VFit’s Weekly Inspo
Last year, VFit Studio embarked on it’s biggest challenge we’ve ever run. We had all 8 VFit trainers lead our teammates through a 6 month LONG challenge, focused on goal setting.
The goal of this challenge was to get each member to hit a consistent class total for six straight months – from July to December.
A SIX MONTH fitness challenge that over half our studio signed up for and took part of. We had never heard of such a program, but felt it was important to find ways to work more closely with our members and help them stay consistent through the second half of the year.
As a recap, we came to find 10 top learnings from the challenge.
By sharing these lessons, we believe you can gain some added inspiration in your life and they can easily translate to all areas of life.
We have them summed up below, or you can hit play and watch the REPLAY of Rachele leading her talk.
1) The best inspiration and ideas come from when you step away from your “normal.”
True creativity comes from stepping away. Getting yourself out in nature with some fresh air and scenery. Whether its at a retreat or convention, or perhaps by water. Getting out of your norm can foster new ideas and innovation.
For us, four members of the VFit Trainer team were attending the fitness industry’s largest convention last June called IDEA WORLD and were all sitting around a fountain brainstorming about ideas to help members stay consistent with their workouts all year long. That’s when we created the #6monthsmatters challenge. Six months – from July through December – of consistent workouts, accountability, coaching and team building.
2) Embrace the power of a mastermind.
Create an environment where people are encouraged and feel empowered to share ideas and contribute. Gone are the days when one person has to have all the ideas.
The biggest ideas come from a collective. It took all 8 VFit Studio trainers working together to come up with the complete six month program.
By including all members of our trainer team with idea sharing, our ideas built off of one another and the end result was a program unlike anything any one of us singly would have dreamed up on our own.
3) RISK in going big.
Six months is a long time. This was far longer than any other wellness program we had created in our studio. Before the six month challenge, the next longest program we had spanned just one month. This was FIVE more months of teamwork, programming, consistency.
Would members get discouraged? How would we keep them motivated? What if one of our own VFit trainers fell off the wagon?
But, the risk of NOT pushing our team to do this was an even greater risk. The upside was just too incredible for us not to go for it. The fact that we could truly change some lives and habits was a risk we had to take.
4) Power of being part of a team.
People are okay with letting ourselves down at times. But put us on a team, there’s no way we would want to let an entire team down.
Having a team to compete with and where your goals and stats were public was huge reason why this program was successful for six straight months.
Members could have individual goals, but it took everyone holding up to their personal goal to advance together with the full team in tact.
5) The beauty of written goals.
Putting your goal on paper and out into the world is HUGE. Doing so, you have a tangible number to strive for and track.
We used goal setting as a major theme that held the entire of the challenge together. Each member committed to a personal class goal at the start of the challenge that they commited to hitting each of the six months of the challenge.
Miss a month? You were out of the challenge. Simple as that.
We had these goals literally ON OUR BACKS with team shirts that members wore with their class goal on the back. The goals were also on made public (to those in the challenge, that is) on a google drive that was shared by all members of the challenge. If you didn’t hit your goal, everyone on your team saw it. Talk about accountability.
6) Coaching to success.
We set each team up with a VFit trainer to serve as a coach each month. This extra bit of coaching from a VFit trainer helped the team stay connected, motivated, and loaded up with fresh inspiration.
Beyond being led by a coach, many teams had natural leaders arise in the team.
Do not underestimate the power of a coach. It’s always a good idea to have a coach to help push you and keep you accountable.
“You won’t always be motivated, but you must always be disciplined,” and good coaches help teach you the art of discipline and building healthy habits.
7) A shiny trophy at the end.
When was the last time you earned yourself a trophy? For most adults, it hasn’t been since we were children.
A fun part of this challenge was putting in some serious effort and EARNING a very real trophy at the end for all that completed the full challenge.
Who doesn’t love a fun prize or earning a trophy for hard work?
There was so much pride shared by our members once they received their trophy mugs. This was priceless. With every sip they take all year long, they will forever remember their six month commitment.
8) Building a community.
Why not have every person in the challenge (127 total members) be in one large supergroup? While we considered this, what really made this challenge special is breaking down the members into small groups.
With a smaller group of about 15 members, teams formed new bonds getting to know members and seeing themselves in some of the obstacles they had in reaching their goals. We had members bond over being new moms, rennovating homes, getting the flu. You name it, there were so many shared experiences for our members. Yet, through it all they forged through all six months and made it to the end of the chalelnge.
9) A few who didn’t meet their goal, silently faded out.
As a society, we put so much pressure to be perfect and when we don’t achieve this we feel shame. This perfection or failure black and white way to view the world is limiting.
We don’t believe this is how shit should be, but unfortunately that kind of fixed mindset is something many of us grew up with .
Sometimes, when you set high goals for yourself, you may not always reach them. Especially when a long time frame is in from of you.
But, reaching and stretching yourself is ALWAYS better than not trying at all.
Life is about improving yourself and focusing on incremental changes each and every day. We believe in working to adopt a growth mindset where you stretch and evolve and work to increase the size of your comfort zone.
We are so proud of the few members who may not have finished the challenge, but they have recommitted to VFit and their health and they believe they are ALWAYS worthy of another comeback.
If you fall down 99 times, the only number that matters is that you get up 100.
10) Heather’s Story – better late than never.
We call it “Heather’s story”, but this is a story that will resonate with all of us at one time or another in life.
Heather was 5 1/2 months into the 6 month challenge, on a team that had not lost a single teammate, she was 4 classes away from earning her trophy and crossing the finish life, when life rocked her world upside down.
She is a mom to 4 young kids, and her youngest baby was sent down 6 hours from home, to CHLA, where she ended up spending 2 weeks in the hospital with him (he is doing great now, thankfully).
During this time, her husband was travelling back and forth, as they were trying to keep a sense of normal going for the other 3 kids, and it truly became impossible for her to get her final few classes in. She did try logging in a few times from the hospital even!
So instead of skirting out quietly and ending the challenge for herself, Heather opened up to her team, asked for forgiveness and admitted that she was not going to make it – feeling she let them all down.
Her team was SO supportive of her and only cared that her baby and family were going to be ok and get through this tough experience. They were there to cheer her on and push her back up when she needed it most.
Heather didn’t get her final classes in by the deadline, but the trainers agreed to give her 2 more weeks to complete the mission and earn her trophy. That was enough to FIRE her up, so that when she got back home and into her “normal” again, she had the support to get back at it and she EARNED that mug in 4 days.
Sometimes you need to rely on our team and others to push you up and believe in you, when you don’t have it in you at the moment. We will all fall on tough times and letting others help you is so critical.
Heather may have earned that trophy 2 weeks late, but still earned it. She didn’t give up and so we didn’t give up on her.
In health,
Rachele & Maria
