I made it through the Advanced Instructor Module. In one piece. I knew it would focus on technique and advanced coaching. While it was not exactly what I expected, it blew my mind. Things are starting to click now. I m so excited to put what I learned into play and take teaching to a new level.
I was silly to worry about the kind of people and levels of experience of the people in the training, there were people who have been instructing for years and years, as well as people who have been instructing as long as I have been. I met so many great instructors, from Southere California to Stockton, Fairfield and San Francisco, from 24hr Fitness to the YMCA.
The trainer was Megan Peterson, Northern American BodyPump trainer and she was awesome!Very down to earth and funny, honest, helpful and to the point. I'm not going to detail the day, but suffice it to say I'm not the only one who talks too much in classes! There was an overall theme of instructors needing to organize our cues, and coach with a sense of purpose, that was missing across the board. I realized I've been giving a grocery list of cues throughout my classes without really delivering the cues with a purpose, and by giving too many cues too close together,npeople have a hard time following them all or even understanding what I'm saying. To slow down gives participants a chance to process them one by one, get the technique down and perform them well.
I've never really scripted my cues, even though Alex has told me numerous times. I'm always too busy, and as I got more experience, I figured I knew what compulsory cues to give so why do I need to write them down? It's like journaling what you eat in order to really be aware what goes in your mouth, when you do things mindlessly, its never a good thing. There needs to be an awareness, whether it's what goes in your body or what you say to a group of BodyPumpers. I realized I throw out cues left and right and I'm constantly repeating myself throughout a track, probably because I fee the need to repeat it because people need the reminding.
I scripted cues for the last two days, wrote out track introductions in order to include the track focus and decided to go back to 76 since that was my training release and I knew the chorey so well. Tonight in class......I'm not going to say it was an epic fail, but it almost felt like I went back to the beginning again. Maybe I tried to do too much at once. I delivered the track intros well, quickly and with a focus. The problem came with my overthinking too much that fifth voice, the one of silence, and as a result, I don't think it was a great class. Yes, I had people tell me it was at the end, and Amanda gave me great feedback, saying some tracks were better than others but I wasn't as animated and my Big voice was missing. I did space out my cues and I didn't repeat myself. Amanda said by the last few tracks, I talked "more" but that's probably because I felt a bit stifled earlier and it was just starting to escape me!
Sigh. This is going to be harder than I thought and take longer to evolve. It's definitely not as easy as it sounds.
I did gain a new member tonight, a participant and fellow teacher brought her friend and she liked my class, turns out she was a former Golds member and remembers me from there, and decided to join once she took my class tonight, so that was a positive. All I can do is keep trying, fill those gaps with some fitness magic, and keep scripting.
Tomorrow I have 9 parent teacher conferences starting before school and until after 4:00. I'm very much looking forward to a 90 minutes massage, as I'm very tight in my quads. Then off to script more and hopefully get into that textbook that I need to focus on.
Deep breath.
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