Guide to FUll Range: Part 1 — Mission & Vision
After almost 10 years of building our gym, and working with the best staff that anyone could ask for, it’s become clear that I should probably put all of our methods and principles down into some sort of resource for anyone that is looking to be a better coach (or practitioner of fitness).
I’ve decided to write this all as a series of posts, in which I can give background and anecdotes, that can then be edited or condensed to make our coaching “guide.” Honestly, I probably won’t even edit these before posting, so this will give me 1) practice in regularly writing, which I often say I will do, then don’t and 2) a lot to look back on and laugh at when I go to edit this down. As much as I can, I’d like to use real-life examples of our actual clients, what we did with them, and how it worked (or, more often, is currently working). We’ve done a lot of work over the past 10 years, and (not to boast), I’m quite proud of it — looking back at workouts and plans written years ago, and remembering how it all became real for the people we train, and for us (literally: you, the person doing the workout, are turning words on a screen into an actual, breathing, sweaty, life-decision-questioning experience. Kind of wild).
Part 1 — Full Range at the Beginning: Mission and Vision
Before I can get into explaining how to be a professional coach and leader at Full Range, I think it makes sense that we first address the question: “what is Full Range?”
First off, I’ll admit that starting a gym wasn’t originally the thought process; instead, it was more along the lines of, “more gyms should be doing [X],” and “wouldn’t it be great if there were a gym that did CrossFit, but didn’t do all of that [Y]?” Then, as we coached more people at another gym, learned more about what worked, and talked more about it, the conversation slowly shifted to “wait — if someone ELSE opened a gym like that, I would be super jealous.” And, out of this, the first concepts that would become Full Range were born.
I should mention here that nothing that we were thinking about doing as a gym was revolutionary. In fact, in working with OPEX (then known as OPT) through their Coaching Certification Program (CCP), we learned the principles of what good training and coaching SHOULD be, or at least what it CAN be. To this day, we are still heavily influenced by, and learning from, other great coaches and gyms, and our origins reflect that. We saw how it could be done, which wasn’t being done nearby, and decided that we were the people (for better or worse) that would change that.
For the first year or so, the goal was pretty simple: put together workouts where, if someone were to ask “why am I doing this,” the answer would be clear. We had both, Alecia and I, done too many stupid things in the name of “CrossFit,” or “constantly varied,” or “unknown and unknowable.” Looking back, we were both pretty weak (having done too many long, grueling metcons, with no structured strength progressions), and had nagging injuries that we weren’t addressing. We were lucky to have a few Physical Therapists join the gym in the early going, and this further allowed us to move our approach away from “maybe you’ll get hurt doing this,” to “we are going to proactively try to make you LESS likely to be injured by making you structurally sound, then get you strong on top of that.”
Bringing it back to “what is Full Range,” we were fortunate enough to have some decent growth over our first 18 months, and found that, in order to keep things going, we needed to learn how to run our business effectively — a skillset that is quite different from that of being a coach. In working with a fitness business consulting company (they are out there), one of the first things that we were asked to do was to define our core values, our mission statement, and to lay out a vision for the gym over the following five-year period. Truthfully, we had had a plan on how to start our business, but never really thought that far beyond getting enough paying clients to make things work, and keep the lights on. We had established a brand in the sense that we had a name (Full Range), a logo (our lion), and a certain way of doing things; beyond those things, if you had asked me back then what our gym was “all about,” my answer would have been longer than this post already is, and might change each time I was asked.
We started with our Core Values, which, though we try to look back on and revise periodically, have held up pretty well to today:
Personal Responsibility
Positivity/Support
Constant Improvement
Cleanliness and Organization
Starting with personal responsibility was big. So often is the case that we try to look outward to find the cause of a problem, when we should be looking inward, and realizing that WE are the problem (and the solution, most of the time). Of course, we don’t exist in a vacuum, and we’ve seen it play out for years that the people who lead healthy, productive lives are invariably surrounded by others that support them in that; hence, positivity and encouragement fall in at #2 on our values. Naturally, since people come to us because they want to change for the better (whatever that may be), we too need to value the constant pursuit of improvement, both in ourselves, and in the space and systems that we create. I find that this one is huge for me, because whenever I feel stagnant, or that I’m not doing something to move forward and make the gym better, I almost always get a sense that everything is going poorly (even though it’s usually not). Lastly, cleanliness and organization will always be a priority, because nobody wants to be in a space that is gross, or chaotic. (Sidenote: Alecia’s standards of cleanliness and organization are much higher than mine, but I have put in work over the years to get on her level — if that’s possible).
From here, we needed to craft a mission statement. We were told that the most successful companies had short, broad-stroke missions. For example, Nike’s is “empowering athletes everywhere.” Of course, I’ve never been good at keeping things brief, so here is ours:
“To create a community of education and support, with the goals of removing limitations, expanding abilities, and balancing fitness and health.”
Even today, after revisiting this many times, this mission statement has remained our underpinning, and guided the direction of the gym (even if just subconsciously). We’ve shorted it too, as a way of communicating to our coaches just what their role is at the gym: to educate, connect, and inspire.
Educating others has always been our goal, and it’s the way by which we feel we can make the most lasting impact. Sure, we could hold your hand each day, and tell you what weights to load on the bar, but there comes a point when you having the autonomy to navigate a workout (not to mention the outside world and all of it’s challenges) becomes a measure of whether or not we have been good COACHES, or merely fitness supervisors and stopwatch clickers. The more you all know about how things work, the better (and easier) we can perform our task of challenging you to constantly improve.
When we refer to “connecting,” this can mean a couple of things: 1) it’s connecting people to each other, and creating an environment where folks want to support one another, and truly enjoy seeing others succeed; 2) it’s connecting people to themselves, their bodies, and their deeper purpose in pursuing better health an fitness. Again, we can help you get a great workout, but we cannot solve the problem for you of why you should keep working out, or why you should put in effort. That’s only going to come from within you, and the best we can do is help you to identify and connect with that.
Lastly, inspiring others as a coach (or a gym) means to live the pursuit; we ourselves don’t need to be the best athletes around, or have 100% perfect nutrition, but we do need to be out there, working to improve, failing, recalibrating, and all the things that we preach to others as being important. If not, we are not who we say we are, and why should you listen to us?
****
In our next post, I’ll share what we consider to be standard practices for being a great coach. But, for us, it all starts with the mission and values outlined above. We are here to help create a connected community, to educate and support, and to inspire others to live a larger life through fitness. If you’re reading this, you’re probably someone that has chosen to work with us at some point in the past 10 years, so thank you for helping us make this all real.
Onward
-ACM
