Facility Covid-Secure and Inspire Client Confidence to Return to the Gym
After what may be up to six months of minimal social interaction, probably including non-attendance at the gym, what is likely to give clients the confidence to start training at your facility again? It is useful to consider that different individuals will have different levels of concern about COVID-19, and how it impacts their day-to-day life, including going to the gym. To pick examples from both ends of the spectrum: there will be people, particularly those in high-risk groups, who may still be second-guessing leaving their homes at all. At the other end of possible perspectives there will be those …
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A Template for Resistance Training, Updated for 2019
One of the questions that I asked James Steele to elaborate on during our recent interview was: if he were to lay out a template for personal trainers introducing clients to resistance training/HIT, how would such a template look today? Let’s explore his answer, as well as James Fisher’s input into the elements that make up the template. Steele starts out by highlighting that his template is best considered as a base that can be built on and experimented from, to fit the individual client and their needs or as James puts it “their context”. The following is a pragmatic, …
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In Conversation with Adam Zickerman: What’s changed since Power of 10?
This is a further blog post in a series featuring outstanding individuals from the HIT community who we spent some time with on our trip to the US earlier this year. In this post, we feature Adam Zickerman, owner of Inform Fitness and author of Power of Ten 10. Adam’s serendipitous career in exercise Adam has been a successful gym owner since the late 1990’s. In fact, 2018 marks his 21st year in the business of teaching the principles of sound strength training, but how did it all begin for him? He had always been athletic as a kid and …
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How to Get People to Make the Right Fitness Choice – The Cognitive Biases at Play
Busy week? Take a moment to reflect. What do you remember? Visualise conversations, training sessions or content that just sticks out. Do you recall every specific detail? As humans, we can’t compute everything. Trying to figure out what you need to know and what you don’t is exhausting. Our smartphones have become more advanced than computers from just a few decades ago. We cram information gathering into every spare moment. Shopping, exercising, listening, scrolling – we can do it all at once. Attention spans are down, accessibility is up. Our brain uses a few simple tricks – quirks of the …
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Top 25 resources you’ve not heard of before on managing and scaling your fitness business
As a founder of a fitness business, you need to be a best-in-class marketer, lead strategist, CFO, product designer and every other role involved with running a small company. The risks and psychological challenges of being all things to all people are real. Even the most confident entrepreneur with a winning business can get burnt out trying to do too much. I’ve curated a list of essential content to help you scale your business. Recommendations come from a mix of small business owners, academics, founders who have started and exited businesses, and scientists. Sift through the list, pick one and …
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How much do you lift? A guide to selecting the right weight
If you are just beginning HIT, one of the practical questions you are most likely looking to answer is How much weight should I use? Keen to get started with the intensity aspect and enthusiastic to lift as much as possible, many new HITers end up short changing themselves. Focusing foremost on intensity at the very outset of the journey and equating high loads with intensity is double trouble and a case of putting the cart before the horse. Or dangerous and inefficient, up goes the likelihood of injury along with a side order of dilution of the stimulus. It …
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The Ultimate Science-Based Resistance Training Routine for Older Adults
On 28th September 2017, a mini review into resistance training for older adults was published in Experimental Gerontology titled “A minimal dose approach to resistance training for the older adult; the prophylactic for aging”. This is a very exciting piece of research, thrilling for the simplicity and practicality of its conclusions and recommendations. It is the kind of paper that I want to beam into the hands of every individual over the age of 60 and every health influencer of that age group too. Scratch that, if all other resistance training research on earth was somehow decimated and just this …
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Fitness and fatness: can you be fat and fit, …or even slim and unfit?
Sometimes in order to save time and avoid mental strain we have a tendency to oversimplify. However, like many situations, over simplification to save time comes at the expense of accuracy and relevant nuance. The concept of being “fat, but fit” or “The Obesity Paradox” meets this criterion. Generally, being overweight or obese is bad for you. Obese individuals have a higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes than lean people. Likewise, being unfit is considered an independent risk factor for developing the same conditions. At first glance, our initial impression of those who are overweight …
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When A Client Demonstrates Unsafe Exercise Performance
At HITuni, we encourage standards of exercise instruction and application that aim to minimize the risks of any injury occurring during exercise. These measures include: selecting biomechanically correct exercises suitable for the client; using appropriate equipment choices; and teaching the client to be in complete control of the load they are using throughout exercise (which in turn results in cadences that minimize excessive force), amongst other performance points. These standards are not promoted for the sake of wanting to be seen to take a stand on the issues of exercise performance and safety. They are there for a reason: to protect …
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