Dear Fitty,
 
As you know, we have to close the gym on Thursday and re-open at the start of December.
So as with the last lockdown, we’re moving online temporarily.
We’ve outlined below, the membership options for this, and further down this post is information about borrowing equipment from the gym to supplement your online training.
 
We have had numerous people reach out and ask how they can support us during this second lockdown, which has been so lovely to see.
We appreciate not everyone can offer additional support nor would we feel it appropriate to ‘ask for’. 
However, we are not too humble to say that any additional support (through memberships or equipment borrowing donations) would clearly be gratefully received - especially, as the government support on offer doesn’t ever our rent this time around.
 
This is of course totally optional, and as ever, the thing we’re most grateful for, is you sticking by us, by staying as a client and training online during these tough times.
 
 
MEMBERSHIP OPTIONS
 
1.Amend your membership to an online-only membership (13 sessions per month) and pay £49 
 
2.Amend your membership to an online-only membership (unlimited sessions) and pay £65 

3.Amend your gym membership to a hybrid membership which gives you 14 online sessions per month, but is your way of “paying a bit extra” whilst we’re closed :-) (you’ll get access to our brand new “Mini Sisters of Steel” workouts - see below) 
 
4.Keep your current gym membership which gives you 14 online sessions per month, but is your way of “paying a bit extra” whilst we’re closed  (you’ll get access to our brand new “Mini Sisters of Steel” workouts - see below)
 
5. Keep my current online membership
 
IMPORTANT: Today, we took delivery of 25 mini barbells and weights set (think body-pump style). These were for use in the gym. We ran a high-end small group strength training program before Covid so wanted to work towards a large group model whilst we're unable to work as closely together.
 
As we can’t use this new equipment for a month now, we’ve decided to add 3 additional online sessions per week during lockdown, that utilise them.
 
And you’ll be able to have access to a mini barbell set and these additional sessions if:
 
a) you choose option 3 or 4 from above
 
b) you choose an online-only training membership from above, but request the “mini sisters of steel” classes as a bolt-on for an extra £10 per month
 
c) you’re one of the first 25 people to request one of these options
 
Please click THIS LINK and complete your preferences.
 
https://chrislupton.wufoo.com/forms/rnowkkq041kxml/
 
We won’t make any changes to your membership and payment until we’ve heard back from you via this form.
 
NOTE: Because of our how membership system works, we still need to figure out whether we’d change your membership, apply a credit, issue a refund etc.
We’ll figure this out over the next day or so - but please be assured that it will be sorted on way or another. Nobody will miss out :)
 
EQUIPMENT BORROWING
 
We are planning to loan out all the dumbbells and kettlebells (including the BIG shiny ones) for your use at home with our online workouts whilst the gym is closed.
 
This time around, we’re asking for OPTIONAL 'pay as you feel' donations to borrow equipment.
You do not have to make a donation (we appreciate we’re not the only ones who have been hit hard during this pandemic), and are still totally welcome to borrow equipment regardless :)
 
If however you want to make a donation, again, we’d be grateful as it helps us to cover our costs (which don’t change during a lockdown).
 
To make a donation, simply choose one of the options below (you don't need a PayPal account!)

https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=VKXBXEHNGZXH8

Click the link below to open the 'new rules' document.
Please do take particular note of:

• Water
• No towels
• Showers
• Mats & Boxing gloves

Greetings esteemed fitty!

We've finally (sorry it's been delayed, we're all working every second going at the moment and it's utter chaos behind the scenes!!) released the new timetable for when the gym re-opens, along with the updated membership options.

We posted in the FB group so some of you will have seen it.

Here's a cut and paste of the entire post incase you missed it or aren't on FB:-)

____________________________________________________________

BREAKING NEWSWe know many of you have been eagerly awaiting this info!
(please hold the funny comments about the length of this post, for once. This is important stuff for us as a business right now and it's important I/we explain ALL of this in as much detail as possible, as it saves us fielding 250 questions by PM).
_______________________________________
Timetable

• This timetable is likely to change an a fortnightly basis over the next few months. At some point, someone will get a little grumpy about it - and we can only apologise for that in advance, and reiterate the message that now more than ever, we are taking all decisions with our (the gym side of things) long term ‘survival’ in mind.
• We have to get to at least 25/30 sessions a week in the gym - in order to fund it. So our aim is to build upto that over August and September. The more people come or want to come to the gym, the sooner those sessions will be added.
• Specific online sessions will remain based on attendance - not verbal demand. eg We won’t keep slots open just because people say they want to attend. We’ll keep them open IF people attend. And likewise, if there becomes a need for other slots, we’ll add those in too.
• PT in the park - we’re going to be advertising and running a 21 day challenge to ‘fill ‘ these slots. Obviously, current members can still book on to those sessions too.
  The 7:10am is currently removed as from August, but we may add one back in if needs be. ALL decisions are taken based on business needs - we understand that from a client perspective, if there’s 4 people or so attending a session then it makes sense to keep it on, rather than upsetting those 4 people, but sadly, that’s just not how sound business decisions work.
  Again, where there’s ENOUGH demand, for anything, we WILL provide it.

• Image 1 is the new timetable from 3rd August for the following two weeks
• IMPORTANT: note the subtle time changes on some sessions. This is due to the increased time we need between gym sessions. (and we don’t want an online sessions at say 7:10am and a gym session at 7:15am. It WILL confuse some people!)

______________________________________

Memberships

• Image 2 shows the updated membership options
• The online-only options.
• The new hybrid option.
• The ‘gym’ options
• IMPORTANT: Whilst we run PT in the Park ( whilst it’s light and warm for a few months) we are effectively grouping it together as a similar service to the gym.
  eg IN-PERSON / FACE-TO-FACE Coaching.
  We are now allowed up to 30 people in one of the outdoors sessions, so we’ll be running it as a large group style session and pricing it accordingly.
  
  THE FOLLOWING IS SUPER IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND:
  This means that for Hybrid memberships, you get:
  7 x online sessions
  7 x Gym / PT in the Park sessions
  (and this 7 can be used in any “mix”.
  eg all 7 in the gym, 4 in the gym and 3 in PT in the park, etc etc)
• For ‘Gym Only’ memberships, you get 14 sessions.
  One more than before!
  These 14 can be used for ANYTHING (not including SoS if and when we get round to bringing that back). That means you can doo 14 in the gym. Or maybe 8 in the gym, 4 PT in the Park, and online. ANY combination at all!
• Unlimited memberships get you as many as you want of everything (except SoS)
• For the ‘Gym Only’ membership, we have a few clang-long term clients on a long-term legacy 'loyalty'  price which is a few quid below this new price and what those who've joined more recently in the past 12-18months have paid (we don't "shout about" NOT  increasing long term member' pricing. we just do it to try and reward loyalty :-)
  That legacy price will be honoured until October, when we’ll increase it by those couple of pounds to £85 (unless you decide to bail!). And of course you get the extra session, plus the new addition of PTITP for extra flexibility and choice.
• The same applies to those on longer term unlimited memberships - if you bought, say last year, at the slightly reduced price, obviously you’ll continue on the terms of what you paid. And these will be the new fees for if and when you choose to renew:-)

____________________________________

Offers

• We’re releasing a couple of “offers”. These are fairly clear on the image below.
  In essence, for each “main” membership, you have the option to pay for 10 months upfront, and you’ll get 2 months free.
  There are 3 of each of those available, on a first come, first served basis.
  And there’s also the option to ‘finance’ the unlimited 12 month option, by paying half upfront, and the other half split across the following 11 months.

____________________________________

What next?

• IMPORTANT (lots of important stuff today eh!?). I know some of you have messaged innovate crew with your intentions already. And it was me who asked you to do that on the webinar last week.
  We need you all (including anyone who’s messaged innovate crew already) to kindly click the link below, and let us know which option you want. (basically, this auto-populates a sheet which makes managing all this 100x easier for Anna and Zoe).

https://chrislupton.wufoo.com/forms/innovate-version-20/
____________________________________

I’ve turned off commenting on this post - purely because historically we find that whenever there’s “big news” like this that impacts all clients, all it takes is one or two public grumbles, to spill over into unhelpful threads of comments.
As ever, we always welcome feedback that is constructive - we even act on useful feedback too.
At the same time, we’re are a business, not a market stall to barter with, and given the unprecedented challenges the gym side of things, and everything we’re now doing is geared towards “re-growing” that side of things, whilst continuing to deliver the new and highly enjoyable visual classes too :-)

Any questions, please message innovate Crew or PM on my WORK FB profile (not my personal one as I won’t reply).
Many thanks as ever - as a team, we’re constantly bouncing between anxiety and excitement around re-opening the gym, but every step we take towards getting it ready, and seeing more people sound excited about coming back , is incredibly motivating for us all :-)

#BeMore

Hey esteemed fitty (by the way, if you're new-ish, we call all our members 'fitties' :) ).

I posted this in the fb group yesterday but wanted to share here on the private member only news reel too, as i know some aren't on FB or may have missed it.

We've taken a very small decision, as one tiny piece of a much larger puzzle, to help us with sustaining our survival in the long run.

Sorry it's longer than expected - typical me :)

Thanks as ever for sticking with us!

​Team innovate 

Dear 'Fitty'

Message from Chris & Pamela (the owners)

Hopefully you'll have seen/heard about the news of why we chose to take sudden action to close the gym.
I shared the "why" behind this decision, on this video.(<--click the link).  Please do watch this if you haven't. I'd personally really appreciate it.

We're aware some gyms have remained open, and focussing on "more cleaning" - we currently don't believe that's enough to ensure as much safety as possible.
I'm told that there's pressure on some of the "sport and fitness governing bodies" to provide more clarity on the lack of clarity the government has being giving for businesses like ours.
If we get some clear guidance that suggests we could re-open with specific criteria - or whether outdoor workouts are "safe enough" if people are spaced apart, then we'll look into that too. It's clear that there's significantly less transmission possibilities whilst outdoors, but until we get clearer guidelines on any of this, we believe we're doing the most responsible thing possible - and that is to adhere to "social distancing".

Moving on.
First up, thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to comment and/or message words of support during this difficult time.
It's a pretty horrific time for everyone right now - I've no doubt you are feeling the uncertainty, worry, fear and anxiety that is common for all of us on a daily - maybe hourly basis!
One way or another, we will ALL get through this - it's just impossible to see how or when right now. But I'm a huge believer in trusting in ourselves as human beings to figure things out, even if we aren't always clear on what that looks like.

Thank you also for your incredible patience over the past 48hrs.
We have not been sat on our bums, enjoying time off - quite the opposite. There's never been more activity from the team, but I'm aware you guys can't really see that.
So I appreciate the time you've afforded us to get our heads clear, and formulate not only a plan, but how we want to continue helping as many of you as possible.

Being blunt, we , like many businesses right now, could go under. 
But we will not go down without a fight - and so we're in "damage limitation" mode right now.

These are the options to continue supporting us, remaining a client, and to continue investing in yourself - something which is incredibly important right now. We must ALL keep practicing self-care - otherwise we'll go insane!

Here are the two options to continue working with us.

Option #1: Online Training, Fun & Support

• Unlimited access to all of our live-streamed innovate large group sessions lead by one of our Coaches who will be able to watch your workout and give live feedback, encouragement and the occasional ass-kicking.  
  
  Incase you're not clear on this, we are going to live-stream workouts on the current timetable (yep 6:15am, 9:30am, 12:30pm some day, evenings etc) - but it's NOT a video of a coach doing burpees. You'll log on with your phone or laptop, and the Coach will be able to see (on their laptop) a video of EVERY participant. The  coach will be able to explain the workout, demo the exercises, and then shout/call/encourage you, based on what he/she sees you doing.
  ​
  eg
  If you think it's safe to skip a set of squats and pet your cat who just walked in, you'd be wrong. Your Coach will see you doing this, and give you a verbal rollocking and let everyone else what you're upto :-p
  
  All of these lives classes will be recorded for future access.

• Access to pre-made HiiT-style workouts to follow along a home, designed, created and delivered by our innovate Coaches.

• Online workshops (first one is tonight on mindless eating - 7:30pm - get it in the diary!), focus & accountability challenges for added motivation and focus
  
  
• Weekly (or more if you need /want it!) support and accountability checks ins from our client support team via messenger, to ensure you’re looking after yourself, keeping active, and providing the occasional pep talk as required!

£49 pm




Option #2: Online Personal Training & 1-1 Accountability Coaching

• Everything with our online training option, plus the following:
  
  
• Access to our own innovate iCoach app (normally reserved for personal face-to-face coaching clients)
  
  
• Personalised workouts based on YOUR demands
  (We will physically contact you 1-1, ask you how much time you have, what equipment you have/don’t have, how often you want to workout each day/week, and create bespoke workouts with videos of every single exercise, based on your own specific needs and desires) - this is all delivered through our innovate iCoach app.
  
  
• Your own assigned Personal Accountability Coach who will not only write and create those personalised workouts for you, but will also use the messaging function on our iCoach app to  add a tonne of accountability and check in with you daily, weekly or as often as you need/want to ensure you’re staying active and hitting your workouts)
  
  
• We can also add in nutrition accountability here - however you choose!
  We can get you to keep a written or photo food diary within the app, or link your MyFitnessPal account - again, we can make it bespoke to you, and we can check every day, every other day or every week to see how you’re doing on the eating front. The goal of course, being to encourage and nudge you back on track, when you start slipping.
  
  
• Bonus: As we mentioned, you’ll also get full access to all the live-streamed innovate large group sessions and all the other bits and bobs.

This service normally sells for £129 - and our iCoach plan with fortnightly face-to-face coaching sessions, normally sells for £150-£250pm (the latter if you were to work with me!), but given that we need to over-deliver as a business and just ‘take the hit’ of losing our gym for the short term, I want to offer this for £79 - a saving of £50




We not only want you to support and help us during this time that’s tough for everyone - but we want you to stay part of the fitty community online. 
We believe our social media groups, online challenges we run and personal “regular check ins” are truly valuable to many members.

It’s easy to tell ourselves that during this time, our health & wellbeing should go on hold - but there’s never been a more important time than ever to prioritise this.

Simply having someone to provide accountability to your life, whilst there’s chaos around us, could be the single thing that keeps you sane and healthy! 

I personally believe that to my core - not because we want to “keep clients” but because I’ve benefitted from being part of business coaching & accountability groups over the years, and it’s been the one thing that’s helped me stay accountable to myself.

Most importantly, we believe that it's critical in these tough times, to have something each day where you can "forget" about all this, which exercise provides. "getting into your body and out of your head" is what I call it.

​
What next?
We are reaching out privately to every single client, to ensure everyone sees this message and will of course answer any questions.

If you are reading this before we message you (eg you've seen it posted up in the FB group) we'd really appreciate it if there wasn't any "online debate or discussion" in our social media groups about this if possible please.  

We will spend as long as possible helping you make a decision, answering questions, sorting admin/payment issues out - we'll jump on the phone if needs be. 

We simple ask for two things:

1) A tad more patience whilst we work through a pretty large client base

2) To stick by us, and invest in one of the options above.

Much love - and stay safe

Chris & Pamela
x

EDIT:
We now have ALL the info and links for our LIVE-streamed classes from the gym:)

Zoe and Nathan's post on Facebook is copy and pasted below......

FIRST ONLINE WORKOUT TONIGHT (18th March)  6:25pm - please get booked on in the normal way! 
Hello Fitties!
Here’s how to download Zoom on your laptop and mobile device / tablet so you can view our live online workouts! 
Laptop / desktop PC:
Got to https://zoom.us/
Click sign up it’s free! Top right
Enter your email address. 
Wait a minute or so. 
Got to your inbox & Open the email sent from zoom & click activate / follow instructions. 
Mobile/tablet:
Got to your App Store. 
Search Zoom cloud meetings & sign up in same way as above. 
You will get a blue icon appear for the app on one of your home screens. 
To access each online session you need a link to the zoom ‘meeting’. We’ve scheduled one per class time to recur weekly. 
The one you need for tonight & every Wednesday 6:25pm is here: https://zoom.us/j/893413821
We will add zoom links next to every session in Teamup, add to the announcements on the fb group pages (see announcements at top of group page) plus you will get an Teamup email notification with the link an hour before each class you book into from now on.
Large Group PT Sessions:
06:15am Online Workout https://zoom.us/j/211316387
09:30am Online Workout https://zoom.us/j/736493262
5:30pm Online Workout https://zoom.us/j/358639087
6:25pm Online Workout https://zoom.us/j/893413821
7:20pm Online Workout https://zoom.us/j/426048468
We are working on getting all class times on zoom ASAP but all of tomorrow’s Thursday sessions will be set, book in as normal via the Teamup members app or goteamup.com/login
Each workout will also be recorded so if you can’t make the live session you can access a recording at a time convenient to you 👍
Thanks so much for your patience - Coaches Nath & Zoë are excited to get going

Please just enter your name, email and mobile number below - and it will populate our magic spreadsheet, so we can follow up with you shortly :)

Welcome to the first of many "client only news posts" here on our website (hidden from the public, just for you).

We always have so much going on, and are aware it's hard to communicate it all to you guys, and are constantly trying to see how to best reach so many people, so that you're aware of what's going on incase you want to get involved :)

You'll see below there's plenty to go at - but we take the time to go into this much detail, because every good relationship is built on great communication, and we're committed to building a deeper and deeper relationship with everyone we work with:-)

We hope this post reaches you well, and you find it useful.

Best regards

Chris, and the innovate team
#BeMore

TBecause we've had to tighten up the waitlist rules to ensure we don't get oversubscribed sessions,  we've put on extra sessions to ensure there's plenty of options throughout the day / week.

We've added:
Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday at 10:40am
Thursday @ 8:15am

They're live on GoTeamUp and start as from Tuesday 14th May

Unless you've managed to be more stealth than a ninja, you should have had your mugshot taken by now.
The coaches have done well to dismiss the desires to only have them done with full make-up, new hair-do, and cocktail dress..........and just cracked on! :-p

Remember,  the purpose of this project is so all the coaches can learn everyone's names better.
They actively raised their frustration at not learning everyone's names as fast as they'd like!
The photos are in confidence, and not shared anyway, so you don't need to fret.
We're adding them to your GoTeamUp profile, and also creating our own photo album (an actual one you can hold) so they can flick through it between sessions.
​

Depending on when you train with us, you may have seen our small group strength training program take place.
It's essentially 'semi private Personal Training' - aimed around structured strength training, mostly using barbells, and designed to progress overall strength, whilst increasing confidence in technique (smaller, more bespoke sessions allow for more focussed coaching).

We currently offer a two-week trial to anyone potentially interested in trying it out.
The caveat is that you are genuinely interested in "upgrading" your class membership to a 'hybrid' one (we have memberships that are a mix of both training types) and want to use the free trial to try out this very different style of training to see if you enjoy it.

Having said that, there isn't any pressure at the end of the trial if you decide it's not for you.
Due to it's bespoke nature, we can only accept two new triallers a week (and we have a limited number of sessions available on the timetable ).........but if you do want to find out more, please contact Nathan on Nathan@innovatefitness.co.uk or message the innovate crew Facebook profile.
​

We don't actively promote this that often, but incase you're not in the know, we offer a two week trial to our normal classes for any of your friends or family.

We don't offer free trials to the public, as we've found on the whole, people who come into our world on the 6 or 8 week transformation program, get better early results and are more inclined to commit longer term.

But we also know that people who've been with us for a while, just love the classes themselves, and want their mates to come with them - but that your mates might be a bit sceptical.
Hence the BAFF - Bring A Friend Fortnight.

It's free, and all we ask is that they can do 3 sessions a week for two weeks.
They don't even need to come to the same sessions as you if they can't make it.

At the end of the trial, they'll have the option to join the 6 week Transformation program, jump straight on a membership, or simply say "thanks but not for me".

If they DO join up a membership though, you earn yourself a nice little £30 voucher of your choice.
That's code for "we pay you sales commission for referrals" ;-)


If you would like to bring a friend for a fortnight, again, please contact Nathan
​- Nathan@innovatefitness.co.uk or the innovate crew Facebook profile.

We've been working very hard to try and get this going - we had planned at the start of the year to really get into this in the Spring & Summer.

So far, it's had mixed results  - but only because all the teachers we've spoken to so far, haven't had the availability we want - or should I say, what you guys want.

We had a couple of sessions mid morning Wednesday - but we've had to cancel due to low demand.

We do have Mondays at 10:40am with Lou - it's a great class for beginners to intermediate 'Yogis' !

We also have Pilates with John (even though he's not a formal team member, we're claiming it as another bloke on the team! ;) starting Saturday 18th May.

Both of these classes are £5 PAYG - and you can find them on your goteamup account - simply click the class, and reserve your space (it'll ask you to pay your fiver the you book).

We are also still actively seeking more teachers who might be able to do some of the times you've asked about - Pamela is heading this project up and we'll notify you as and when we make progress.

We've re-designed our training format for our large group sessions!
It's a year since we did this, and it's my (Chris) parting gift at writing the workouts as I hand them over to Nathan.
I've written every single workout since we first started in September 2012 - I dread to think how many that is! - and I think overall, we've got it right with tonnes of feedback about variety and enjoyment.
Having said that, it's time to pass it over, as my role of running the business becomes more demanding. 
I wrote a big post on Facebook explaining it all, as many clients enjoy understanding some of the thought process behind it all - rather than repeat it all here, you can CLICK THIS LINK

95% of you will have been part of our push to ensure everyone is parking in the correct place.
Yes it was 'dull' (you don't come to get lectured about parking right?) and yes it means being a bit more mindful of HOW you park aswell as WHERE you park, but we've been super delighted with the response (I had a personal thank you from the landlord!) and whilst it might seem a petty subject, it IS important, and we would all like to just say thank-you, for taking onboard our requests and cracking on with it.

I hope you've found some use from this 'newsreel' of info.

We'll aim to tart it up and improve it was we go - but the important thing is that we want to keep on improving our communication with you all.

Thank you for your ongoing support, commitment and loyalty - we're proud of what we're building and we're proud to have YOU onboard as part of it.

#BeMore