A guest blog post by Mike Whitfield, CTT, The Boot Camp Finishers Guy
It’s confession time. First of all, let me give you a background story of where I came from. I used to be really large… like REALLY large. I was close to 300 pounds, wore 46 inch pants and XXXL shirts.
In fact, when visiting family at Christmas one year, I simply turned around and my family threw a welcome back party.
Ha. Hilarious. No? Whatever.
The truth is that I was consuming around 8,000 calories per day, and that’s just a guess. I would eat a large pizza by myself.
The turning point was in January of 2003, as I decided enough was enough. Like most people, I jumped on the New Year’s Bandwagon but the big difference was that I set a goal to stick with it. I wanted to lose 50 pounds by my vacation, 6 months later.
I managed to do that plus some… as in 75 pounds dropped in 6 months. (That’s right… boo-ya).
Since then, I’ve lost another 30 pounds and have kept it off for years now. Losing 105 pounds of ugly fat is what propelled me into the fitness industry.
I’ll be honest with you, the last 30 pounds were, as you expected, tougher than the first 75 pounds.
But when I paid attention to my diet (no specific diet really… just made better choices), and used metabolic finishers, the fat finally came off more consistently.
“Mike, What is a Metabolic Finisher?”
I like to call them, “grand finales”. You already know the media preaches to us about using cardio as a fat loss tool. You know, … the whole “walk 60 minutes a day” approach. You already know that doesn’t work.
And you probably already know that interval training is superior to long, boring cardio as well. Call me strange, but even interval training would get boring to me. So, I used metabolic finishers instead at the end of my main workouts.
This means I didn’t have to hop on the treadmill or elliptical for my intervals, but instead used crazy and whacky rep and set schemes with big, compound movements.
It’s also addicting. And when you’re addicted, you’re consistent. Consistency, as you already know, is one of the biggest keys to success.
How I Used This Addicting Method to Get More Clients
Finishers worked so well, I used them with my own clients. The fun part was that as I crafted my approach, the finishers got better, and the results were coming even faster.
Let’s take Philip for example. Philip won the Turbulence Training Transformation Contest and won $1,000 just for losing fat… as in 34 pounds in just 12 weeks.
He didn’t do ANY cardio.
I wanted Philip to accomplish two things during his journey:
1. Lose at least 20 pounds of fat
2. Get an AMAZING farmer’s tan
He managed to do both…
Well played on the V-neck tan my friend… very well played.
He, along with all of my other clients, would always say how much they enjoyed the mental and physical challenges that the finishers bring. It was my big “hook”. I was known at the gym for my finishers, and that what would bring in referrals.
In fact, that’s my confession…
My marketing skills were horrid as a trainer. I never did any post cards, direct marketing or magazine ads or anything like that.
My business was 98% referrals.
That means I had to deliver an amazing experience with my clients so that they would refer people to me. Fortunately, my finishers alone brought in more people. Just about every prospect I talked to would say, “_____ told me about your finishers. I’m ready to do that!”
After tweaking and testing, I soon discovered that finishers got my clients faster results than even intervals. But more importantly, they were addicted to working out. That’s why they stayed so consistent.
More and more clients got results, including my clients winning $4,500 in transformation contest money. Finally, I decided to use finishers with my fitness boot camps as well as my personal clients.
This allowed me to have over 20 people in my summer bootcamps, when it’s supposedly slow. I was in a small studio next to the gym and we outgrew that, having to move into the gym up the street inside a high school.
It was my “Addiction Method to Get More Clients”.
“Oh my gosh… that’s the name of this post Mikey!”
Yeah, I know.
Look, I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I can write some of the craziest, yet fun and addicting finishers known to man. I say that because that was my biggest marketing campaign.
Toot-toot (Yeah, I totally lied)
So, let’s do the zany bootcamp finisher that Craig Ballantyne and I put over 50 trainers and boot camp coaches through at the TT Summit earlier this year. Put your campers through this crazy finisher after the next bootcamp workout….
The Infamous “3’s Company Finisher”
Do the following circuit as many times as possible in 3 minutes, resting only when needed. Your campers can rest as needed, but the clock will continue to tick:
*Burpee/Spiderman Pushup Combo (3)
Lunge Jumps (3/side)
X-Body Mountain Climber (3/side)
* This is when you perform a burpee, but as you are in the pushup position, you perform a Spiderman Pushup (1 on each side), then kick your feet in and continue. Don’t worry, photos and descriptions are in the manual.
Sure, this looks easy on paper (and it looks easy on a PTPower blog post, too), but don’t underestimate the power of this effective bootcamp finisher.
It’s finishers like these that got my campers addicted to working out and losing fat fast. It’s a staple in all my programs and they should be in yours, too
In fact, whenever I promoted Bedros’ 14-Day Fat Furnace program on my ridiculous 8.5 X 11 piece of paper on the gym desk back in the day (I told you my marketing was horrid), I used a combination of metabolic resistance training, metabolic finishers and even homework assignments for my campers.
Then, they would drop fat fast and get addicted. That’s a win/win.
So, go ahead, get your campers addicted to working out using Bootcamp Finishers… like the 3’s Company finisher. I hope it’s cool that I toot my own horn about how I name my finishers.
Toot-toot.
Awesome…. Have fun getting your campers addicted and coming back for more,
Mike Whitfield (aka Mikey), CTT
By the Way, Mike just launched Boot Camp Finishers and is having a HUGE sale on it for the next two day. Click the image below to learn more about Boot Camp Finishers
