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Mobilize Your Personal Training Staff

The fiscal year is coming to a close, and you have a chance not only for a successful final push but also to connect with your personal trainers in a way that inspires them. Use the following tips to build a cohesive team, empower your trainers and, ultimately, sell sessions.

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Quick Tips for the “Barefoot Studio”

You’ve been asked to reinvigorate—or create—a mind-body program at your facility, and you have no clue where to start. In addition to being a freshman at this task, you run up against a few unforeseen obstacles. How do you create an amazing mindful program that supports membership and the bottom line?

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Focus on Fitness Assessments

As a facility owner or manager, you know that ongoing monitoring can be essential if you want to contribute to your members’ fitness and wellness for the long term (Goldman 2012). A significant way to help people succeed in their fitness goals is to provide ongoing fitness assessments: measurements and tests that combine to determine an individual’s physical fitness.

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Getting Great Summer Skin

?Is your skin ready for the summer? The cold, dry months of winter can leave skin parched, dull and flaky, yet preparing skin for summer involves more than a great moisturizer. Beautiful skin starts from the inside.
People often turn to topical treatments to shed their winter pallor, unaware that a diet rich in skin-nourishing nutrients coupled with blood-pumping exercise can revive the dullest winter complexion.

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Building Networks of Nourishment

??Mindful movement specialist Lawrence Biscontini, MA, has won awards from ACE, IDEA, Inner IDEA®, Can-Fit-Pro and ECA World Fitness. He has created programming for international clubs and spas, including Equinox®, 24 Hour Fitness®, Gold’s Gym® International, Bally Total Fitness™, and Golden Door® Spas, where his work received a Condé Nast Traveler Award. He has been a consultant and trainer for leading spas in Europe, Asia and the United States and has served as a contributing author to IDEA Fitness Journal, AFAA’s American Fitness and AsiaSpa.

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How to Create Outstanding Outcomes

Part of your role as a group fitness instructor is to help students reach their fitness goals. This is not always an easy task. Each person has different objectives, as well as unique obstacles to overcome. If you can understand some of these factors, you’ll be in a better position to meet participants’ needs, and you’ll be a more effective teacher, coach, motivator and leader.

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Core Off the Floor

?Instructors, it’s time to take your core work off the floor. There are many fantastic ground-bound exercises that target the core—and you should definitely keep them! However, if you learn how to “sneak” in core work while standing, every workout has the potential to enhance participants’ strength, power and functionality.

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Sample Class: Jump Onboard

Classes that appeal to athletes often intimidate many beginning- and intermediate-level exercisers; however, participants of all levels can do a challenging plyometrics class if you give them options. Jumping, in fact, can provide a foundation for inclusive, fun and effective training. By teaching with layers, you facilitate self-paced progression that challenges everyone.

Jump Onboard Details
FORMAT: Layered plyometric intervals using a step platform.

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Creative Ideas that Inspire

The Orange 360 sessions held at Orange­theory® Fitness, in Phoenix, feature treadmill interval training, indoor rowing and resistance training. Classes are open to all fitness levels and are challenging enough for participants to reach their maximum calorie-burning zone. Attendees receive customized fitness assessments to keep them focused on their goals.

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Green Calorie Labels May Send False Impression of “Healthy”

?Close your eyes and imagine you are
hungry while you wait in a grocery store checkout line. If you were then given two candy bars—one with a red calorie label and the other with a green—which would you perceive as healthier?
If you said green, you are in the majority. Of 93 students in a recent Cornell study, most perceived the green-labeled bar as more healthy than the red one, even though calorie content was the same.

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Lead in Rice

If a staple in your diet is imported rice, pay attention to labels the next time you buy it. Researchers from Monmouth University, in West Long Branch, New Jersey, recently presented an analysis showing that some rice imported to the U.S. had lead levels higher than those considered safe by the USDA.

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Cracking the Code of the Organic “Health Halo” Effect

With so much emphasis on organic, non-GMO foods these days, many consumers are under the false impression that foods labeled
“organic” are bound to be healthy.
Not so. An ooey-gooey-chewy fudge brownie by any other name is still packed with fat and calories and will bust a diet just as fast as its nonorganic chocolaty cousin.

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Time Factors Into Our Health Choices

If you had to choose, would you rather spend 10 minutes more exercising or 10 minutes more preparing food each day?
A study by researchers at The Ohio State University’s College of Public Health suggests that because of the way Americans allot their time, the two may be mutually exclusive. The study found that a 10-minute increase in food preparation time was associated with a lower probability of exercising for 10 more minutes—among both men and women. The finding applied to single and married adults as well as parents and those with no children.

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2013 IDEA Fitness Programs & Equipment Trends Report

The 17th IDEA Fitness Programs & Equipment Trends Report bears out that fitness professionals are becoming more specialized, yet more diverse, as the North American population ages and transforms its demographic markers. This year’s survey was distributed to the largest sample pool ever and garnered the largest number of responses in its history (2,818).
As in recent years, the programming and services offered clearly underscore a robust personal training and group exercise presence. Respondents report that half of their facilities are also offering mind-body activities.

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