(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’ve seen many posted to personal account albums as well as many shared to the resort albums for all to enjoy.  I enjoy seeing the resorts and happy vacationing Fit Pros and so does the Fit Bodies staff… so much so they’re offering a prize to encourage even more.

Further details on the photo contest can be found HERE

Personal and Coaching Mentors can from many different areas and may provide you much more than the simple technical aspects of your profession. Perseverance, attitude, focus, determination, motivation are all examples that you may pick up in addition.  Take an objective look to ensure that your mentor is actually providing you positive and beneficial non skill based values.

I personally had an outstanding mentor in the world of athletics who recently passed on.  I invite you to learn more about him and some of the values that he share with me.

Frosty Westering – http://workoutsforathletes.com/sport/wellness/i-miss-frosty/

Frosty Westering – Coach, Mentor, and Friend  -  http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/44702352/

If you visit http://fitnessprotravel.com the fitness industry community and home to the Fit Bodies Teaching Vacation website today or into the future things look the same but just a bit different as well.

Most noticeable will not be the slight change on the login page, but the second page you come to (unless you are being prompted to renew your account) will be very different. Previously it was the MY ACCOUNT page you landed on after signing in. Now it will be a refreshed home page with

• lists of the most recent locations booked
• upcoming events
• most recently joined members
• quick search tool

No worries though if you liked that MY ACCOUNT page. Just click on the tab labeled the same and you’ll be taken straight there.
Happy Travels!

Questions/Comments:
I am interested in possibly purchasing the Enterprise account package, but I would like to make sure that it will benefit me as a traveling Yoga Teacher….

Reply:
For access to all location opportunities for your specialty you are only required to have one of the specialties (Travel, Medallion, or Enterprise).  What Enterprise does for you in this respect that the other two do not is provide you earlier access to dates.  Basically, you have a window of about a month into the future of whatever dates are currently available on the site to call and reserve at the Fit Bodies office.  This helps many who want first shot at Spring break, holiday travel dates, or something significant to them.  You basically beat the rush that happens each time new dates are opened up.

As far as other things that you would gain with an Enterprise:

• 10% discount on all orders – helpful to frequent travelers.
• Higher referral commissions – provides 20% commission on referrals who sign up for a premium account and 2% on any future purchases they make for travel or otherwise.  Medallion and Travel have similar program, but at a lower commission rate.  Great for anyone with a list or workplace of many other fitness professionals.
• Promotional abilities – events, jobs, classifieds, etc. all have large limits for the Enterprise account.  If you provide workshops or are an employer this allows you to use these tools within a community of 16000 fitness professionals saving big dollars over similar marketing avenues.
• Advertising ability – We have a couple rotating ad sites which can be seen by logged in members as well as non logged in people who visit certain pages.  You can add two graphic ads that link directly to your website or similar.  Generally these would be expensive via outside sources as well.  Medallion members can post one graphic ad.
• Discounts – In addition to the automatic purchase discounts, there is approximately a $150 savings on attendance to the Fit Beach Conference each year as well as several discounts and bonuses from our partners who offer specials to our community.

These benefits are good for the entire year of your membership.  There is a full list of benefits when you go to the side by side page for each account.  Access that when logged in by clicking on the UPGRADE/RENEWAL INFO link from the drop down under the ACCOUNT tab.

*As an Enterprise member you are truly a VIP in the community.  What that means is that you get personal help in utilizing any of these account features, we’ll even provide some creation assistance if you need to get these in place… Fitness Pro Travel Teaching Vacations

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I don’t often spread the advice from bodybuilding.com, mainly because I’m not training a bunch of competitive bodybuilders. But because we do visit hypertrophy (bodybuilding-esk) training from time to time I do pay attention to their conversation. They sometimes come out with some great info like this one from Lifting Lingo Made Easy article.

Bro-Science, def.

“Ignorance cloaked as “science” is bro-science, mostly because it’s tossed around by guys at the gym who failed chemistry and biology in high school, but picked up a few science-y sounding words in the last issue of Muscular Development. Bro-science is more anecdotal than scientific. It’s born in the gym, not in the lab.

Incline Curl

Even so, bro-science can occasionally be useful. Our advice: Take any sentence that begins, “Hey, bro,” with a grain of salt.”

So, hey bro, who you paying attention to with your program design?

@jebsonj doing plyometrics. (Photo pomranka)

It can be challenging sorting out the what and when of adding plyometric exercises to your athletes training programs.  I have tried all sorts of variations and haven’t necessarily found one time to be significantly beneficial over another.

That is considering all things being equal and the athlete is not already deplete of energy.

I am coming to realize that these activities are likely the most important for the strength coach to pay the most attention to.  Young athletes tend to think a couple scoops of creatine and 500 box jumps at a 48″ box are the keys to athletic success.  If left to their own direction (and you’ve likely seen the ones who only follow their own drum beat) something similar to this is what they’re up to.

Plyometrics as well as any explosive training is much more about quality of movement. It intentionally and appropriately should be challenging the stretch shortening cycle, taxing the type two muscle fibers, and primarily utilizing the phosphogen energy system.

With extremely high repetition, poor mechanics, and insufficient rest between plyometric training sessions athletes will experience poor results and increase the potential for injury.

IYCA recently posted a simple review (and examples) of plyometric training principles.  It’s a great quick review for anyone working with an athletic population. (SEE MORE)

English: Frank Zane, three times Mr.Olympia winner (1977,1978,1979) Columbus, Ohio, United States ??????: ???????? ????? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My days as an athlete at the same high school where I now provide services to the kids as a strength coach were spent following bits and pieces of advice from a couple well meaning coaches and yet getting the bulk of my information and motivation from guys like Joe Weider, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Frank Zane, Lou Ferrigno and Tom Platz.

I played several sports other than bodybuilding and yet my programming was built around the bodybuilding model.

Better biceps and a bigger chest were motivators for most of us at that time.  Being a bit stronger was a nice cross over benefit for other things in life but not the focus.

Here we are 30 years later and while the science of exercise & sport has come light years along the prime motivators for at least the majority of males has changed very little.

I still respect those former bodybuilders and the motivations they provide, but now I follow the lead of several folks who develop programming with a mixture of science and art to enhance performances that are a bit more specific to the actual sports participated in.  Vern Gambetta ? @coachgambetta, Mike Boyle @BodybyBoyle, Dan John, Eric Cressy @EricCressey, to name a few of those I might now refer to as my strength training mentors.

A recent article in Club Industry magazine spoke directly to club operators addressing these youth programs.  Several of the suggestions from the article I have found to be accurate in my experience.

Teen athletes and their motivations need to be to some extent accepted.  They apparently aren’t changing a great deal over the years, so accept or not the motivators will be the same.

I am finding that while I would love them to follow my ‘perfectly’ periodized off season program design and beg for my next word of wisdom in performance enhancement… the heads will nod, but the peer influence and the awesome picture in the magazine, and the new magic bullet supplement ad will push me to the back of the mind.

“They want to pop a supplement, but they’re having a burger for lunch, no breakfast, Red Bulls, sleeping only six or seven hours a night,” Faigenbaum says. A program leader who can talk with teens about these dangers is worth the cost.

To combat this I incorporate just a bit of the “if you can’t beat them, join them” attitude…

Joining them is likely the wrong term, but acknowledging their motivators, addressing those aspirations with proper advice in that realm will go a long way in winning their trust.

Gaining their TRUST is key here.

With their trust that you care about them and their goals that often go beyond sport, are often driven by peer pressure, or may even be a nearing contraindicated for the activity you are ideally there to prepare them for, you have an opportunity to share and inject the healthy and performance enhancing aspects that will help them with the goals that are truly important to their sport activity.

I talk biceps and hypertrophy training quite a bit with them in the high school weight room. I interject periodization principles, benefits of multi joint movement patterns, utilization of various energy systems, nutritional foundations all around it, but BICEPS just happens to be where we start that conversation…. I guess sometimes working from smallest to largest muscle is the way to go.

The foundation of my approach here is something I first heard back when I played college football under the Great Frosty Westering.

“They don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care”

I talk biceps and body building with various athletes because I care.  The day they realize how much I care, they listen to what I know about strategically training them for their sport.

Consider this tactic when you are working with young athletes even adult fitness clients.  They may listen to you because of all the certification letters after your name, but they will listen and learn from your advice enthusiastically when they know you understand, will not minimalize, and even care about their true motivators first.

She takes her stuff very seriously and very much dislikes other trainers who take shortcuts or devalue the profession.  As I jumped into the industry a few years after her, I was well aware and careful not to scorn the more experienced trainer and wife.

I’ve talked with a handful of want-to-be trainers who’s primary motivation was to get their workout in while teaching or training others… Good freaking grief, isn’t this one obviously out of line???…

I enjoyed reading another blog post today by Thomas Plummer.  He apparently also has a few peeves specifically about the fitness training professional’s conduct and took the time to list them out so we all have a chance to learn from him as well. 
Check Out Thomas’ Post Here.

It’s well worth the share.

Your clients, students, or athletes will benefit while you enjoy a personally branded potential financial booster.

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