 Our next caller is Aaron from New York. Hey, Aaron. Good morning, Aaron. What's your question? Hi, so my question is, what is the best way to deal with a manager at my gym that programs not great group classes? Oh, God. A lot of cardio with weights, high intensity. I wanna be the best coach for my clients, but I'm pretty limited with how much I can change in the class. Okay, so you're a trainer there. Wow, this is a landmine. Yes. It tells this was me at Orange Theory. This was me at Orange Theory, totally. Do you teach group classes there as well, or do you just train people one-on-one? I train group classes. That's where I started with, and now I also train people one-on-one. Now, do you have the autonomy from the owner to run your classes the way you want? Yes, kind of on the back end. He knows I change things, and he's all right with that, but I haven't been given complete, do whatever, it's also hard because I work a full-time job, so I'm already training people one-on-one. It's hard for me to do a whole group class change when I should just be able to kind of go in. You know what I mean? So this is very close to home for me. So I don't know if you know this, but when we first started Mind Pump, I was also helping my buddy, Brendan, start up the first Orange Theories in the Bay Area. And if you've been listening to the podcast long enough, you obviously know my stance on group training. Get here I am teaching a group training class. So this was the same exact dynamic. And luckily, Brendan sounds like your boss, where he gave me some freedom and latitude to kind of mold or change some things that I really didn't like in the group class, but I still had to somewhat follow their protocol, which was still challenging for me, right? So what I started to do was the last five minutes or so of the class, I started to turn into like, I would teach like one thing. And of course I was trying to teach something related to what the problems that I'd seen in the class. For example, when you're in a class setting like that, you know, and it's supposed to be, you're trying to be building strength. Clients tend to, you know, no rest periods. They go right in the next one, right in the next one, right in the next one. And they just, they don't rest and gather themself and then go to the next weight in Orange Theories. And so that would be like a topic of the day is the importance of rest periods for building strength and not just doing cardio with weights. Or I might pick out an exercise that I saw everybody doing incorrectly and they're doing it incorrectly because they have mobility issues. And so I might talk about the importance of ankle and hip mobility when we're squatting down and why some people will lean forward or they'll feel it in their knees or their hips. I would just like pick one thing a day that I would teach after my class. And my classes became very popular for that because I wasn't just teaching the group class. I'd always give this bit of information and education surrounding the group that was in there. And that's what kind of allowed me to still be able to implement my philosophy and the things that I thought were important and the things that I saw wrong in the group training while also still being a group training coach at the same time. Yeah, the other thing too, Aaron, is if you have the flexibility to kind of teach the classes the way you want to, then the best thing you could do is teach the classes the way you want to and get those classes to fill up. If your gym manager sees that you are successful and you're bringing in members and people value you, that gives you a lot more power because I think the gym managers probably gonna be quite interested or at least they have a strong interest in having a successful facility. So if Aaron's classes are the ones that are filling up, if Aaron's members are constantly asking about her, if everybody else is saying, I wanna do that class, you've got a lot more influence and I know that's what happened at them. That's exactly how it went down. I started off with little bits of me teaching and then eventually I got all the freedom and then I started to completely change the format. I changed the total, I look at what they had for me to teach for the day and very little of it would stay on the routine but I had to get to that point. I had to first introduce a little bit of my philosophy around what they're teaching and without insulting the business and slowly do that and then once it got to a point where I had so many people waiting for my class, the bosses pretty much went, okay, we're not gonna let Adam do his thing. We'll make everybody else follow this thing but let him do his thing because he's our number one coach. So that should be your goal is to give, don't change too much to where you end up pissing everybody off, try and add more value to that class by adding the things that you see that you don't like about group training but don't do it in a way that you're putting down the boss or other people, do it in a way that you're just adding more value to your class and eventually you'll be known as that coach that's going that extra mile and then you have more freedom. Plant those seeds for sure and also if you can make yourself available outside of that to then kind of have that interventional type of mobility practices and more furthering their information with how they can help their joints, you could even start wrapping two clients together and taking them through actual priming in ways that they can actually add some longevity to these type of workouts. So that this is great, Justin, what you just said. So Erin, I don't know, have you seen the Maps Prime Pro webinar that we did? Yeah, so actually I have to thank you guys for all of your content. So quick background on how I found you guys is because the owner approached me to do the group classes and then I quickly took on more responsibility and I had no idea what I was doing so I was searching for information, found you guys on the podcast, found the YouTube and I have almost every program now and that's what I use for my one-on-ones and I try to do priming as we warm up and I think I've been able to provide a lot of value because of that and I just want to thank you guys so much for providing all your content. Hell yeah, that a girl. So what Justin was just alluding to was actually one of the things I also started to do with the class. So again, instead of asking the bosses can I completely change your format? I said, could we add a day? I did it on Saturdays for one hour and it was on a time that they weren't using the classroom and I started to offer everyone that took my classes to come see me on Saturdays for this mobility class and I offered my service for free so I could teach them and educate them and before long that class became so full and all I was teaching was the Maps Prime Pro webinar basically. So all those mobility moves I'd do that for like an hour with them and I'd be talking to them while I'm teaching them. So I'm teaching these moves and I'm telling them this is why this is so important for you to do this. This is why your knees hurt or your hips hurt or your back hurts when you take these classes and you go in circuits. This is why I'm always trying to teach you guys to slow down and work on your form and your core and so it allowed me to really educate while also taking through my great mobility class. That's a good way to approach the boss instead of again trying to get him to completely change what he's doing offer your services outside of the time that they're using start to try and fill that class up with the people that you're already teaching. Build some interest. That's right. Okay, okay. All right. Well, Aaron, thank you very much for calling in. Thank you guys. Merry Christmas. You too. Merry Christmas. Yeah, I can totally relate to that one. Oh dude, I mean, here's the deal. I managed gyms for a long time. If I had somebody in my gym that was working for me that was different than I was but they were bringing in members, providing value, their classes were full. It's undeniable. I'm gonna be okay with it. The key though, the hard part though and where she's at is that transition. Yes. It's not, it's when you're teaching it and you know that you would teach it differently or you're not happy with the format. You gotta be calculated with how to do it. Exactly. You can't just go like, I'm gonna run it differently. No, because there's no evidence yet. Then you're gonna get pushed back completely. Yeah, you gotta, and that's why, I mean, the way I did it was by just adding more value to what we were already currently doing to gain that trust from my members. Totally. And then I transferred a free service on top of that and then before long, it was like, okay, now everybody was good. And then it was really easy. Now it's like, Adam, what are you doing? How can we do? Yeah, why is Adam's classes booked out two months and the next coach is maybe booked a week out. Maybe we should incorporate this. Right, right.