Is your Health Club Wasting your Time, Energy, and Money ?

What has your gym done for you lately ?

Gyms these days are full of top brand equipment like Life Fitness, Bodymaster, Hammer, Cybex, Precor, Stairmaster etc. The equipment is much more advanced than it was just 10 years ago.

Well, I say what good is it if you don't know how to use it.

You see these TV ads that show an overweight person losing 20 to 30 Lbs in a few months and all you have to do is join and like magic you will lose the weight, reshape your body, meet the person of your dreams, and live happily ever after.

Well it is true you need to join a gym, but after you join 99.9% of us need help. What is a chest press or a low row machine ? How much weight do I use and how many times do I do it ? There is no one to ask unless you want to pay a personal trainer $50.00 an hour to show you. I can safely say that over 70% of members that join a gym are using the equipment improperly. Half of these members will drop out because they are not seeing the results they saw on TV. You would think that there would be a law, as part of the membership the gym would have to provide a least one instructor on the exercise floor at all times showing members how to use the equipment properly. At the price of memberships these days they can afford it. The reason they don't is that it would take away from their personal training business.

Way back in the late 60's Jack La Lanne and Vic Tanney started the first commercial gyms. The concept was to have people enroll into their gym and they would provide the equipment and show you how to use it.

I managed Jack La Lanne gyms for 12 years and the concept stayed the same. When we had a new person enroll they were assigned an instructor . On the new members first day we would record their body measurements and weight and set up realistic goals for the first 3 months.

We then set up a work out card for the member and took them through their first work out. The instructor would first demonstrate how to do the exercise properly than have the member do it. On each visit the member would come in pull his card from the A to Z file and hand it to their instructor. The instructor would sign the card and take the new member through the work out again.

This would go on till the instructor felt confident that the member was ready to go on their own. At that time the member still had to have their instructor sign them in each visit, and the instructor would now take the member though again on every 5Th visit to make an adjustment to the program. This normally went on for 3 months.

By this time the member has hit their first set of goals and is fully versed on how to use the equipment properly. A lot of our members were hired as instructors because of the training they received as members.

Back when I was running clubs we didn't have fancy TV commercials or newspaper ads to draw people in. Word of mouth was our way of advertising. A friend of one of our members would notice how good the member was looking and ask, " What have you been doing, you look great" the member would reply, "I have been exercising at Jack La Lannes" and bring that person in as a guest.

Well that was then and this is now. Being here in California and having Arnold Schwarzenegger as our governor, you would think that it would be a little different here today.

Most strength equipment these days has a placard on the machine to show you what muscle group the equipment is for and a picture on how to use it. It doesn't replace a instructor but it helps. Look for it the next time you work out

Well I got that off my chest. Good Luck
Tony