By Mike Watson, Mentor for the 1-1 Coaching Course
As a coach you know that motivating your clients is your job.
Sometimes it can be the hardest part of the job, especially if a client isn’t laser focused on one specific goal. Instead they might have general goals of getting stronger or being healthy.
There is nothing wrong with having general goals, the client might just love being active and being part of your gym community.
The problem with general goals is that those who have them can be tough to motivate.
In the Two Brain Coaching course we teach a concept called the Motivation-Action timeline.
It suggests that the longer the time period between an athlete expressing a motivation and the time it takes to:
- Act on that motivation
- See that motivation come to fruition
…the less likely they are to continue to be motivated towards the goal.
I coach a lot of runners. It’s easy to sit around on the couch watching Netflix documentaries about people achieving crazy things and decide “hey, I’d like to run a marathon”
The easy part is getting the motivation. The hard part is keeping it when you don’t know how to get to where you want to go, or, the window of time is so long that you have no immediate spark to get going! There is no better motivator than last minute panic!! Without this, it’s too easy to get distracted and shop for new shoes instead of putting on the ones you have, and getting started with training.
But what about people with no specific event goals? The ones who just want to get in “better shape”
We provide them with a road map littered with ways to test themselves.
And we tell them how to get there.
Having a solid schedule for yearly events can help to provide the tests along the road map.
Our current events schedule for Catalyst is below. It’s subject to change but these are yearly staples:
New Years Day – Murph
March 11-29 CrossFit Open followed by a social team building night – lacrosse, tobogganing, etc, teams, intramural open
End of May – we sponsor a local 5km/10km trail run
July – Fran Fest or a similar CrossFit “Girls” themed event
September – Catalyst Games (our huge yearly competition)
September – we sponsor and have a huge attendance at a local Duathlon
December – Supermeet – our yearly in-house Powerlifting meet followed by a Christmas potluck dinner
As you can see, the tests are varied and evenly distributed throughout the year so we’re never going longer than three months without an opportunity for our athletes to test themselves.
All of these groups are preceded by a specialty group or clinic to build skills and build hype for the event.
So, why do regular events matter?
First, they provide a training focus for those who might not have one. We have many clients in our gym whose focus is on getting ready for their next event and focussing on trying to improve their performance or quality of movement from the year before.
Second, they open your members’ eyes to new challenges that they might never have thought to try on their own. They also provide an opportunity for your athletes to invite friends and family to the gym to experience their amazing progress and your amazing community first hand!
Next, they provide an opportunity to experience success on a bigger stage than normal. Hitting a clean and jerk PR in a PT session or group class feels good. Hitting a PR in a gym packed with cheering people is a feeling some people will never forget!! It’s like a turbo Bright Spot!
Finally, pictures! Events provide an awesome opportunity to capture tons of action shots to highlight your clients’ achievements and provide them with lasting memories and the chance to show off to their friends and family.
If you don’t have a yearly events schedule it isn’t too late to draw the roadmap for client success in 2022!