Archive for “Target” Tag

Your Youth Fitness Business Operating System

Posted on: June 11th, 2012 by IYCA No Comments

Youth Fitness Business Systems

By Pat Rigsby

To run a youth fitness business that functions at a very high level you need the following Business Operating System components in place:

An Overall Business Growth Plan – Most fitness businesses approach growth very arbitrarily. They randomly try to do things and don’t really have a plan. It’s very much like the difference between designing a program based on a client’s assessment and goals versus just giving them random workouts.

It might work out ok – but the odds of it doing as well as the planned approach aren’t very good.

This plan should include:
Knowing who you want to serve
How you intend to reach those people and get them to become clients
A Marketing Calendar to put this into action

Specific Business Targets – You need to have targets for the number of leads that you need each month, the closing percentage for those leads actually becoming clients, specific revenue targets and specific profit targets at minimum. There are any number of other target metrics that you can (and should) track, but those are the basics.

Trackable Lead Generation System – For you to grow a successful and sustainable business you need to have several lead generation strategies that you can consistently execute and track for effectiveness. You need to be able to know that:
You’re getting enough quality leads per month.
Where those leads are coming from.
The cost of getting those leads, both from a money perspective and a time perspective
This way you can focus on what’s working and improve or replace what is not.

Trackable Lead Conversion System – You must know how effective you are at turning prospects into clients. You should know which prospects are higher quality (convert better and stay longer) and which aren’t.

Client Value Maximization System – You can call this what you want, but you must have a systematic way to:
Retain clients
Maximize their value to your business
Provide them the most complete solution for their goals possible
Most fitness professionals do not have this System in place and leave up to half of their potential revenue on the table.

Business Operations Systems – The systems for what go on ‘behind the scenes’ in your business, from how you answer the phone or respond to emails to how you clean your facility. A business might get away without these when it’s a one person operation, but they’re critical if you have a staff or want to.

Finance Systems – You must have systems to address:
Automated billing
Bookkeeping
Accounting
Taxes & Payroll (if you have staff)
Financial systems routinely either get overlooked by fitness business owners or are handled in a way that eventually costs the business a lot of revenue. Remember, it’s not what you make, it’s what you keep.

Hiring & Staff Training Systems – Almost every business owner aspires to have staff, whether it’s adding more trainers or coaches or it’s hiring someone to handle some of the administrative tasks that go into running the business.

If your going to have staff, then you need to have systems in place to hire the right people and develop them to do the job that you need done at the highest level possible.

Hopefully this gives you some more clear insight into the components of the Business Operating System you need to have in place to run your business at the highest possible level.

Obviously, there is far more to it than what I can address in an email, but these components should be present in your Youth Fitness Business. If not, you should immediately start working to build each of these systems.

They’re that important.

If you’d like to discuss how we can help you with your Business Operating System and in providing you all of those components, click on the link below and let me know. That’s exactly what Athletic Revolution was built to do:

Help great coaches build great businesses.

You can learn more about Athletic Revolution here:

Youth Fitness Business http://www.myathleticrevolution.com/more/

Also – with Athletic Revolution you can maintain your own brand while leveraging the best business systems in the industry. A true WIN/ WIN.

https://www.myathleticrevolution.com/more/

Making Strength Training Fun for Young Athletes using Resistance Bands

Posted on: February 1st, 2012 by Dave Schmitz 4 Comments

Making Youth Fitness Training Fun with Resistance Bands

A t least once a week, I am asked about youth fitness training using bands, and in most cases, all I can envision is kids being put through a grueling workout using big bands that literally throw them around like a human slingshot .

OK, maybe I am a little off, but I see a lot of things on YouTube that scare me when it comes to training young athletes.

So here’s a tip on how to have your athletes naturally enjoy training:

If you really want to make youth fitness training fun, start making the training game-oriented.

My goal with any young athlete resistance band workout is to get them to train instinctively because when they reach that level, they are as close to a game situation as they possibly can be. At that moment, training becomes fun because athletes are thinking about competing, not training.

Over the past several years, I have had the chance to test some resistance band training games with youth fitness training and wanted to share some of these simple training games with everyone in the IYCA.

Video – Partner Zigzag training for Young Athletes
Young athletes need direction and a target. I find cone drills like a simple Zigzag drill to accomplish both of these. The key to this drill is making sure athletes have a good understanding of how to shuffle or backpedal and how to hold for their partner. Once this is accomplished, Zigzag drills are very easy to implement. Within about 2 minutes, you will have taught and trained a young athlete how to decelerate in the frontal and sagittal planes while developing good reactive strength from their trunk, hips, and quadriceps.

Video – Ricochet
Ricochet is a drill I developed to teach deceleration in youth fitness training. It has become a training game because athletes can compete while performing it. It can be used for all band locomotion drills but can also be effectively used for strength training drills as well. The video below demonstrates how it works with locomotion. It is used for strength training drills in essentially the same way, with athletes alternating back and forth during the strength exercise. This format is great for developing teamwork, but it is also very effective at improving strength endurance—especially when done for a 2-minute time interval.

Video – Partner Reaction
This drill is where athletes get to test their partner, who now is their opponent. Athletes face off where one is offense and one is defense. Defense must react to offense and try to mirror them during the drill. Best drills for this are shuffle or turn-and-go drills. Also, 2-step deceleration drills work well with this setup. This is also a coaching favorite because you allow the kids to dictate the start and stopping point of the drill.

1-Minute Partner Challenge
The 1-minute partner drill is fun because you can do it with 2, 3, 4, or 5 athlete teams. You can do all the same exercise or you can have each athlete do a separate exercise for 1 minute. The goal is to get as many reps as possible in 1 minute before transitioning to another exercise. My favorite band exercise for this are:

Band Push ups
Assisted pull ups
Split Squats
Squat Jumps
Front Squats
Overhead Press
Turn and go (touching a cone)

To make this entire resistance band training game experience just a little more motivating, all these games can be played anywhere because bands are so portable. This means:

Kids can train at their practice site and not have to go into a smelly weight room
Trainers can have athletes train outside where it is much more enjoyable to do
Coaches can throw these types of drills into practice any time and supplement conditioning with strength training

To be a successful youth coach, you must find ways to motivate young athletes starting from a very young age and continuing throughout their high school years. Resistance bands can provide a definite change of pace that athletes find fun and challenging at the same time.

Getting BETTER with BANDS

Dave Schmitz

P.S. On this final video, I thought you would enjoy watching 2 very special young athletes have some fun competing while training in bands. Pay special attention to the laughing that comes along with this type of training. To this day, Kenzie and Carter Schmitz (yep these 2 are mine; I thank God every day) still talk about this experience and when they will be able to do it again. This is yet another reminder that youth fitness training doesn’t have to be filled with boring, routine drills; competition is a great thing!

Video – Kids Getting The Best of Some Fitness Pros

If you are looking for a fun and exciting new component to add to your training programs that will have your young athletes performing their best then check out the IYCA Resistance Band Course. In this course you will learn how to use one of the most versatile, and effective, training tools for young athletes!

https://iyca.org/bands/