Introducing: The Ideal Member

One of the many mentors once spoke about his “ideal member”. This hypothetical individual would join his gym and train just two or three days per week as a beginner. With time, she would see remarkable fitness gains, learn how to move, and eventually upgrade her training volume. Some day she would eventually train as much as five or six days a week at the gym mastering her new found capabilities and mindset. Over time, say five or six years, she’d actually begin to train less at the gym and more on her own.

In my mentor’s mind, the ideal student came to his facility to be coached. The coaching would progress the individual’s fitness level to the point where she learned how to train, and eventually would be proficient enough to need this coaching less and less. His perspective opened my eyes up to what the value of the gym was.

The way DEUCE Gym has evolved has changed what’d I’d call our ideal member. Contextually, we are also a facility predicated on coaching. Our ideal member is also a beginner who commits to training just two or three days per week to start and sees remarkable fitness adaptation to the point that she can scale up training volume. She’d have a growth mindset that’s open to learn and would embrace critique. For me, what starts to make the ideal DEUCE Gym member unique is the nearly unlimited opportunity for growth outside of GPP class. This member who has learned accountability and earned tangible fitness with coaching in GPP class would venture out to explore a specialty course to satisfy either some deficiency or genuine interest. She would eventually return to GPP with new skills and proficiency that would spiral her experience of fitness forward.

Ideally, she would continue to explore specialty courses one-by-one sucking the marrow out of each coaching experience. This process could be repeated for a decade of meaningful, new learning. After a full exploration of every specialty discipline from rowing and strength to breath-work and gymnastics, this student could reflect on an ideal quest into human movement the DEUCE Gym way. It would feel like she earned a black belt in fitness.

The only cherry on top for this ideal member would be a curiosity that manifested outside the gym. She would take up something new like rock climbing or kick boxing along the way that would give training renewed meaning. Life would be different outside of the gym.

I always appreciated my mentor’s perspective on the ideal student. To expand upon his vision, we’ve selfishly devised a fitness school with DEUCE Gym that challenges coaches to spearhead their specific specialty deeper than surface level. This allows us to be responsible for more and, as a result, offer more to our students. Ideally speaking, we’ll have dozens of black belts under our flag one day.

 

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach