Great coaches do more than kick your butt. Great coaches educate you about what it’s going to take to reach your health and fitness goals. Here at Skill of Strength, we pride ourselves on doing just that and so far, we’re pleased with the results.
Before you invest in our gym, we want to know more about you and we want to make sure SOS is a great fit for you.
Hint: we don’t just want you to sign up and go away.
We get inquiries almost daily about what types of membership and training options we offer at our gym, Skill of Strength. Most inquiries to our gym come from people who are interested in personal training, adult group training or sports performance training for high school and collegiate athletes.
Of course, more often than not, one of the first questions potential clients ask is how much training will cost. Some want to know exact training rates while others are just looking for ballpark numbers. And that’s okay. It makes sense. Most people have some sort of budget they need to follow to maintain financial security.
With that being said, it’s time to play the honesty card. You get what you pay for when it comes to gym membership.
If you spend 10 bucks a month on a big box gym, you are going to gain access to a boatload of machines, rows of cardio equipment, a handful of free weights and zero instruction or guidance on how to train safely and effectively. If you know what you’re doing, and have no difficulty motivating yourself to train consistently, this type of gym might be a perfect fit for you.
If you aren’t self-motivated at all times and you’re not quite sure how to train safely, and in a way that is going to help you reach your goals, you really need to look beyond a big box type of gym.
And yes, it’s going to cost you more money. But you’re also going to get a whole lot more out of your investment. We spend a pretty significant amount of time with our potential clientele before they decide to invest in our training system.
We schedule a 30-minute consultation with every individual before he/she makes a decision to train at SOS.
Our consultations give us an opportunity to do four things:
- Discuss your current and past health and training history
- Educate you about how our training system works
- Communicate our expectations for you (yes, it’s important)
- Answer any other questions you may have
The consults at our gym are basically an opportunity for you, and us, to decide if Skill of Strength is the right gym for you. We realize our gym is not a perfect fit for every single human and we never want to sign up a client who is going to be unhappy, unmotivated and non-committal.
That’s right. We want you to come to the gym. Preferably 3-4 times a week. We want you to ask questions and reach out to us if you need anything. We are your coaches.
Listen, we know how to get people fit, but we are also very honest with our members about the fact that it takes consistency, hard work and dedication to make a change. There is no magic pill.
If, after the consultation, you decide you’re ready to invest in yourself and join SOS, the next step in our training process is your evaluation.
People often ask us why we spend so much time evaluating our members.
Here’s my general reply.
You would never go to your physician and tell him all the medications you need. Or maybe you would, but if you did, hopefully the physician asks a ton of questions prior to prescribing the medications.
Listen, a good doctor is not going to just start writing random prescriptions because you decide it’s a good idea. Hopefully your doctor will go through your medical history, check your vitals, test your stress levels, do some bloodwork and gather all other information that is pertinent. Obviously, he should never randomly prescribe you medicine.
This is how we feel about training.
Strength coaches or personal trainers should never just start handing out exercises without getting some background information on a client first. Yes, this means we want to take the time to go through your health history, medications, previous injuries, and current aches and pains.
We want to know about your prior training experience and we need to see how well you move in general. We need to get a basic idea of your current mobility, stability and function before you dive into an exercise program. Basically, your evaluation is a fact-finding mission for our coaches so we can develop an appropriate starting point for your exercise plan. In other words, the evaluation gives us some information about your so we have a better idea of where to begin.
Once we start, things are going to change. Life happens and we understand that. There will be days you will have to take it easy, utilize alternative exercises and yes, there are some days you just need to rest.
In a perfect world, we would all be born with an individual user manual and we would each have a perfect plan to make our lives, including our workouts, perfect, but that’s not the case. We do our best to give you enough time and information during your consultation that you feel comfortable with our training system. Once you decide to invest in our gym, you’ll spend 75-minutes one-on-one with a coach so we can see where to start. After all, without a starting point, how do you know how to get to the destination?
Since starting Skill of Strength, we’ve always said that we’re not just in the training business, but also in the education business. If you train with us for a year, you will have a really good idea of how to work out safely and effectively. Our promise is that if you show up consistently and follow the plan, we’ll be here to give you the tools (exercise and information) necessary to improve your flexibility/mobility, get stronger and improve your conditioning.
Ready to reach your goals? We’d love to help!