A Total Body Burn Boot Camp AZ Story of: Having Fun, 12 Boot Camp Workouts, and Losing 8lbs
See What Happened During the 2011 Boot Camp AZ 12 Days of Leanness
To say I learned something from the 2011 12 Days of Leanness would be a huge understatement, but before I get too deep into this I want to thank everyone who participated, and I sincerely hope you got everything you wanted from the 12 Days and More.
So let’s start from the beginning, it all really started 2 Saturdays before the 12 days of Leanness with a TV spot on Channel 3 that Angela was able to arrange for us and that rolled into a live spot at the studio/gym with Channel 10 the following Monday.
This was really cool and gave me a chance to let some of my regular clients get on TV and show off, plus letting me get on TV and plug the 12 Days. These 2 TV spots plus 1,000 postcards and a few directly mailed cards, and clients helping get the word out really helped get the ball rolling. This started to get the energy and excitement UP for the 12 Days, it also help to get some interested folks to raise their hands and sign-up.
While we didn’t hit the max-out number of 30 new people, we were definitely well within my goal of getting 10-20 new folks involved; and while the marketing promotion effort was better than last year there is still much more that can be done.
Why start with the talk about marketing? The simple answer is this you can have a really great program/event with lots of cool prizes but if there is no one participating, it really sucks on all levels.
Which leads me to my most profound observation of the 12 Days; if you have a nice group of 10 – 20 cool, high-energy people the impact and energy is awesome and some really neat things happen during each training session. When you have that energy in each session you have great things happen as you’ll see when I get to the results.
Leading to the next observation; my ATS programs are not for everyone and I am becoming ‘ok’ with that.
On the flips side, sometimes you get a surprise(s); so it is very important not to make snap judgements and let people come experience it and see if it is for them or not.
Like I said so long as they don’t screw with the class ‘vibe’ they are more than welcome to come figure it out for themselves.
The 12 Days workouts are a compilation of the ‘Best of ATS’ workout for the year.
What I know for sure is that anyone who comes and participates will find that these are the best & hardest workouts of their of life (again the results will speak more to this later)
More about the workouts, some of the important things that I learned and observed from coaching the workouts are:
1. It is absolutely critical for people to have some fun, this is usually indicated by smiles and laughing.
Here are a couple of the workout segments that people seemed to enjoy the most:
Bieber Fever
Chasin’ the Squirrel
Rock/Paper/Scissor tournament
Having workouts with ‘names’ also helps clients develop and learn that ATS lexicon.
There was another workout called the ’30-Pointer’ where clients had to learn and report exercise names and I think this was very valuable for helping learn what it is that they are actually doing.
Another thing that I started doing more by accident than anything, is what I call the ‘Coaches Wrap-up’
This seems to be a very important to reinforcs the ‘why’ we do what we do, that it is a program & system, and NOT ‘random’.
I think when people are in the middle of it, it just seems hard, they are just trying to get thru it and the explanation seemed to help bring it all together for people and let them know that it is much more than just regurgitated group exercise
- On a second coaching note, it is hard to coach a new program everyday, as you need to spend a bit of time getting non-clients up to speed on terminology and technique. Along with that because these are the ‘best of programs’ and with the wide variety of fitness levels in a group of 15-20 it is very, very challenging to keep the rep quality as high as I prefer.
- The hardest workouts of the 12 Days were probably as follows:
Day 1 Micro-Burst
The Second Week Wednesday Sandpit Workout
- Along with that during the 2 weeks the bootcamp group definitely had to test their will as it was the coldest week of the year here, with frost and temps in the 30′s , it definitely took some motivation to get out there and hit it,at 530AM.
- Now on to nutrition. People are definitely thirsty for good reliable nutrition inf. This was evident when I invited my friend/colleague and nutrition expert Paula Owens to come train with the group and then do a Q & A with them. This was good for everyone since although they got the ATS 3-Day Diet and Elimination Diet, sometimes hearing from and getting to personally interact with, a more relatable expert is often extremely helpful.
On an anti-nutrition note, while I don’t know what everyone was doing for their exact nutrition, I do believe they made at least 1-3 changes to their lifestyle. None of it really being super extreme, no one converted into a vegan-monk or anything. Just sensible stuff like no soda, no alcohol etc…
That said I think when you are training in a fairly intense environment 5-6 days per week you don’t have to make super drastic changes for the 1st 8 or so pounds. After that there seems that there might be a little plateau and some further manipulation may need to occur.
- I also noticed that a definitive timeline was important to people, the ‘it’s only 12 days’ comment came up multiple times, when the end is in sight then your ‘belief’ becomes pretty profound. This was also valuable to me as the coach/trainer because I was pumped up and motivated to help and show people your best ‘stuff’ every day, and let them get a piece of the ‘experience’ that clients have gone thru during the year.
See More Pict from Total Body Burn Bootcamp AZ 12 Days of Leanness
- Along those lines, the Facebook interaction turned out to be really valuable and important for people to be able to ‘go thru it’ together and have a shared experience. I was nervous early on that people wouldn’t use it or see it as a waste of time, but it worked out really well. Next year I actually intend to set up a Facebook Fanpage specifically for the event.
Another thing that I noticed is that direct competitiveness and competitiveness to win a prize varies greatly.
- A couple other items of interest are, there is no perfect time; but with a deadline, low entry price point, and target/prize people will take action anytime; along with that people will sacrifice and change a lot, even schedules etc…. to accomplish and be a part of something cool.
- On the flip side if you are going to run a short-burst/’get started’ type of program it has to be really good with a lot of touch points and support; because if people don’t get something out of it ‘fast’ they will quit faster.
- A quick note on recovery, we had a lot of perfect or near perfect attendance, these were people trained 10,11, 12 out of 13 days and to that point a lot of people loved training that much. Some were actually surprised that they like training that much.
Also several people got sick during and the week post-12 Days and I don’t know if it was the cold or they were under-recovered, but a good recommendation for anyone wanting to take on the perfect attendance challenge would be to significantly up your sleep like an extra hour per night and up water and fish oil intake.
- This was one of my huge take-aways, and I am already trying to figure out how to give people more of what they want. This will probably come in some form of unlimited workouts, that are developed inside a weekly system/protocol
Now for the part you’ve all been waiting for the Prize & Winners Prizes, I was actually at a loss on this one, prior to the night before, because I didn’t have a good way to give out the big prize.
I went with the classic biggest loser/survivor and let the ‘peers’ vote for who was going to be the winner.
The candidates were:
Brannigan, Keith, Kristel, and Jason
The really cool thing here is I believe each one of them lost at least 8lbs in 12 Days, absolutely A-W-E-S-O-M-E
It was a pretty close vote and Keith won, he has a really cool write up here: Keith’s 12 Days of Leanness Story
He definitely ‘flipped a switch’ and change his mindset and nutrition approach, both interestingly non-exercise components
Those in the running for the perfect attendance award were: Brannigan, Keith, Kristel, Debbee, and Matt
I gave that prize via a drawing and Debbee won that award
Side Note: Next year I definitely need to give more guidance for people who are in the running
for ‘big prize’ to either write their story/pitch their case on Facebook or do it in a little different format during on the 12th day.
Here are a couple of my final big takes aways
- A gym can quickly become a person’s ’3rd place’ (besides home and work) a true meeting place, community, enjoyable place, dare I say exciting place, where you can enjoy what you are achieving and the people who are there with you .
This is probably pretty far from most people’s concept of a gym and exercise in general.
- I heard a version of this multiple times: people are motivated by other people not their trainer; therefore if you are trainer/coach you need to be about being the best at programs, system delivery & creating/guiding the community/tribe.
- On a business note people tell people when they are excited and that is good for business
As for next year here are some the ‘fixes’ I am considering
I have to figure out away to make it more clear and simpler for people to sign-up, find location, and
schedule. I thought I did a pretty good job of this but based not the number people that had questions about this I need to make it better
Along with that I need create away for earlier and more sign-ups; this will allow me to add more value in the way of classes and of course prizes
On the topic of prizes I am thinking should probably do a big prize for both non-client and client (of course holding the client to a higher level achievement)
Along with that I would like to have some more prize categories, in order for that to happen there has to be more sign-ups so I am going to be put it out there for 2012 the goal for 12 Days of Leanness is to have 50 non-clients participate.
The 12 Days of Leanness was definitely a success and I am already working on some of the other contest & challenges that ATS will be running in 2012
I am starting to get pretty excited about them and can’t wait to tell you about them, very soon.
Thank you for participating in the 12 Days of Leanness and I hope I can be the one giving you a prize at one of our 2012 events.
Troy M Anderson
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