Before COVID-19 shut down the studio where I teach I had never put much though into online teaching. I could imagine a few scenarios in which teaching remotely might help support students far away with little access to a studio, or I could see working with new moms on post natal work while getting out of the house wasn’t yet practical. But I hadn’t given it much thought beyond that, partly because I was already running to keep up with my in-person teaching schedule and didn’t have much time to ponder ways to add even more teaching to my life.

Then the pandemic hit and all at once I was forced to to think, and think fast, about how online teaching would now fit into my life. 

First, a little about what I teach in “real-life”. Back in the studio I  was teaching mostly private sessions, primarily GYROTONIC® equipment sessions, but also some duets and some pilates. I had only one GYROKINESIS® class a week on the schedule, and that was a staff class for trainers. (In the past I had several on the schedule, but now those are taught by other trainers, as it’s too expensive for the studio to have me teaching small group classes). In addition to that I was teaching a pretty full load of GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS® teacher training courses. 

Initially, as I went about setting up my free, trial online class, my concerns were that ivirtual classes would lack the warmth of an in-person class. Teaching in-person I would walk into the room, sense the energy of the participants, have a little social exchange, and then start teaching a class. I’d be calibrating on the spot to the particular energy level I felt in the room that day. How would this be possible over a computer screen?

My other concern, specifically regarding equipment classes and private sessions, was that I’m very much a hands-on teacher, giving lots of tactile cues and support. My GYROKINESIS® classes tend to be very rhythmic and fluid, without much stopping and starting, but how would this work for equipment and privates? How could I translate my teaching style to virtual classes? Could I convey the information online to my students that they needed to have a positive class experience and that would support their continued growth in their movement practice?

And yet another concern was would anybody even come? Was there really a market for online classes? 

So at this point we’re coming up on two months of this online life and I’ve found, while there certainly are challenges, this has been an amazing experience that will forever change the way I teach, reach out to students, and structure my career.

By far the easiest transition to teaching online has been GYROKINESIS® classes. Since I would normally do the class with the participants, not a lot changed there, except that I have to speak more than I would in person and make gestures for directional cues bigger to communicate more clearly and keep the class in sync over our small screens. The biggest change in terms of GYROKINESIS® classes is the regularity I’m teaching these now. I teach these classes pretty much every day now, and often multiple classes per day. 

And because I’m teaching daily, and people are coming to classes regularly, I’m able to dive more deeply into the work with them. I’m able to pull threads of concepts more clearly across my classes, and offer more variety from class to class. Often when people are coming to my once a week class I feel like the frequency isn’t enough to progress them along. Having participants take class daily, or several times per week, allows me to unfold and expand upon the material in a more free-flowing way, without feeling the need to “recap” what we did last week. And, when the participants are practicing more frequently in this way, change happens in the body to allow for deeper connections and therefore deeper understanding in the work. 

Yes, people do come to online classes. What I’ve found is that some might normally attend regular classes in their local area, but many are taking far more classes than they ever would in person. Many don’t have access to in-person classes or, if they do, they might not have the space in their schedule to drive half an hour to class, take class, and then drive half an hour home. Classes might not be at convenient times for them. Online classes bypass many of these obstacles people face in getting to class regularly. 

The other really appealing aspect of teaching online is that I can draw students from a wider area, really from anywhere at all. I like to teach higher level classes that demand a certain level of experience from the participants. I’m located in a small city, so it’s hard to draw enough people from my local area with enough experience to regularly fill high level classes. But with teaching online these students find my classes from wherever they are in the world and this filling of my classes with experienced and curious students allows for greater levels of creatively and inspiration in my teaching.

Just a couple of weeks ago the studio where I teach closed it’s second location, consolidating back down to just the main studio. This meant I had to pick up my Pulley Tower and take it home, which opened up for me teaching group tower classes online. In the past when I’ve taught tower classes I’ve stood in front of the class and cued verbally while gesturing with my arms, or showing the movement on a stool, and I’ve walked around and giving hands on, occasionally booting someone off their tower to demonstrate something in more detail. But now the number of towers isn’t a limiting factor. And, since I can’t walk around and give hands on, the most obvious approach is to just do the class with the participants, cueing as I go, and fitting in as much detailing information as I can within the rhythm of teaching. 

My students have said they much prefer when I do the class with them like this. I figure it’s a good opportunity to focus on rhythm, flow, and continuity, which sometimes get lost a bit as we go for analysis and precision in our in-person classes. Analysis and precision are good and important, but it’s really nice to take the emphasis off perfection for awhile and let people apply all the principles they’ve worked on for so long and enjoy a flowing, fun workout. And especially during this time, when everyone is stressed and under heavy pressure, it’s nice to just let us all move together.

Of course some days this teaching approach is challenging, such as the day I taught a Level 1 Tower class, Advanced GYROKINESIS® class, and then a Level 2 Tower class, plus took a client through a GYROKINESIS® private session. Clearly one cannot do this every day with no end in sight. 

Private sessions are a different matter. I have a few pilates privates and duets on my schedule. For these I sit in front of my screen and cue, occasionally getting down on my mat or standing to demonstrate a particular exercise. For GYROKINESIS® privates I move with the participant, and the other day I did my first online Jumping Stretching Board private on the JSB I have in storage in my basement. I used clothes pins to hang a big sheet from the beams behind it to hide the furnace and storage crates. I put the laptop on the paint supply shelf and found it really worked best if I did the workout with the student, looking over frequently to give her corrections. It was actually really fun to do. Moving with other people creates more sense of community and connection than just about anything else we do, so it’s appealing and comforting during these times of isolation.

So how about the warmth? The energy of the classes and the exchange of energy with the participants? Yes, that’s there in the online classes. I was surprised at how strong it actually is. I can feel when I’m teaching to a smaller group and I can feel when it’s a large group. I can feel when energy is low and they need to be built up and I can feel when the energy is too frenetic and needs to be calmed down, just like in a “real” class. Sometimes this is tricky because often there are students from many time zones, some just waking up, some in the middle of their day, and some winding down for bedtime. So in these cases I mostly try to stay away from over-stimulating material for those about to try to sleep. 

Online teaching has been exhausting, but it has also been an enjoyable, inspiring experience which has connected me with so many new people throughout the worldwide GYROTONIC® community. I’m not entirely sure what online teaching will look like for me when we go back to “normal”, but it’s certainly a venue for teaching that I’m excited to continue to explore.

Back when, what seems like years ago but was really just mid March, the studio where I teach announced they were closing for in-person sessions and it was clear I was going to have to get myself set up to teach online pretty quickly to maintain any sort of income I managed to get going with my online teaching pretty quickly. I then spent a lot of time helping colleagues through the same process, which lead me to write a blog post called Zooming to Get Up and Running with Online Teaching outlining how to get started.

Since then, as online teaching has begun to feel more natural and life has settled into a bit of a new routine, I’ve managed to streamline and refine some of the processes to reduce my administrative time and make a smoother user experience for my clients. I’ll share here what I’ve done since those first days, when the focus was just simply getting started, to make my system a bit less clunky. If you’re not yet set up for online teaching it might be worth having a look at the first post for the basics.

Again, I must preface this with saying I am not a “tech” person, I’m simply a movement teacher who had to figure this stuff out in order to make a living through the pandemic.

Automate anything you possibly can. Online teaching is exhausting. Add to that the stress and emotional drain of life in isolation, with many of us also homeschooling kids, and you really can’t be wasting any extra energy or resources on busy work that could be automated. 

Integrate your booking and teaching platforms: One of the easiest ways to automate registration is to link your booking platform to your online teaching platform. I use Acuity for booking and Zoom for teaching. Acuity has a page for “Integrations” (on the left hand side bar when you’re logged into the website). In “Integrations” scroll down until you find Zoom, then “enable” it. You’ll just have to be sure that you look at the list of your class offerings that will appear and make sure all the online classes have a tick mark. If there’s a tick mark by a class the system knows to automatically generate a Zoom link when that class is scheduled. Acuity will automatically send a confirmation email with the Zoom link when a client books into the class. All they have to do is click the link when it’s time to join class. They won’t need a password or anything else. 

Keep in mind, when you schedule a class a Zoom link won’t be generated until someone registers. So you’ll either have to just trust that it’s working, or register for your own class to test it. And remember that any time you add a new class type you’ll have to go into Integrations  and tick the box for that class, or else the system won’t know to generate a link.

I’ve had a few people contact me because of confusion over how simple this is. Once you’ve integrated Acuity with Zoom DO NOT create/schedule a link in Zoom. You’ll end up with two links for the same class and your students may not be able to find you. Just set it up in Acuity and let the system do the rest for you. You don’t need to email anyone anything, as everything they need to know will go to them in the automated confirmation email.

Trouble shooting glitches:

Occasionally problems can arise. Sometimes confirmation emails will go to junk mail, in which case hopefully the client will contact you in time so that you can forward them your copy of their confirmation email. Alternatively, you can  click “invite” from the Zoom meeting and invite them on the spot via their email address, or copy and paste the meeting login info to their email, text, or messenger app. 

If a client clicks the direct link from their confirmation email  it will take them directly to your class, but if they should read the link on one device and then type it into another sometimes they will be asked for a password. I don’t know why (as I’ve mentioned many times before, I’m not a “tech” person), but that seems to happen every so often. In that case look in the Zoom meeting and you will see the password for the meeting and can just text it to them. I set up my confirmation emails with a message that say if they have trouble logging into class to text me, and of course included my number (this can be set up in “customize appearance” which you’ll find in that left hand side bar).

One aspect that I do still have to do manually, since Zoom made changes to their set up for security reasons, is I have to go through my meetings on Zoom every couple of days and double check that “enable waiting room” is switched off. It now is enabled by default and I haven’t found a way around it, other than manually going into “my meetings” and editing the meetings individually to disable the waiting room feature. Every so often I’ve missed one and I haven’t noticed until the meeting had started. Once the meeting starts you can no longer disable it, so you’ll have to manually admit each participant. If they’re late to sign in to class they won’t get in if you’re busy teaching, and if they lose their internet connection for a moment they won’t be able to get back into class. 

Automate payments. I’ve heard from a few people that their booking and payment systems aren’t linked. So clients sign up for the classes and then the trainer will send an email and ask for payment via PayPal or Venmo. In a pinch this works, but it takes a lot of time, tracking, and organization. I highly recommend setting up a system that will save this hassle. I have my Square account linked with my Acuity, but Acuity also links with PayPal as well as Stripe. It’s pretty easy to set up. Acuity walked me through linking Square when I initially set up my account, but you can do it after the fact through Integrations, just like linking your Zoom account.

Recording classes on Zoom. If you’d like to record your classes on Zoom so that they’re available either for participants to view again later, or if you’d like to make the classes available for rent to those who might not be able to take your classes at the times they’re offered, you can do that really easily. Keep in mind when you’re recording, at least in the United States but I believe in many countries, it’s illegal to record someone without their permission. So you have to set up your Zoom recording so you don’t inadvertently capture a participant on the recording. 

The way I do it is as soon as someone logs into my class I click on the video of myself and text will appear over my image. There’s an option to “pin video”. I pin the video of myself. Then I click back up on the gallery view option, because pinning the video will pull it by default into “speaker view”, which is just me big on the screen so I can’t see my students well. After I’ve greeted all my students and it’s time to start class I first “mute all”, then I hit record. There will be an option to record to the cloud, which is on Zoom, or onto your computer. Record onto the cloud, otherwise (at least on my Mac) I end up getting the participants showing up in the recording. When I do it this way on the cloud I get just the video of me teaching without the students’ images. As soon as I finish class I first stop the recording and then unmute. If I time it right I don’t need to edit the video at all. However sometimes I catch just a blip of a student and I have to trim it off in iMovie. Or if you were to stop the video and answer questions midway through you’d have to edit that out afterward.

You can keep your recordings on Zoom, but the basic paid plan only allows for storage of a few hours of video. You can pay to upgrade to more storage, but this didn’t seem like a great deal when I looked at it. It was an extra $40 a month to be able to store probably a week’s worth of classes. Then if you want to share/sell access of those videos it seems like you have to do it all manually. 

My solution was to use a service called Gumroad. Gumroad offers more privacy than Vimeo, which is critical for GYROTONIC® and GYROKINESIS® trainers, as any of our videos have to be password protected and only made available to our existing clients. After hours of working with Vimeo I was still unable to find a way that my videos could be both password protected and also available for sale. If I wanted to sell access to stream them through a password protected page on my website the videos still had to be public on Vimeo. Gumroad allows the videos to not appear through Gumroad, yet be available as streaming rentals through my password protected page. Plus Gumroad is free. They take a percentage of any sales (8.5 % + 30 cents), so factor that into your pricing, but there is no membership fee and apparently no limit to how much you can upload. Vimeo was going to cost me over $200 a year, plus they take a percentage of sales.

From Zoom I upload the videos to my computer, then upload them from the computer to Gumroad. Be sure to delete your recording from Zoom once you’ve uploaded it to your computer so you have room to record your next class. I also delete them from my computer once they’re on Gumroad to save memory. I can always download them from Gumroad later if I need them.

I opt for a rental option only, so they have access for only a limited time, and only make it available via streaming (no downloads) which keeps me in line with GYROTONIC® guidelines. Also this keeps me more flexible should I decided to change platforms in the future. If a client buys my video to have forever then I’m pretty much committed to the platform on which it was sold.

Aside from having to upload the videos to Gumroad and then paste them into my password protected video page, all the payment and streaming links are handled automatically. 

I’m still working on the details of my insurance to cover recorded videos, but they are only available to my existing clients, not the general public, so that should be more insurable. I put my liability waiver in the class description and state that by purchasing the rental the participant agrees to the liability waiver. This is my preliminary legal protection and I will post an update when I nail that down better.

This is all a fluid, dynamic process and I don’t profess to know all the answers. But hopefully some of what I’ve figured out will be helpful to you. You’ll have to make yourself a coffee and spend a good few hours with your laptop to get it going, but once everything is place you should find your days a bit more calm and settled. 

As I’m writing this it seems most of us in the fitness industry have settled into our new routine of online teaching. A couple of weeks ago everything was a mad blur as we converted our entire in-person businesses over to online. Whether we’re business owners, self employed trainers, contractors, or employees, we all should take a moment to look back over the past couple of weeks and appreciate what we’ve accomplished. We’ve all done so much and we should recognize that. (And if you’re feeling a step behind and still need to get yourself online, read my blog post Zooming to Get Up and Running with Online Teaching)

Now it’s looking like what might have been just a few weeks now could stretch on for months, with some estimates saying it could be up to a year to 18 months before everything is back to normal. Even if we return in a couple of months or so, we need to be prepared for our individual areas to go back to isolation in the case of local outbreaks. And some of us have found that online training could be a great option to keep doing, even once we return to our in-person lives.

So it’s time to start taking our standards for online sessions beyond just the make-do, emergency setup that was just fine for last week, and into a more professional presentation that brings our clients the maximum value in their online training.

That in mind, now is still not the time for most of us to be spending money on fancy professional lighting and sound equipment. Most of us are still concerned with how we’re going to make our rents, mortgages, and keep ourselves and our families fed and safe. And even if you have the funds to order nice equipment, there’s no guarantee you’ll be able to get what you want delivered, since so many businesses are impacted by the crisis.

So how can we create a professional, high quality, high value experience for our online clients without spending unnecessarily?

Use what you have. As we go through what it takes to make your teaching space look good and your client experience as smooth as possible, think about the resources you have already. I’m using just my laptop, with the built in camera and microphone, and it’s working great. From extra lamps around the house, to the online services you already pay for or have for free, most of us already have almost everything we need to make this work beautifully.

Make the most of your light. You’ve probably figured out by now that backlighting doesn’t work on camera. You will appear as a featureless dark blob. So, once you’ve made sure you’re not set up in front of a window, now look for ways you can bring your lighting up another notch. Some people are lucky enough to have professional lights for this purpose, but you don’t need these. I have an IKEA desk lamp that I set up next to my laptop with the shade turned so that the exposed bulb is directed right at my teaching space. I also have a window to the front diagonal of my space. That alone worked fine, but to achieve an even brighter, airier look to the space, I also placed a wall mirror on my other side, out of view of the camera, to reflect light back onto the other side of me. I then went down to the basement and brought up an extra table lamp, took the shade off, and placed it behind and slightly above my laptop. This gives me even more lighting from the front. You could place sketch pads behind your lights so that the blank white pages reflect even more light back onto you and your teaching space.

Frame yourself well. You can start a meeting on Zoom and not invite anyone, just so you can play with angling your camera to get all of you in the frame and cut out anything you don’t want to be seen, like a bookshelf or pile of fitness props. You can also check your lighting on the screen. I’m teaching in a very small space and so in my GYROKINESIS® classes I know I have to slightly adjust the camera angle down when I transition from sitting on the stool to working on the floor. I take this as an opportunity to check in with my students, asking “Everyone doing ok?”. They know to give a thumbs up for “ok” and a hand wave for assistance. So then it doesn’t seem awkward that I’m walking over to the screen to adjust my laptop angle. You’ll most likely want the camera set at an angle so that it’s looking just slightly down on you. This will get more of you in the frame and is also a more flattering angle than from below. I have my laptop on a little box on top of the desk to give it a bit more height.

You want to make sure your clients can see all of you when you’re demonstrating, so make sure you’re not cutting your legs out of the frame, and that your arms can be seen when you reach up overhead.

Consider your sound. It’s challenging with my partner having work meetings over his laptop, while my son meets with his fourth grade class online, all while I’m teaching sessions. And all of this is happening in a very small house.

My miniature poodle (who has a serious barking issue) has been sent to my mother’s house for the duration of isolation so that we can work form home without him disrupting us. We moved the guest sofa bed out of our office/guest room and into the garage to make a teaching space where I can close the door and keep the cats and household noise out. My son has been informed that any kicking of the soccer ball against the walls while I’m teaching will be punishable by loss of all screen time.

Some people have complained that their laptop microphones aren’t high enough quality without an additional microphone. There are several microphone options available to buy, but before you do that try out your other devices. Your phone or your tablet might have a higher quality mic than your computer. So be sure to explore all your options before getting on Amazon and ordering extra stuff. Also, be sure to orient yourself with how to mute or disable your notifications on the device you’re using for class. This way you won’t be getting message dings that your clients can hear while you’re teaching. I’m on a MacBook Pro, and found I can go into preferences and then to notifications, and then set it to “do not disturb” for my regular teaching hours. You can google how to do this for your particular device.

Set up a Zoom meeting with a friend while your house is at its busiest. They can give you feedback on what sounds they’re picking up on their end and what the sound quality is on your mic.

Dress right for the tiny screen. While Zoom offers a really stable platform its still not the most crisp picture your clients are seeing. And they might be watching you on their phones, so that picture might be really small. I’ve found that, even though I have a fairly bright colored mat, if I wear dark colors on the bottom my legs sort of blend in a bit too much. I’ve found that what seems to read best on the screen are fitted, or semi-fitted clothing in brighter colors. Patterned leggings seem to stand out best against the mat. Loose clothing creates too much of a blob effect on the screen, so I don’t wear anything too baggy. Darker tops seem to work fine, but color seems to stand out better.

I’ve never been much for wearing makeup, I usually would throw on a little under eye concealer to cover dark circles and then a little mascara, but I’ve found by putting on a bit of eyeliner and a little lipstick my features and facial expressions seem to come across better on the screen. It’s just a touch, but I think because the students aren’t in the room with me any extra nuances of expression they can read can be helpful.

Pay attention to the look of your space. It may be your home, but too many personal details may be distracting to the clients. Try not to have too much extra in the frame that could be visually busy, and we certainly don’t need to see your laundry basket. I think less is definitely more in terms of items we can see on camera.

Create a seamless, professional feeling experience for the client. This means thinking through from the client’s perspective everything from communication, to booking, to payment, to the class experience itself. It’s easy enough to integrate booking and payment systems such as Acuity and Square. These are what I use. Acuity can link directly with Zoom to generate and automatically provide booking links for your clients. The clients get these in a nice, streamlined looking email confirmation.

Have a friend test out your booking and payment system and show you what they see on their end. I found that the confirmation message that I’d set to go out for teacher trainings, which is how I was originally using Acuity, didn’t make sense for people booking into my online classes. When I saw how it looked on my partner’s confirmation email I knew to go back and adjust my settings and text to be more clear. Payment should be clear and easy. An integrated system is best, like Acuity and Square, so the client simply clicks the booking button on my online scheduler and it takes them to payment, then sends them a confirmation email with the class link for Zoom. I don’t have to do anything, other than making sure I have my settings correct at the beginning.

Be willing to adapt your teaching style. In person I’m very much a hands-on teacher, so I’ve had to make some adjustments to communicate and teach as clearly as possible on a little screen. In my GYROKINESIS® classes I find I give a lot more verbal cueing as the students can’t sense the movement in the room like they would in person. So I call out direction changes more often and speak more loudly when I’m turning away from the microphone. I also find myself slightly exaggerating my gestures as I give directional cues, just so I can be seen more clearly. Another change that’s surprised me a bit is that I do more class preparation ahead of time. Often in an in-person class I plan nothing and just get a feel for the energy in the room when I come in to teach and go with the flow. While I get some sense of that online, it’s not as strong as it is in person, so I feel like I rely more on planning particular themes and variations for each week than I usually would. I’m actually enjoying the change, as I think it shakes up my habits a bit. I think that’s probably pretty healthy for my brain.

I honestly think that even with all the challenges we’re facing in our industry, which are scary, daunting, and very real, this is also an opportunity to expand our knowledge, test our own boundaries, and grow as individuals and as a community. I know that may not be so reassuring when the rent is due, but if we can squeeze every chance at positivity and growth out of this situation then at least not all is lost. And once we’ve made it through this, we’ll know we can make it through anything!

At this point the studio where I teach has been closed for over a month and we’re about a month into a Stay Home order. My initial panic drove me to get my teaching set up online via Zoom, move the sofa bed into the garage to create a home studio space in our 1000 square foot house, and to dive deep into social media and technology to get my classes marketed, and get registration and the overall class experience streamlined. I spent countless hours on zoom meetings and texts with colleagues around the world to help them also get up and running with online sessions and new booking and payment systems (see my post Zooming to Get Up and Running with Online Teaching). Did I mention I’m not really a “tech person”? It’s amazing what a little bit of sheer panic can push one to do.

And then a week and a half ago I crashed. I was teaching two to five hours or GYROKINESIS® classes every day, seven days a week, working long hours on the computer, and homeschooling my ten year old son. I’d been having a burst of blogging productivity, since so many colleagues were asking the same questions and it seemed the most efficient way to communicate more broadly. Through all of this I was making a good effort at keeping up with my own workouts and doing a ballet barre every day. I was hit by an overwhelming fatigue, having dizzy spells, losing my voice, and feeling really down. I’ve been through bouts of fatigue before (see my post The Sneaky Epidemic Effecting Mind Body Fitness Trainers), but this one caught me off guard because I wasn’t even leaving my house, except to run or go for a walk in the woods, so I hadn’t expected to be so tired.

While I didn’t want to cancel any of my scheduled classes, in part because I’d committed to offering regular classes every day to create a feeling of consistency for my students in a time of so much upheaval, but also because I really need the income, what I did do is to take a couple of days at the weekend when I just taught my one class each day, and then didn’t pressure myself to do my ballet barre, workout, or really do anything at all productive. This was easy enough because I was too exhausted to do much but lie on the couch and read. The hard part was putting the brakes on my computer time. I’d worked up a whirlwind of social media and tech projects that felt really, really important and urgent, and I found I had to consciously disengage from all of that. After a weekend of letting myself slack off I felt a lot better, refreshed, and ready to get back into the groove for the next however-long-this-takes.

Stepping back for even just a short while let me reflect a bit about this new, temporary normal. Here’s what I found.

Weekends are still necessary. Even though we don’t leave the house and it seems like we must be relaxing because we’re at home, there still needs to be a defined weekend. While I’m still teaching one class a day on Saturdays and Sundays, I’ve limited it to that. We stay in bed late those mornings and make a fun weekend breakfast, like pancakes or waffles, before I teach. Then after my 11am class the rest of the day is chill out time. We might go for a hike, but I take time off of my workouts, don’t try to take on computer projects, and let my incoming messages and texts sit for a bit so I can take some of the pressure off.

This is no time to burn ourselves out. When we do go back to working in-person there’s still going to be a high risk of transmission of the virus. If we drag our sorry, adrenal fatigued, worn out butts back into the studio our compromised immune systems won’t be doing us or our clients any favors.

I can figure it out. I’ve been extremely stressed over all the technical aspects of this new way of working. I’ve never been the “tech savvy” type, never one to just “play around with it”until I figure out how something works. But so far in over the past five weeks I’ve figured out how to:

• Teach classes on Zoom
• Integrate my booking and payment systems with Zoom for a seamless, automated process that requires little admin time
• Record my online classes without recording participants
• Download those classes and edit them in iMovie
• Upload them to Gumroad without allowing them to be seen publicly and then link them to a password protected page on my website so that clients can pay to stream the classes (okay, so the last part my software engineer partner had to help with, but I at least got that far and knew what I needed to ask to get the rest done)

And I also figured out what “stories” actually are on Facebook and Instagram, which may seem silly, but gives you some context for my previous level of online skills.

So now I know that I can figure this stuff out. Now I can use these tools that I might have found a bit intimidating before I was so desperate that I was forced to just dive in.

We’re all facing some heavy emotions right now. I’ve been meeting with colleagues from around North America and Europe online a couple of times a week to work through some of the issues we’re facing in the industry, as well as just connecting with friends and colleague individually. What’s become apparent is that people are dealing with levels of deep sadness or even grief right now, even if they personally haven’t lost a loved one to COVID-19. Friends have told me of being overwhelmed by sudden feelings of loss of loved ones that happened a year or more ago. Some just feel, well, really, really sad.

My dad is a retired therapist and I often think of something he told me once, that “every loss is all loss”. Meaning, when we experience a loss we don’t just feel the emotion of that particular loss, but also the emotions and grief of all of our past losses come back to us as well. All of us are experiencing some type of loss now. Whether the literal loss of a loved one, the looming fear of loss of someone close to us who may be an essential worker, the loss of our job, income, studio, daily routine, sense of security, or whatever it is that touches us each personally. No one I know is untouched by this. So by acknowledging the greater emotions that flood in when we find our lives rocked by this level of turmoil we can hopefully cut ourselves some slack.

There are lots of silver linings when we take the time to look and appreciate them. I’ve found a few nice surprises through this experience.

• First, I found that I love teaching online GYROKINESIS® classes. I have students from all over the world in my classes, some I worked with years ago and who live far away but can now join my classes nearly every day. I love the continuity of teaching GYROKINESIS® every day. In “real life” I only get to teach one class a week. I’m limited in what I can do, because once a week isn’t really frequent enough to make the changes and develop the concepts needed to progress as deep as I’d like to take people into the work. When people are coming several times a week I can pull threads through over the days, get more and more creative, and present more variety, since I’m not always having to focus on the basics.

• I’m getting lots of family time. Which, with three of us all trying to work or do school in a very small house may not sound like such a great thing, but really it is. We’re all home for dinner together. we get lots of long walks. Sometimes we all just cozy up by the fire and work on our own projects. I’m hoping after all of this is over we can keep some of those nice moments in our daily routine.

• Our community is amazing. The support and kindness I’ve seen amongst my colleagues is heartening and uplifting. There are so many smart, talented people I’m so fortunate to know. And realizing that I’m not having to solve all the problems I’m facing on my own, but that there’re all these goodhearted, capable people and that we’ve all got each other’s backs right now is a really good feeling.

As I’m writing this we’ve had over a full week now of social distancing protocols, meaning the studio where I teach abruptly, and very responsibly, closed for in person sessions. The schools have been closed, so my 10 year old son is home, and my partner has been working from home for over two weeks, as his company was at the beginning of the wave of isolations.

During this time I’ve been working longer and more intense days than I do normally, but for significantly less pay. The first day was a panicked flurry of work on the computer, getting Zoom set up, updating my Acuity scheduling set up for online training, checking my insurance for online teaching coverage, moving the sofa bed out of the guest room/office and into the garage to create a clear teaching space, and getting my social media updated to let people know I was teaching.

I’m not the most tech savvy at all. Normally I much prefer to spend my days moving rather than to be sitting at a computer playing around with various platforms to see how they work. I gave up owning my own studio six years ago, mostly because I can’t stand sitting still for administrative work. But the sudden panic of realizing the income from my only marketable skill could vanish instantaneously was motivating enough for me to get a move on it right on day one.

Since then my days have been filled with teaching daily GYROKINESIS® classes online, managing all the scheduling and set up around that, and then fielding calls, texts, emails, facebook messages, etc, from colleague all over the country desperately needing help getting themselves set up and teaching online to maintain at least some income over the next, indefinite stretch of time. All while attempting to homeschool my 4th grader.

While the “how to” in getting started with online teaching is actually pretty straight forward (see my blog post on this), there are some ethical issues that suddenly arise in this new reality that many trainers have never had to think about before. That combined with the overwhelming stress and anxiety faced by studio owners and trainers can lead people to act as not their “best selves” in the lightening quick decisions we’re all being forced to make in an ever changing and insecure situation.

Here are some important points to keep in mind while you make the important decisions so many of us will have to face over the coming days, weeks, and maybe months.

Many studios will not survive this crisis. Small fitness studios tend to operate with very small profit margins. Studio owners still have rent, high software expenses, such as Mind Body Online, possibly administrative staff costs, and more miscellaneous business expenses that still need to be paid, even if the studio doors are closed. So if you’re a trainer working for a small or mid sized studio, even a larger studio, try to understand the position the studio owner is in. They’re worried not only about their own livelihood, but also probably feel a great deal of responsibility toward their employees and contractors as well.

Trainers are in survival mode. Just as studios often operate with small profit margins, so do many trainers. As movement trainers we do what we do usually because it’s what we love and what we feel called to do, not because it was the most financially lucrative career we could pursue. Trainers don’t tend to make a load of money and may not have a significant emergency fund or financial cushion to fall back on. Because mind-body fitness is somewhat of a boutique market, many of us live in expensive areas that can support this type of business. This means trainers may not make or have saved much money, but still have high rent or mortgage payments to maintain.

No Poaching. Boundaries are no longer physical, but still need to be respected. Most trainers know not to solicit clients who they have gained through their employer’s studio resources. If it was the studio’s marketing money and efforts that brought you a client, that client is a client of your studio, not your own personal client.

In my personal case, I was up and running by the end of day one of social distancing protocols for my area. The studio for which I work was several days behind in getting their own online teaching plan into action. So while I was already set up to teach online I was very deliberate in NOT contacting my regular clients from the studio, even those who I had personally brought to the studio from my own studio when I closed it six years ago.

Fortunately for me as a Master Trainer I have a broader network of students around the country and across other countries as well. So simply by posting on social media many of my past students easily found me and my classes, without my having to encroach upon any clients from my employing studio. Since then, slowly, the studio has begun to book a couple of my regular clients in for me as online privates from my home.

This of course can be problematic for a trainer who doesn’t have a client base from beyond the studio for which they work and is dependent on waiting for their studio to provide the online teaching hours they need to survive. But it is not okay to contact a studio client to set up training without the permission of the studio. However, new clients you obtain from your own network, who are not (and have not recently been) clients of the studio, are perfectly fair game.

What if the studio where you teach isn’t offering their classes online? Is it okay to contact your regular clients? Each case is different, for each studio and for each trainer at each studio. In the case that your studio isn’t set up for you to teach through them online, or if they’re set up for it but haven’t been able to mobilize clients onto their online platform, you need to have a discussion with the studio owner or manager.

Open communication is key, on both sides. The trainer needs to be clear about their intentions, while the studio owner needs to be clear as to why online teaching opportunities haven’t been made available to the trainer. Maybe the studio owner is overwhelmed by the technical and administrative demands of switching to online sessions. In which case a tech savvy trainer might be able to offer assistance. Perhaps the studio owner doesn’t expect the studio to survive the financial impact of the crisis and is considering steps to dismantle the business.

Only through open and frank conversation can the best, most ethical course of action be determined for each situation. If the studio won’t communicate with a trainer, or seems to have no plans of offering online training as an option to their clients, or if the trainer is laid off due to the crisis, then the trainer has a little more ethical leeway. If you find yourself in this situation it’s not appropriate to reach out directly to the clients. But if you set up a basic website, and get really present and productive on social media, then the clients will find you. If they’re really missing training with you and want to find you all they have to do is google your name. Remember, this is only an appropriate course of action if you’ve exhausted all good faith efforts at working with the studio.

Navigating online fees and free classes is new, tricky territory. There are a lot of questions and discussions going on right now about online pricing and offering services for free. How do you price your online services? Do you keep prices the same as they were for in-person sessions? Offer a discount because you can’t offer the same level of service virtually? You’ll have to think this through pretty thoroughly before you make a decision.

One school of thought is that you’re a professional with a certain level of training. Your time is your time and the value of that time remains the same, whether in person or online. Another thought is that you can’t offer the same hands-on cueing or subtleties that an in-person session allows, so the price should be a little less.

In my personal situation, because I’m not reaching out to my regular clients, rather I’m drawing from the larger circle of students I’ve developed as a Master Trainer, most of my trainer-clients are currently out of work. Therefore I’m offering group classes at the deeply discounted rate of $10 per class. It’s not a lot of profit for me, but it’s what the trainers can afford right now. If I continue teaching online classes after all of this blows over I’ll definitely put my price up a level more in line with my in person classes.

Also, keep in mind that you need more set up and tech time for online classes. In person I would usually teach several classes back to back. In an online schedule I need at least 15 minutes in between clients to deal with emailing or texting clients to assist with logging in and getting their microphone and camera settings adjusted.You’ll have to evaluate your situation and the situation of your client demographic to make pricing decisions.

Many of my colleagues are pretty angry right now about the issue of free classes online. One friend who owns a small, boutique studio told me of how a large corporate owned gym near her has sent all the trainers home with full pay. The trainers are offering free classes online, since they have loads of time and aren’t concerned about cashflow. Meanwhile, smaller studios are struggling to keep some revenue coming in through paid classes while competing against a glut of free content suddenly available. We have to think about how our pricing strategies not only effect ourselves, but also the greater community of our industry. If we’re giving our work away for free that devalues the work for everyone. That’s going to have lasting effects beyond the end of this crisis. Sure, set up a free trial class for friends and dedicated clients so you can work out the technical glitches and ask for feedback, but then be sure you charge for your services once you’re up and running.

If you’re worrying if something is unethical that’s probably a red flag to more closely examine your thinking. Some colleagues and I were talking through some of these issues via a Zoom meeting the other day. Briana Kline, owner of Roots of Integrity in Chicago, said when trainers ask her if something is ethical or not she responds “If you have to ask me, you already know”. I think that’s very frequently the case. Although sometimes I think very conscientious trainers may err on the side of over-caution when it comes to possibly “stepping-on-toes”, to the point that it unnecessarily compromises their career opportunities. While this conscientiousness is a great quality in a trainer, there is a delicate line between over accommodation of others and asserting one’s rights to career advancement. As one who has probably tended too much toward an avoidance of this “stepping-on-toes” at the expense of perfectly legitimate opportunities, I know that it’s not good to find oneself paralyzed into inaction by the fear of upsetting anyone at all. So I think what we all need to do is carefully consider our motivations in each action and how these actions will effect others.

We’re all facing a new reality and so many new challenges. There’s not really any precedent for this and we don’t know how long this will go on. So there’s a lot of insecurity and anxiety for everyone. But I believe if we can be our best selves even when times are bad, even when we feel desperate, that’s the true demonstration of of character.

Those of you who know my teaching style are aware I’m very hands on. That combined with being only average when it comes to tech savviness has made this abrupt shift to teaching exclusively online a big and fast adjustment.

My last few days have been spent getting up and running with teaching via Zoom, homeschooling my 4th grader, and fielding texts, emails, and facebook messages from colleagues and friends who’ve seen that my online classes have launched and need help getting set up to do their own. Last night I was up well past my bedtime with three simultaneous text conversations, talking people through the process.

I’m not a tech expert, but have managed to get myself teaching online with only one day’s heads up that our studio was closed. So I thought I’d share my experience so far.

What You Need:

-An online meeting platform

-A scheduling system

-A system for taking payment

I already had Acuity set up for scheduling my teacher training courses and I had Square set up to accept payment. These platforms are compatible, so that’s worked really well for me. I’ll go into more detail on these in a moment.

So all I had to set up was Zoom for my meetings. I chose Zoom because I’d had someone set up a meeting with me on the platform quite awhile ago and remembered it had worked pretty well. I was also aware that Zoom has a reputation for being the most stable of the online meeting platforms, which better connections, fewer glitches, etc.

Zoom

To set up Zoom I just went to the website and set up an account, which took just a couple minutes. I chose the Pro account which is $14.95 a month. The advantage of the Pro account is that it has unlimited meeting times, where as the free service has a 40 minute limit. Plus Colleagues have been talking online about having more control over the client’s ability to record sessions with the pro. There’s a rumor going around that Zoom has lifted the 40 minute limit curing the COVID-19 crisis, but I’ve heard from friends who have been setting up their accounts that as far as they can see on the Zoom site that doesn’t seem to be the case, or at least it’s not clear how that works.

So with the Zoom account you can either pre-schedule a meeting at your planned class time, or start a meeting right before class and invite participants to join by sending them an email. What I do is I schedule the meeting time ahead of the class time. Then, about an hour before class starts, I send a group email containing the link and simple directions to the participants.

All the participants need to do is click on the link and it takes them to the class/meeting.

Used with Acuity this works great, because in Acuity I can go into the registration list for a particular class and there’s a button for “email attendees”. I copy and paste the Zoom link into that email before the class. Then they just click the link to get in at class time.

In setting up Zoom there are a few glitches I worked out after my initial free trial class that I offered to test out the system.

1. Check your time zone setting in your profile. Mine defaulted to Pacific Time and I’m in Eastern Time, so when I set up my first meeting time it was off by three hours. I then had to reset it and email everyone with clarification.

2. Make sure you DO NOT check “enable waiting room” when you schedule your meeting. I inadvertently did this. This means you have to manually admit each participant. So when students tried to join my class late I didn’t see their request to be admitted pop up, and wouldn’t have wanted to stop the flow of my class to have to walk over to the laptop and click them in. Also, a student who started the class lost her wifi connection for a moment and then couldn’t get back in.

I do enable “enable join before host”, so clients can get in before class and mess around with their settings or whatever they want to do to feel ready. Also, be sure to click the boxes to enable video and sound for both the participant and the host, so you can see and hear your students.

3. Use what you have. I just do the class with my laptop, using the built in microphone and camera. That works great. If you’re unsure if yours will be high enough quality then do what I did last night with a friend in Florida. I had her set up her laptop where she would put it for her class then start a meeting with me. That way she could test to see if I could hear her, see her, and how it all looked to me on my screen.

4. I have my students start out with their microphones on, so we can chat together for a moment before class. Then, when it’s time to start moving, I have them mute their mics. This keeps extra noise down, but also, if the mics are on and one student is breathing louder, or there’s a sound at their end, they’ll pop up on screen as the “speaker” and your students won’t be able to see you well for a moment. Midway through class you could have them unmute for a moment if they have a question.

5. I leave my screen in “gallery mode” so I can see my students in little boxes on the screen. This way I can give little specific corrections, or see if a student might be struggling or having an issue. On my display that’s in the top right hand corner of the screen, but that may be different on the app for phone or iPad.

6. It’s good to be there with the meeting started about 10 minutes before the class starts so you can help people figure out if their sound and video is working. I have my phone handy to text with clients who are having sound issues. Usually it’s just me having to help them locate their microphone icon on their screen

Acuity

Acuity takes a little bit of time to get set up and familiarize yourself with its features. The most important part to get started with is setting up your appointment types.

1. On your side bar on the left of the screen you’ll have your “appointment types” link.

Here you can set up group classes (you’ll click a box to indicate it’s a group class) and/or private session. I’ve added “Online GYROKINESIS® Class”, “Online Advanced GYROKINESIS® Class”, and “Online Pilates Mat Class”, to get started this week.

2. For private sessions you’ll need to go to “Availability”, where you’ll see boxes for days of the week where you can plug in your hours. If you have group class scheduled do not make that time “available” as it may then allow a private client to book overlapping your group class.

3. Once you have your classes set up you can go to “Appointment Calendar”, click on a specific class and you’ll see the list of attendees. Here’s where you’ll see the button to send them all the Zoom meeting link you’ll cut and paste from Zoom to access your class.

4. After emailing out the “scheduling link” (also find this on the side bar) I realized that my classes weren’t displaying so that clients could see them. By going to “customize appearance” I was able to change the default calendar display clients see from monthly (which doesn’t show individual classes) to daily, which makes it easy for them to see your offerings.

5. In “Availability” you can set a timeframe for class registration to close before a particular class. It defaults to 12 hours, which was locking out some participants too early. I changed that to one hour. This way, an hour before my class I know I can send out the Zoom link and that everyone who’s signed up online will get it. I haven’t found a way to differentiate between group classes and private clients on this, so that means a private client could also book in the hour before a session, so be aware of that if that’s going to catch you off guard and unprepared.

6. Set up your “Terms and Conditions”. In this you should have your liability waiver and your cancellation policy. They have to tick the box to register for your class, so you know everyone who’s signed up has a waiver. Just remember, if you sign someone up on your end then they have not done their waiver and you may want to email that individually and have them answer with “I AGREE”, then save that correspondence (maybe in a special file).

There’s quite a bit more to play with and figure out on Acuity, which will be pretty specific to your situation, but those I think are the top tips to at least get you started.

Acuity links seamlessly with Square to accept payments. Square takes a few days to set up and verify your account with little bank deposits of a few cents. Another friend said she found it also links with PayPal, so you might choose that instead to get you up and running with taking payments faster.

Square

Square does take a little lead time to get going, but I really do like it so far. I have been taking teacher training payments this way for awhile, so I was really glad to have it in place already for having to move my teaching online. Here are some ways I’ve used Square so far with my online teaching.

1. Since it integrates with Acuity it takes payment when the client signs up for the class, which is very easy. The money goes into your account usually that day or the next. It’s really quick.

2. I was able to send an invoice for a client who missed the registration cutoff and who I had to sign in manually without payment. This was really easy on both ends and made for a smooth, professional exchange

There’s a lot more Square can do, but to get you teaching online in a pinch, that’s probably enough to get you started.

As for actual teaching tips there are a few adjustments I’ve made to my teaching style to adapt to an online format.

1. I’m speaking a lot louder. It’s not such a problem when I’m facing directly to the camera, but I move a lot and demonstrate a lot, so if my head isn’t facing the camera I really have to project my voice. It’s not been a problem for people to hear me, but I’m definitely aware of making sure I’m speaking (and breathing) so I’m heard.

2. Keeping in mind that I’m very small on the screen I’ve started somewhat exaggerating my gestures for directional cues, or for pointing to areas of connection or engagement.

3. Limited space, both in my little office that’s converted into my online studio space, and in the homes of my clients, means I have to keep a certain amount of containment to the class I present. This isn’t too limiting, I just can’t really have my students travel trough space very much at all.

4. Make yourself seen.I think about how what I’m wearing will show on the camera to be sure my clients can see my movements well. You can start up a Zoom meeting with just yourself, just don’t invite anyone, and see how you fit in the frame, how well you stand out against your background, etc. I find very loose clothing doesn’t read too well on camera.

Lastly, the biggy, is pricing. It’s a difficult decision what to charge. Clients aren’t brining in much money theses days, but as trainers we also need to maintain some income. As a guest teacher in a physical studio I would often charge $35-$45 per person for a Gyrokinesis® class. My online classes I’ve set at $10. That said, I have a lot of angry colleagues who see other colleagues teaching classes for free online, which it could be said devalues the work of all of us. Personally I think a free trial class to work out the glitches and get feedback is great, but beyond that charging a fee that you feel comfortable with is the right thing to do, whatever that price point is for you. But we should charge something, because it maintains the value of our industry and of our work.

Best of luck to all of you out there. I hope you’re staying healthy and calm. With the right attitude we can turn this from total disaster to a great learning experience that could open up new avenues of revenue and creatively for the future578 views3

As movement professionals we spend a lot of our own time, money, and energy pursuing many facets of our own health. We may see osteopaths, massage therapists, an array of wholistic medical practitioners, and physical therapists. We read extensively about nutrition and supplements, and may commit to certain dietary practices in our quest for better health, wellbeing, and physical performance.

Our clients see this and may have questions for us about these various modalities, diets, and supplements. Clients often ask me “what do you eat?”, “Do you take supplements?”, or “what is this chronic pain in my hip?” And having been drawn to this profession out of a passion for helping and teaching people it’s tempting to share with them all the great information I’ve found over the years.

But I’m very aware of the boundaries of my “Scope of Practice”. Whatever entity through which you obtained your certification probably has a code of conduct, or some guidelines that reference your scope of practice. There may also be state or local laws that determine what can and cannot do within your practice.

Over the years I’ve overheard fellow trainers slipping into offering advice on supplements or diet, giving clients specific medical advice, and have seen some doing what borders on chiropractic adjustments that were clearly outside the bounds of our training as fitness professionals.

We’re immersed in this world of health and anatomy, and we know a LOT. But sometimes not as much as we may think. We may be missing important pieces of information crucial to properly understanding a medical situation. And even if we are right and do know what we’re talking about, we are obligated by the license contracts we’ve signed, possibly by law, and definitely by ethics to refrain in our interactions with clients from straying outside our scope.

What are the big no-no’s in regard to scope of practice? And how do we navigate these restrictions to best serve our clients?

Do not give the client a diagnosis, or anything that may be interpreted as a diagnosis. In your experience it may be very clear to you when a client complains of a sharp pain around the ribs that’s worse with deep breaths and accompanied by shoulder pain that there is likely a rib out of alignment. But we can’t present that to the client as being a fact that we have determined.

We can however state that sometimes when this happens there’s a possibility that a rib may be out and we then need to advise the client to see their physical therapist, osteopath, or doctor to see if this might be the case, or if it might be something else. We can guide clients to the information, but we cannot make the statement “Your rib is out”, as that slips into the realm of diagnosis.

There have been several instances when a client has come to me and based on their reports of pain and on my observations of their movement patterning I have a strong sense that they’re going to need a hip replacement. But I cannot tell them that. What can I do? I’ve handled it by saying “I’m really concerned about what’s going on with your hip. I think there might be something more than I can see going on in there and I think it would be a good idea to get that checked out by a doctor who’s good with hip issues.” If they don’t know whom to see I’ll point them in the direction of doctors I’ve heard good things about.

This way I’m helping connect the client with the appropriate professionals and information, without stepping outside of my scope.

We can’t offer medical or dietary advice. If a client reports pain or symptoms that are outside of what we can safely address through movement and breath we need to refer that person to someone with the proper medical training.

It is within our scope to offer information that is considered common knowledge. Such as if a client complains of swelling from an injured ankle we can suggest that they elevate the ankle. We start to stray outside our scope when we start recommending taking anti-inflammatory medications. If a client asks “should I take ibuprofen?”, I might tell them that I’ve heard that does work for some people, but that I can’t really give them advice on what specific medications might be right for them and to give their doctor’s office a call to ask.

There have been several occasions in which I’ve seen clients with what appears to be some pretty bad inflammatory issues in the body. They complain about joint pain, may have red, blotchy skin, or other symptoms that are generally red flags for inflammation. In my personal opinion, from my reading and experience, I might feel they should be eating an anti-inflammatory diet. But it is not my position to tell them that specifically, or to tell them what foods they should eat or avoid.

What I can do is say some thing like “I’m not suggesting that this is right for you, as I am not a dietitian and not trained to give dietary advice, but I’ve heard some people with these issues have done well on an anti-inflammatory diet. If you’re curious about this I can give you the name of a wholistic nutritionist who can help you figure out if this might be an good option for you”

Remember, you can always give common knowledge advice, such as “eat more veggies and less processed foods and sugar”, but cannot suggest a specific diet.

So what can we do if we feel our clients have gotten “bad” medical advice?

Being in the movement field it may seem clear to us that long term investment in the body, through good movement, healthy eating, and manual work such as massage, physical therapy, or chiropractic, etc, generally provides better long term outcomes than quick fixes, such as surgery as a first option. So what do you do if a client’s doctor has recommended a surgery to fix a problem you’ve seen over and over again to be easily addressed through movement? Or my pet issue, cortisone shots?

We cannot tell the client to ignore medical advice, or that we know better, or offer our own medical advice. What we can do is gently suggest the client seek a second opinion, and possibly direct them to links to credible medical sites, such as the mayo clinic site. We can not push our opinions, so if they don’t seem receptive to the suggestion we must back off and let it be.

In regard to cortisone shots, about which I have strong feelings and opinions, when this comes up with my clients I generally say “I’m not a medical professional, so I am certainly not giving you medical advice here, but there are some conflicting opinions out there about these shots, so it may be worth looking into a bit more before you decide. My orthopedic doctor advised me strongly against the shots because he says they degrade the joint, so are not appropriate for a younger, active person, with lots more years to go on the joint. That is what he said to me, but your situation may be different. If you’re thinking you want to investigate more before making a decision I can give you the names of a few local doctors who might be able to give you a second opinion. But again, I am not medically trained and have not seen all that your doctor is looking at to give you this recommendation.”

We have to be super careful with this, to be very clear we are not giving medical advice and that there’s no way the client could infer that we are telling them to disregard medical advice given to them by a medical professional. I would consider the advice to seek a second opinion within the realm of common knowledge, so I feel that keeps us within our scope.

So what about supplements, essential oils, and muscle recovery rubs?

There are countless products that are meant to support our health, recovery, and general wellbeing. We may swear by some of these, and might possibly sell some of them, too. How do we navigate discussing these products with clients?

I would say that any recommendation of supplements definitely falls outside our scope of practice. We should suggest, if a client asks, that they speak with their wholistic or osteopathic doctor to address these questions.

There is one supplement, called Zyflamend, that was highly recommended to me by the occupational therapist I saw after a TFCC tear in my wrist, resulting from a bicycle accident, followed by a bit too much handstand practice. She told me it was clinically tested with great results, and shown to be safe. I used it and continue to use it for flare ups of inflammation in any joints. Occasionally I have a client who asks if there’s anything they should take, or that I take for similar issues. I’m careful not to recommend the supplement. I might state that, while I cannot make recommendations about supplements, they could ask their doctor about it and see if it might be an appropriate option. I clearly state not to take it on my advice, as I am not qualified and don’t know their medical details to know if it’s safe and appropriate for them. If I write down the name of it for them I’m always sure to write “ask your doctor about..” before the name of the supplement. So even if they find the paper lying around months later it is clear that I am not recommending the supplement, only suggesting that they could bring it up as a possible option with their doctor. And I only do this when specifically asked about supplement or anti-inflammatory options, so it’s clear I’m not promoting a product or medical approach.

Essential oils and muscle recovery rubs, such as arnica ointments, are in another category in terms of scope. These have good anecdotal support, but not a lot of specific scientific research backing them. Most importantly for us though, is that they have little in the way of side effects, other than possible allergic reactions. Most directions for use state to test a small patch of skin for allergic reaction before using in greater amounts. So we’re looking at a pretty safe product, if used properly, with lots of great stories of helping people with all sorts of health issues. So is it safe and within our scope of practice to recommend these products to our clients?

I personally feel that as long as we do not recommend the products in place of medical treatment there is a place within our scope to suggest trying some of these as options. Also, if you sell these products great care must be taken not to step over the boundary of a suggestion and a beautifully arranged display of pretty bottles, into an overly strong sales pitch that pressures a client into making purchases. As trainers our clients put a great deal of trust and faith in us, so we must be careful not to exploit that trust for up-selling our retail products. Yes, we need to bring in revenue, and that’s fine, but a soft sell approach is more ethical (and probably much more appealing) in our line of work.

What about hands on assists for clients? It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to teach movement effectively without giving hands on assistance and cueing. This is especially true of the GYROTONIC® system, in which most movements have carefully coordinated hands on support from the trainer, which are learned in the teacher training course as part of our basic cueing.

Both the Pilates and GYROTONIC® systems incorporate some form of assisted stretching or tractioning. But while we may assist in guiding a bone through the proper pathway of its joint, or giving a little pull at the ankles to create decompression through the legs and up through the spine, we need to be sure that the hands on we’re executing is clearly for the propose of guiding movement, and not stepping into the bounds of massage or osteopathic manipulation. Even if for those trainers who are qualified in these other modalities a clear distinction should be made between movement training, massage, and manipulation.

If you are unclear as to where that boundary lies, ask yourself what is the purpose of the assist? If it’s to guide, support, or traction movement or alignment, then you’re probably within your scope. If it’s to adjust the boney alignment or release soft tissues in manner in which the client is passive, then you might be stepping out of the scope of practice. This can of course get into grey areas, so it’s important to maintain an active awareness and to keep evaluating your cueing to be sure you’re keeping clarity of your scope.

As trainers we should be able to share our passion and knowledge about heath and wellness, and there’s plenty of room to do that within our scope of practice. If you’re a bit unclear still about what’s okay and what’s not, take a few minutes to review any code of conduct or scope of practice guidelines provided by the entity through which you certified.

Do you have any grey areas you’re coming across in your teaching and want some guidance of how to stay within scope? Let me know!

As a Gyrotonic® Master Trainer and Pilates Instructor Trainer I’ve had many discussions over the years with new and experienced trainers in which they tell me their dreams of opening a studio of their own. I’ve also had many friends and colleagues who are studio owners confess their insecurities, frustrations, and also share their stories of successes.

I had a studio for 15 years, at one time I had two, and have seen ups and downs, joys and turmoils. Closing my studio at the end of 2013 was an immense weight lifted from my shoulders. I thought I’d feel some sadness around it, but it was clear that chapter of my life had come to a natural ending. When I closed it I could see shrugging all that off was freeing me to focus on the aspect of my work that was most important to me, which is teaching.

When a trainer asks me whether or not to open a studio, or to expand an existing one, I can’t honestly answer that for someone else. I can only pose the following questions and ideas and hopefully their own responses will lead them to a decision that’s right for that particular person.

How do you imagine your studio?

A studio can be anything from a large, fully equipped space, offering multiple modalities, employing a dozen or more people with a reception staff, and a a juice bar, to a spare bedroom in your home with a single piece of equipment. Or it can be anything in between those two extremes.

Often times I find trainers picture the studio where they’ve done their teacher training, or one that’s hired them to train clients, and that hold that up as the image of what a studio “should” be. But this scale isn’t right for everyone. If you’re planning to create a studio of your own it should be the studio that fits your lifestyle, strengths, and personality. It certainly doesn’t need to be the biggest studio in order to be the best studio you could create.

What are your strengths? And why did you choose the path of becoming a trainer?

If you are terrible with keeping up with emails, overwhelmed by spreadsheets, dread interpersonal confrontation, and if you like a lot of leisure time, running a midsized to large studio might be outside your comfort zone.

But if you thrive off networking, love being in a managerial role, and get a buzz off of being in constant communication with others, maybe it’s something you could consider taking on.

Be aware, if teaching is your sole passion, running a studio will cut into the time, energy, and resources you have to work with clients or pursue continuing education for yourself. In this case working for a studio that provides you with your basic studio needs, or setting up a little home studio for yourself may be a better option.

Another approach is the collective style studio. In this model often times trainers will all chip in rent for the space as well as managing their own scheduling and billing. There are many ways to set up a collective arrangement, partly dependent on state employment laws and partly based on preferences of the trainers involved. There may be one person who takes a lead role in this set up, or a group of equally contributing trainers. Just be sure if you enter into an arrangement like this that you trust all the trainers involved, have clear expectations, and have a written agreement.

How much time can you invest?

If you’re a parent to a young child or have other family obligations, health concerns, outside hobbies that take a lot of your free time, or certainly if you have another job you can’t leave, you might want to consider keeping your vision scaled down to fit your life. This might mean renting space from a small studio, setting up a little basement studio in your house, or continuing to work as an employee for a studio. If you’re single, or have a very undemanding partner, have few family obligations, and are ready to leave your current job, then you might be in a great position to take on opening a bigger studio.

How much money can you invest?

I personally started my studio in my apartment with $2000 I borrowed from my dad to buy a used reformer, and then just added piece by piece as I grew, until I had a studio full of equipment and had to move to an even bigger studio.

But if you want to have a fully equipped studio with a good few trainers from day one you’ll have to have a sizable amount of cash for that. There’s the equipment, studio rent, insurance, small equipment and props, web design, utilities, studio software (I hear Mind-Body Online is running $200 a month or more now for some studios), toilet paper, light bulbs, business taxes, etc. Will you be hiring a payroll service? Maybe you’ll need to hire an accountant. Will you give out little holiday gifts to clients? Will you print T-shirts or swag? Will you offer retail items? All of these have costs that might be bigger than a lot of trainers imagine.

What are you financial expectations?

If you’re going into the Mind-body fitness studio business to make your millions you’d better have a good re-think about that. While I do know some studio owners who are making a fairly comfortable living, I haven’t met any who are really raking it in. It definitely helps if when starting out you’re not counting on studio profits as your primary income to support a family.

The primary issue with the typical studio model is that what we do takes a good bit of square footage, which costs a lot of money. We also need to be in areas accessible to people who can afford our rates, often meaning higher rents. Plus trainers need to be paid an attractive enough wage to come work for you, and to stay working for you. So the percentage of the total fee the client pays for a session that the studio actually gets to keep as profit ends up being pretty low. So this means you either need a large volume of clients coming through (which adds more costs in terms of managing people and scheduling, as well as wear and tear on the equipment and studio furnishings), or you need to bump the price per session up high enough to make a bigger profit margin. But then you’re potentially pricing out a lot of clientele.

Because private sessions and smaller group classes are pricey, a lot of studios tend to present a luxurious front to appeal to the clientele that can afford these types of services. There may be live orchids, and trays of organic lotions available for clients to use, and possibly some expensive retail products displayed alluringly, all creating a sense of indulgence and affluence. Trainers, or students going through teacher training, may see this high end presentation and assume that it reflects the bank account of the studio owner. But that’s probably not an accurate picture of the revenue the studio is actually generating.

It’s important to make any decision about opening a studio, or about what scale of studio to take on, with a clear understanding of the challenges of studio finances.

How long do you want to do this?

Often times I see trainers get really inspired and excited about creating and building a studio business. They love making their business plan, designing a logo and website, picking paint colors, ordering equipment and setting it up, and walking through IKEA picking out their shelving. But there’s a big difference in how it feels to create a studio and how it feels to run a studio. Every day. For years. That can get tedious. And it’s not terribly glamorous work. I remember getting a call at 9pm on a Sunday night that someone was locked out of the studio and had booked a client at that insane hour. Guess who was responsible for changing out of her pajamas and driving to the studio to open the door? That kind of stuff happened all the time.

Once you start hiring people you become responsible for their livelihoods. You can’t ask people to base their career decisions on you providing a consistent teaching space for them and then suddenly close up shop one day because you’re tired of it. Well, you can, but it’s not really an ethical thing to do.

There are lots of other considerations as well, such as is there a market for this where you want to set up? You’ll need to make a business plan. Are there enough skilled trainers in your area, and if not how will you get them? Is your local market saturated with a particular type of studio? What will you do to be different or the best? Or at least the best option for enough people to come to your studio over the other choices.

In my teaching career I started working for a big studio, worked out of my apartment for awhile, ran a collective style studio for awhile, transitioned that studio into a bigger business with employees, a studio manager, administrative help, and interns, and a second location, and now I teach once again out of a larger studio that I don’t own. I plan when I retire to continue teaching part time out of a home studio.

We’ve all experienced physical pain and probably work regularly with clients who have pain. Pains can come and go, or pain can be chronic and relentless. Some of us seem to have great tolerance and resilience toward pain, while others seem to fall apart at even the thought that something might ache.

Pain is very individual, very personal, so one person can’t really judge another person’s pain. As trainers, while we don’t want to judge our clients’ pain, we can serve as something more like interpreters of their pain.

When a client says a movement “hurts”, we then have to ask a series of follow up questions, which might include:

“Does it ‘hurt’, or is it more of an ache?”, “Is it a sharp feeling, or more of a dull feeling?”, “Where exactly do you feel it?”, “Always in the same place? Or does it move?” “Only when you move, or afterward as well?”, “ “Have you felt this before? If so, how long?, how frequently?”, “Do particular activities bring it on?”, “Is there something you find relieves it?” “Does it feel like muscle soreness, as if it’s worked hard, or does it feel like strain?”, ” Does it go away quickly, or does it last a long time? How long?”, etc.

We also can’t help but interpret the situation based on our experience and knowledge of the client. Is this someone who never complains even when we suspect they might be pushing too far into discomfort, or is this someone who gets really uncomfortable if the towel they’re lying on is a little bunchy? Or do they fall somewhere in between on that spectrum.

The one question I’ve never asked a client is how they rate their pain on the “pain scale”, the ten point scale you’ve probably seen in doctors’ offices or emergency rooms. I’ve been asked to rate pain before on this scale and found it to be perplexing, ambiguous, and highly subjective. I’ve often side stepped the question by answering something like “it hurts more than second degree burns, but less than labor contractions”, because this is my specific reference for pain. Someone else’s is probably quite different.

I started to think pretty deeply about the subject of pain after I was run over as a pedestrian by a pickup truck and suffered a shattered tibial plateau and a displaced fracture of the medial malleolus. The meniscus was torn and there was other pretty nasty soft tissue damage. I had surgical reconstruction of both my knee and ankle and was non-weight bearing for three months, relying on a walker and a wheelchair, and occasionally crutches.

I was given morphine in the ambulance, and then prescribed narcotics. And again, I was given morphine after surgery and then prescribed another assortment of narcotics. The paramedic in the ambulance who had given me morphine for transport had also given me a great explanation. He said “the morphine won’t take the pain away, but it will make you not care about the pain”. In the foggy, drugged out state that followed I pondered how true and profound his statement was. But soon I discovered it really didn’t matter because I couldn’t tolerate narcotics.

Somehow, I’m not sure why, but the pain medications didn’t really work to relieve the pain. They did however make me so nauseated that I couldn’t eat. So my leg still hurt and now my stomach hurt. So they gave me an anti-nausea drug, which didn’t really work, but gave me splitting headaches. So now my leg hurt, my stomach hurt, AND my head hurt. So I stopped taking everything after pretty much right away.

The thought came to me that if there was no dulling the pain my only other option was to dive into it and explore it. I spent the next year immersed in and fascinated by pain.

My first realization was that pain is really just communication from the body. If I tune it out I’m missing out on a lot of useful information my body is trying to give me. I’d experienced this before when I gave birth to my son at home without any medications. I’d found that the intense sensations, along with my experienced midwife, guided me as to what to do through a difficult, three day labor. But this time the pain was going to have to guide me through a much longer process.

I tuned into the pain, all of the sensations, and found I could discern subtle differences. “This is bone pain” I’d say to myself, “My bone is growing and repairing and so it’s okay that I feel that. It’s as it should be.” Or I’d notice “this deep ache that makes me feel nauseated and sweaty is my tight fascia being stretched after having been immobilized in the boot and the brace. This is okay. It’s beginning to move again.” But sometimes I’d feel a sharp, piercing pain and know “this is my body saying stop. This range of motion is going to cause damage. I’m not ready for this yet”

Once I could understand the pain I had less anxiety toward it. And once the anxiety lifted I could get to the business of doing what I needed to do to heal.

So how does this apply in working with clients? First of all, I feel I really do have a deeper understanding now of what they may be going through. While it’s not my place to tell them what their pain means I can help them explore it and help them begin to interpret it for themselves. This may be challenging for people with less body awareness, but even just bringing their attention to the shades and layers of sensation, helping them focus in on the differences, can help them feel less anxious.

Often times I’ll notice someone may wince slightly before they even begin a movement, as they’re only just preparing to move. I might have them talk me through the sensations they’re feeling and the emotions they’re having surrounding those sensations. Often times they realize that they can do more than they expected, but that they are so conditioned to brace against the pain they’ve felt in the past that, even as the pain has subsided over time, the anxiety they feel about it begins to act like the pain itself and becomes the restriction to a feared range of motion.

Or the pain may still be present and real. But I won’t know until we connect with it. As trainers, we can help them navigate the pain. Together, trainer and client, we can then determine what their true restrictions are, and not hold them back from reaching their potential out of fear.

All of that said, we must remain within the scope of our practice. If a client is experiencing ongoing pain they should be working with a good physical therapist or other body worker qualified to provide manual work and adjustments in addition to the physical conditioning they’re doing with us. And of course we never want to pressure a client to “just push through it”.

If it’s okay with your client and you can have a bit of communication with their other practitioner(s) this can be immensely helpful, both from a programming prospective and to make sure the client isn’t hearing conflicting information, which can be discouraging. (As a side note, I like to have a client email or text me permission to share information about our sessions. This way I have a written record that they agreed to me discussing their confidential information, just to have all bases covered)

While going through a period of pain isn’t going to be fun, pain can be a great opportunity for the client to learn about their body. They’ll hopefully come out of the experience with a better understanding of their anatomy, alignment, movement patterns, habits, as well as their capacity and potential. My perspective is that if you’re going to be in pain you might as well glean as much as you can from the experience.

Have you thought about your relationship with and attitude toward pain, be it yours or your clients’? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

It’s about time to start working on your taxes, and if you’re like many mind-body fitness trainers this might fill you with a sense of foreboding, panic, or impending doom. While some of us might be good with numbers and math, that’s probably not a skill that drew us to this profession. I know it’s not my strongest area.

Hopefully you have an organized, efficient system in place and you can easily access all of your pertinent info and either plug it into your tax program, or neatly present it to your accountant.

If that’s not the case I’d love to give you a quick solution to dig yourself out from under the pile of random receipts, but unfortunately I can’t. What I can do is give you some tips that have worked for me so that you can put them into place right now so that next year goes smooth and easy.

While everyone’s situation is different, this is how I manage my taxes. One caveat: my degree is in dance. My financial training has been purely trial and error. If you have specific financial questions please check with an accountant. Also, although I have run a studio in the past, this is more relevant to trainers who don’t run a studio with employees, although it might still give you some ideas for tracking your travel and educational expenses.

INCOME

I currently have several sources of income that I have to track. I receive:

1. W2 for the clients I see as an employee of the studio where I work.

2. 1099 for payment to my business for teacher trainings I conduct at the studio.

3. 1099 for payments made to me for an equipment purchase.

4. Pay slips for some of the courses or classes I teach off site as a traveling Master Trainer.

5. Nothing for some courses or classes I teach off site as a traveling Master Trainer, so I have to keep my own documentation of these.

These documents I put into a big, clear plastic envelop when I receive them. I print out my own record of payments for which I received no documentation. This doesn’t need to be elaborate. You could do it in a spreadsheet, or you could just keep it in the notes app on your phone. Just make sure you note the date, amount, who paid it, and what was the service provided.

When I receive any other tax documents, from my credit union, investment accounts, health insurance, or anything that comes in the mail or online that says “TAX DOCUMENT”, it all goes into the envelope.It would be helpful to have a list, or spreadsheet if you want to get fancy, of all the tax documents you expect to receive.

You could prepare now by making a list of what you receive this year, and then just think through what might be different for next year. You could put that list in the front of your envelope and check things off as you get them.
I double check my list and see if there’s anything that I didn’t receive by mail that I need to go online and print out.

Now is a good time to double check that the info is correct on ALL of your documents. Last year there was a typo in my social security number on my W2. I didn’t notice and so my tax return was rejected. So far it’s cost me $340 in accountant fees (as the IRS wouldn’t speak to me, and the accountant pays for special phone access that we can’t get as regular citizens), and I still have not received my refund.

EXPENSES

I used to save all of my receipts in an accordion folder and then dump them all out on the floor in January and sort through the pile and add up all the categories. Ugh. Horrible. That’s why they invented apps.

Now I use a budgeting app called Mint. It works on my phone or laptop. It’s great just for budgeting and tracking spending in general, but I’ve found it especially useful for tracking my business expenses.

What I do is for each business trip I take, for example, I create a “tag”, such as “Gyrotoner®/Germany/2018”. The Mint is linked to all of my bank accounts and credit cards. So any time I spend on a debit or credit card, or write the occasional paper check, it comes up in my transactions. Cash expenses I can enter manually (so do them right away so you don’t forget). I then tag each of the expenses to “Gyrotoner®/Germany/2018”, or whatever the appropriate category would be. Then, once I’ve finished spending on a particular trip, I can pull up the tag on my laptop, then export all the tagged transactions so I have them all in a spreadsheet.

Not only does it help me track expenses for taxes, it also helps me see the total cost of taking a course, or how much I spent to go teach a course, so I can see if I’m spending my money and time as efficiently as I think I am.
You can also set up categories in Mint for business expenses, with sub categories for meals, uniform, tuition, studio rentals, etc. Think about how it would make sense for you to use it, play around a bit with the app, and do what works for you.

I also keep a super simple spreadsheet in which I note any mileage if I drive to teach or take a course. I just note the date, purpose, to/from, and miles. At the end of the year I print it out and put it in my envelope.

HELP

I personally send my exported expenses from Mint to a friend who does bookkeeping for me. It’s such a small job I just give her a couple private sessions around tax season in exchange. I could probably do it myself now, but we’ve been doing it this way since I had my studio with more complex finances, and it’s just sort of carried over.

I also take all my compiled income and expense info to an accountant. This is also a carry-over from having a studio, with depreciation on equipment, and all sorts of other complexities. But this year I’m going to try Turbo Tax, since those financial loose ends from my studio are pretty much tied up now. You can also take advantage of FREE assistance opportunities. If you make under $55,000 you can get free tax preparation by volunteers https://www.irs.gov/individuals/free-tax-return-preparation-for-you-by-volunteersYou might also check with your local library to see if they have information on free help.

Grey Areas

There is conflicting information out there, but here are a few things relevant to our field worth taking note of to be completely legit on your tax return. Again, this is tax advice from a dance major, so verify all of this with a professional if you’re concerned.

Technically, as it was explained by my accountant, workout clothes are NOT tax deductible, unless they have the studio logo or branding. In that case they are considered “uniform”. So don’t go crazy at Athleta assuming you can write it all off.

Bartering is supposed to be reported on your taxes. So if you exchange private sessions for massage with a friend, you’re technically supposed to report the value of that exchange. Super confusing, I know.

Be really clear with your accountant about “per diem” expensing your trips. I know a lot of trainers do this, but it’s not necessarily as straight forward as you might think. So if this is something you plan to do you’d best get some professional advice.

And on that note, get professional advice on anything you’re not sure of. Even if you work with an accountant for one year and get all of your specific questions answered. You can use that year’s tax return as a sort of template for when you try it yourself the following year.

This is just how I handle my taxes, and it may or may not work for you. Do you have any tax prep hacks you’d like to share? Let me know!