Id like to address this issue of Whos teaching/subbing class today? PLEASE READ! Thank You: Exercise classes! Do you go to one, a couple, some, more? This is what I reckon happens from your perspective. You turn up, excited to start, speak briefly to the instructor. If you are feeling brave you might introduce yourself to others in the room or you go and hide at the back. Your face is stern as you try to concentrate on getting the steps right. You might like the music, you might not. The class comes to a close and you are either bouncing out the door on a great high or rueing the day you decided to come and vow never to step foot inside again. Either way, it is down to the instructor, right? Right. It is. BUT Have you ever thought of it from the instructors point of view?! Let me give you a little insight! We spend hours choosing the right music and listening to it over and over again to make sure we know it upside down and back to front. We practice our choreography until we pretty much hate it and berate ourselves endlessly when we still get in wrong. We spend hours in front of the computer on admin, processing health screening questionnaires, adding contact details to databases, finance accounts, tax returns, replying to emails, invoicing, paying invoices, banking, putting flyers through peoples letterboxes, viewing halls, booking halls, answering the phone, writing newsletters, writing blogs, contacting the press to try and promote our business and ourselves--marketing, designing flyers, getting them printed, paying designers, writing e-books, recording you tube clips – the list is relentless. It takes hours and hours to deliver leaflets, promote, etc.... So, imagine (if you will), you spend weeks delivering leaflets, etc, going into shops, doctors surgeries, hair dressers, beauty salons. Everything and anything to try and promote your new class/business. Then you go to the place that you have managed to book (believe me this is a trial in itself) AND No one turns up or even worse, one or two turn up. Trust me on this. As an instructor you would rather no one bothered than only one or two. You go through everything in your mind, what have you done wrong? Why has no one come? Why are your competitors classes packed every week? What is wrong with you? This is not a nice feeling! You battle on in the hope that things will change. You talk to people, start to change things around. Week in week out, you keep going. With any luck, things improve but quite often they don’t and this may have nothing to do with the instructor but boy oh boy, do we blame ourselves. We teach through pain, heartache, misery, even illness-- we teach through everything. We slap that smile and cheer on regardless of what else is going on in our lives. We are there for each and every one of you. When we are having our own struggles, that one hour class lasts for what seems like an eternity. We feel guilty as we try to clock watch and cannot wait to get out of there to wallow in whatever crisis we are going through. Yet to you, we are not just an instructor. We are teacher, leader, counselor, friend, therapist, marriage guidance, doctor, consultant, mother, sister, best friend. Ultimately, we are whatever you need us to be at that time and we do our utmost to be whatever it is you need us to be. We battle with our weight and body shape too. We feel we should lead by example. We feel like failures when we don’t walk the walk. We feel like hypocrites and frauds when we gain weight or lose too much weight. You know what? I could go on and on and on but at the end of the day, we are the same as you. We are human. We do what we do because we love it. We are not in it for the money. We frequently carry on without making a penny after all the expenses and are often working at a loss but we still carry on. We have good days and bad days just like you. We have days when we don’t want to teach, days when we just want to crawl under a duvet and stay there but we don’t. We slap on that plastic smile, laugh and joke where we may be literally screaming inside. We teach through pain and injury. But you know what? As much as I love Zumba®, it just doesn’t have the same vibe--especially if we have a SUB in place for YOU to still have a class. Grant it, having a SUB doesn’t give the same buzz but what will be, will be. When class numbers started falling and let’s face it, every instructor/studio/fitness facility has experienced this, its not a good feeling. The fitness industry goes in waves, a new trend comes in, it explodes and then it goes again. I went from 70+ in classes to being lucky if I had 10. That is a hard pill to swallow. Still, we turn up. Still we put all the energy and effort in and out of class to make sure it is as good as it can possibly be. We keep it going until we know we have to face reality and have to call it quits. No instructor likes to stop a class. We feel like we have failed and this failure is magnified if other local instructors are smashing it. The life of a fitness instructor can be a very lonely existence. We practice on our own, we do our administration on our now, we market our classes on our own – and we are afraid to let our fellow instructors know what we are doing for fear they will nick our ideas. So, what is the point of this blog? For instructors it is to say, you are not alone. For those going to exercise classes it is a little insight, how about going to class tonight and asking how your instructor is for a change? You have no idea the impact that will have……
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 00:30:55 +0000
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