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