This year was my first ever visit to the FitPro spring convention. I had heard how incredible it was, the quality of the speakers and the enthusiasm and inspiration delegates come away with. This article is a short summary of my initial thoughts, with more detailed articles to follow.

The convention is held at Loughborough University – the top sporting university in the country, and head of the English Institute of Sport, meaning if nothing else I would come away with an idea of the quality of facilities the top athletes in this university are using.

Loughborough University

The university itself is the biggest campus university in the country, with over 16000 students studying the same range of subjects as anywhere else. There is no doubting however, the massive sporting influence on the University – its design, its range of facilities, but more importantly, the quality of those facilities. They are of the kind of standard that really makes you feel like you could have been a professional athlete if you were only given the chance to train here as a child!

The main event sponsors, Lucozade, had a chill out area for the convention delegates. To reach the area we had to walk alongside the gym, at a balcony level. I have never been more impressed by a gym in my life, and god knows I have been in plenty of them!

The main gym was the size of a sports hall, and it was just perfect – full of bars, plates, dumbbells, power cages, boxes, heavy medicine balls etc – not a stepper in sight! There was another room off the main room, where I could see a chin and dip station and a few resistance machines, but not much else. To cut a long story short, if I could design a gym from scratch, it would look pretty much the same as the Loughborough University gym!

Everyone was in top shape – and the range of shapes was noticeable. From the power lifters to the distance runners working on their conditioning, it seemed every different sport was represented. I saw women performing power cleans with 75kg, I saw a guy benching 170kg, and I saw a tiny Chinese woman deadlifting 120kg – that must have been at least double her body weight. It was great to see fit people doing real, functional exercises. Everything had a point, it wasn’t a fad or something they had read in a glossy magazine last month, it was real exercise for a real reason – to improve performance.

We are already aware of the importance of good health – we just need more people to realise it too.

The gym itself was really quiet – not by means of users, but by volume. There was nobody standing in groups, chatting. Everyone was training hard, training for a reason. There were no women plastered in makeup, no guys spending more time looking in the mirror than actually working. The equipment is battered and tatty – not because it is old, purely because it had been used, regularly and properly. It all works; it all does the job it is supposed to. It isn’t the kind of place WAG’s go to be seen, a premium priced branded gym – it is a performance centre.

To sum up the gym there, it is inspirational. I would love to show people who follow fad diets and exercise regimes the gym at Loughborough, and the conditioning of the people who use it. I’m positive it would change opinions, and do it very quickly. The place reeks of athleticism and achievement. If only this kind of facility had mass appeal…

The Convention

FitPro is the biggest membership organisation in the fitness world. In the UK they control the licensing for Les Mills BTS group exercise, the most famous and well publicised group exercise product in the world. In group exercise circles, were Les Mills leads, the world follows. As a result there was a massive group exercise presence, with all of the glamour, hyperactivity and (at times) downright cringe-worthiness of the presenters.

I don’t want to take anything away from group exercise – it has its place in our massively varied industry, and for many clubs it is literally a lifeblood. It also appeals to millions of people worldwide who perhaps wouldn’t exercise at all if it wasn’t for group programmes, and that can only be a good thing. The social aspect keeps club retention levels up and some people really love it. I am not taking anything away from group exercise programmes – they are just not what exercise is about for me. I see exercise as a health and performance tool, not a flashy, showbiz, theatre-inspired dance. But that’s just me – millions think otherwise, and that’s fine.

The mixture of delegates was interesting to me – every single area of the industry was represented, from the suits at the top of the major gym chains, to the bodybuilders, the beginners, the strength and conditioning coaches, the sole traders, therapists, Personal Trainers, group exercise instructors, students and even those who didn’t work in the industry but were interested to see what was going on in the fitness world! For those who don’t actually work in the industry, I would be interested to hear what impression they left with!

The fitness industry thrives on vanity – members join clubs to look good, trainers often secure business by looking good, sports clothing manufacturers are employing fashion designers to allow people to look good as they train – it is a world were image counts. The convention had vanity in spades – guys walking around in base layer tops – material so fitted you can see individual chest hairs! At times there was a cool breeze outside, but it didn’t stop the Mr Awesome walking around with next to nothing on, just so we could all get a look at their physique! The vain women were actually in the minority, and it was mostly the Les Mills presenters who wore next to nothing! That said, there was plenty of fake tan and over the top makeup!

As I mentioned earlier, there is no doubting the quality of the speakers they have at the convention. All of the biggest names have featured over the years, and this year was no exception. I had planned ahead the lectures I wanted to attend, based on a couple of criteria – the title and the presenter. The title didn’t always give away the content (as I found out with a couple of lectures), but they were all interesting – some even more so!

In many ways I liken the convention to a music festival – over the course of a hectic weekend you get to listen to some of your favourites, and discover people/groups you never knew existed! One of the particular highlights for me was Bobby Cappuccio – listening to him speak was incredible, he had great charisma, enthusiasm, knowledge and his lectures were always packed. I will say now I had never heard of him before, but I couldn’t recommend him highly enough. The content of my favourite lectures will be saved for future articles, so I won’t go into details here, but rest assured he was a brilliant, brilliant lecturer. His energy, his Tourettes (yes, you read that correctly), his knowledge and his enthusiasm all combine to make him a real highlight of the weekend!

There were quite a few household names dotted around, and one of them, Pete Cohen was a great speaker. I found Pete’s lectures entertaining rather than informative – and by that I don’t want anyone to think he doesn’t know his subject – he really does. He was more about the personality behind behaviour change. His specialist area, psychology and behaviour change can’t be boxed like many other topics – there is no right or wrong, no set formula. Pete has an infectious personality, and I can’t help but think that is part of the reason he is where he is. In my opinion his enthusiasm is his product – not his programmes.

David Haye, the WBA world heavyweight champion was there with his trainer, Adam Booth and they gave a practical demonstration of their ‘Outbox’ programme – a course that teaches coaches how to teach boxing. It has been very successful, and has been around since before David was a professional boxer himself. I only took part in the initial demo, but it seemed far more in depth than other boxing courses I have either been on or know about.

Two other lecturers I was really interested in seeing were Paul Chek and Charles Poliquin – both legends in the fitness industry. In terms of content and knowledge, they were real highlights of the lectures for me. Interestingly, there seems to be a rivalry between the two, with Poliquin disregarding much of Chek’s work. I am not sure that is such a wise idea – Chek has been around for a long time, and although their approaches work very differently and have different aims, they are both very, very successful men. Chek certainly wasn’t fazed by Poliquin’s opinions of his work, and offered to debate certain topics live on TV giving it a mass audience, saying “if we are going to slaughter a pig, let’s allow lots of people to have a taste!” The thing with coaches like Poliquin and Chek is that they bring with them a massive CV and a reputation earned over the years. Add to that charisma and a genuine passion for their subject and it is a difficult cocktail to see past at first!

Again, I will go into details about the topics of these lectures in future articles – their lectures alone could provide enough writing for a whole section of the site!

To a degree then, there was hypocrisy amongst the messages delivered by many of the speakers – and that is fine. There is more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak. All of the trainers have their way of doing things, and it is easy to get carried away on a tide of enthusiasm after hearing a speaker, thinking they have all the answers and that is how you will train all of your clients from now on. The truth is though, once you have had a chance to sit down, put your thoughts together in your head, you can take the best bits from each trainer and their approach. I went to the convention with that in mind – I took notes from every lecture, thought about what was being said and how I could apply it to my own work. It would be stupid to disregard anything completely – after all these guys have a platform due to everything they have achieved over the years. Once the initial wave of awe had subsided, I re-read my notes and thought about how I would work in future.

Despite the hypocrisy in terms of the training messages being delivered, one continual message that was delivered by lots of the speakers was about the mental approach to the work of the fitness professionals, and how we shouldn’t overwhelm people with massive instructions on how to completely change your life in 5 minutes. As the saying goes, old habits die hard, and we need to remember that. A consistent message delivered by many speakers was that behaviour change should occur in stages, not all in one rush. Of course Psychology has known about this for years, but we aren’t psychologists – we are only just catching up.
I kept thinking of how many different teachers referred to the mental aspect of fitness – something that is rarely mentioned in training books and articles. Sport Psychology is now a recognised science, but the crossover into everyday fitness is slow at best, but lots of the top lecturers are starting to mention it more and more. It isn’t a new idea to me – I have been listening to Tony Robbins and reading Steve Pavlina’s work for a few years now, but I am happy to see the fitness industry embracing aspects and ideas of personal development. Paul Chek in particular is a big advocate for mental fitness as well as physical fitness and that can only be a good thing.

There seems to be a shift in the industry, moving away from training purely for fitness and vanity (fat loss and muscle building), to training as a key to good health. By that I don’t mean as an industry we are losing sight of the importance our services have of improving a person’s fitness per se, but we are realising more and more how fitness can be used to improve lives generally by helping to prevent and cure certain mental and physical diseases.

Fitness can help to bring communities together and can potentially play a massive part in the green revolution by encouraging people to cycle to work, walk more, eat more natural foods with less industrial processing and packaging etc. I don’t think I am being over dramatic when I say managed correctly; the fitness industry could be the biggest growth industry of the next few decades. I strongly believe this – all around me I kept noticing things and thinking of ideas that could change lives forever. We just have to spread the message as best as we can and I suppose the internet is the best medium of all in terms of reaching a mass global market.

We are already aware of the importance of good health – we just need more people to realise it too. I personally think we are best placed to save the world!

I attended a broad spectrum of lectures, ensuring I took in plenty of exercise physiology, nutrition, psychology and business development. I came away from the weekend inspired, enthused, more knowledgeable and buzzing with a million and one new ideas! I can’t rate the convention highly enough and have already warned my girlfriend that next year she will be coming along with me! There is so much to learn, and I would urge anyone who is interested in a career in health, fitness, leisure or personal development to make sure you attend. It was brilliant – one of the most positive weekends I have had in my years being involved in the fitness industry. Hopefully you will benefit from much of my weekend over the coming weeks! It certainly has given me enough ammo to keep articles and products being written for a good while to come!

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