I have heard that expression so many times, it makes me grit my teeth.

It’s the epitome of a cop-out, of someone being pointed in the right direction they desperately need and their shrugging it off with an indifference that is appalling.

I can ask 10 people if they need to go to a gym, and I can guarantee I will get at least 9 answers like this. Even 10 out of 10 in some cases.

Yet, none of those people will take action – despite knowing they need to.

It’s an apathy of unbelievable proportions, a disgusting state of affairs that has made Maltese people the fattest in Europe and almost the fattest in the world (don’t worry, we will clinch that title soon, it’s a no contest so watch out Cook Islands and Qatar).

I mean, UrbanPeek has us listed as the laziest country in the world with 71.9% of people labelled as “inactive”.

 

A HUGE PROBLEM…AND NO ONE GIVES A….

We have an incredibly severe problem on our hands. One that no one seems to be taking seriously. Not the authorities, not the medical sector and certainly not the “fitness industry”.

Let’s not get bogged down on the semantics and the righteous posturing. The truth is that the problem is getting worse every year – so, no, sorry, it’s not being addressed. Period. I don’t care what you add after that. The end result is all I am interested in.

And that is why I keep on insisting that all these gyms, with all their shining equipment and their classes and personal trainers have failed to provide the answer.

Let’s go local. Malta and Gozo are rife with gyms. Gyms are snazzy, they are cool, they are hip. So how come we keep getting fatter year after year?

Because most gyms are only interested in the bottom line. Their interest stops once you have given them your money. After that, you’re on your own. At best, you are on a conveyor belt that provides you access to a cookie cutter system filled with everything that is trendy and nothing of what you need.

Normal gyms expect their members to be inconsistent. They only plan for 18% of their members to attend regularly. In fact, to be profitable, the average gym needs to book in 10 times more people than they can actually fit in the premises.

No wonder people opt out and quit. In most gyms, 14% of new members stop going in the first month and 80% quit in 5 months. And research shows women are more likely to bail out then men.

Now let’s take a crack at personal trainers too. Honestly, most of them should be called impersonal trainers. Their interest just extends to counting your sets and reps. That is, if you can drag them away from the mirror and their mobile phone first. There is no connection. There is no feeling. There is no relationship.

It’s a system primed for failure and no one really cares.

 

T2C – TIME TO CHANGE

It’s time for the fitness industry to evolve. Research shows that the places that get life-changing results are the ones that engage in coaching. Not personal training. Not hamster classes. Only when the client is engaged at a core level do you have people experiencing enough connection and getting enough real education to make a difference.

Coaching is the place to start – the platform where knowledge fuses with edification, where clients are taken seriously on a personal level and transformed at a deep level, where bad habits hide instead of simply being changed at the surface for a few weeks.

Yet few are willing to go the extra mile. Coaching is difficult, time consuming, and intense. It involves taking your client seriously. It involves making their problems your personal issues. It involves you making this your life’s passion and your life’s goal. There is no other way to do this right. And most, honestly, just won’t bother. Who wants that kind of commitment anyway?

 

WE DO

At The Forge, we provide world class coaching and nothing else. We are not interested in ramming the place with members. In fact, we only want to work with very specific people, people who don’t simply want to come to a gym as a social meeting place but people who want to seriously take their lives to a better place. People who are committed to breaking away from the norm and making themselves the best version of themselves they could be.

And I am proud to say we are very successful at doing just that. There may be a little less glitz and glamour involved, but the results are unbeatable. We take on serious cases and take them places. From seriously obese people, to cancer patients, to those just looking for more self-empowerment, this is a unique and highly effective environment to bring out your inner champion.

And if you are that kind of person, we definitely want to hear from you.

We live it and we love it.

Now, we just have to reach out and touch more people’s lives. And get others to do the same.

Who’s in?

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