Stephen and I have been in and around the fitness industry for as long as we can remember, going on courses and trialling different methods.
People often ask why we do certain types of training or have certain protocols…
Well its time we explained why The DVCC is set up how it is….
In this podcast, you will learn:
- How The DVCC has transitioned from one on one training to group training
- Why The DVCC is so focused on nutrition
- How The DoubleVision Conditioning Centre has evolved and how what is being done right now may not be done in 5 years time
Transcript:
Mark: Hi, this is Mark and Steve from TheDVCC.com. I’d like to welcome you.
Stephen: Hello there.
Mark: Today, we are basically answering question that we’ve been asked a lot and that’s the evolution the DoubleVision Conditioning Centres. So people often asked where did we start to what kind of training did we start doing and how have we developed the protocols, the type of training that we do at the DoubleVision Conditioning Centres.
Stephen: First, I think we should kind of discuss what your arm is in right now.
Mark: Okay. So I am wearing a sling. I had an operation on my shoulder a week ago basically. And it was on the general anaesthetic. It was what’s called a labrum tear fix…
Stephen: Repair.
Mark: Repair, it’s called a slap lesion, I think it is. And basically, it’s the cartilage around your shoulder joint. Well, my shoulder was partially dislocated in a rugby game and I didn’t realize I tore the labrum, a 270 degree tear of my labrum and basically, it’s been stapled down around the shoulder joint.
Stephen: You injured yourself four years ago, didn’t you?
Mark: Yeah, four years ago, my last game of rugby basically and I didn’t realize the extent of the injury. And over the years, I’ve kind of realized that it’s something that needs to be fixed and I decided that it needs to get done. So I have the operation. And I’m in a sling for three weeks and then lots of rehab to happen. But it’s good. Obviously, I’m pretty lucky and the fact that I’ve done lots of learning over the years on rehabilitation, helps a lot of people rehabilitate their shoulders.
Stephen: And you can actually use the protocol that we use at DoubleVision Conditioning Centres actually which is the pain-free shoulder system that…
Mark: Exactly.
Stephen: I designed actually through, like Mark says, a lot of different courses. Actually, it’s the way they rehab a lot of Olympic athletes. So it’s very, very effective.
Mark: And it starts from pretty much now acute stages…
Stephen: You were in the gym the next day, weren’t you?
Mark: I was in the gym the next day and I obviously can do a whole lot but it’s still mentally helps and that’s part of the whole rehabilitation process. A lot of people don’t realize that sitting at home, watching movies isn’t the best thing for someone that’s been active and for someone that wants to get active as soon as they can because it’s completely out of the norm. So getting back into the gym, doing what you can do, obviously on the guidance, is very important.
But anyway, we digressed. So basically, I wanted to explain how the training at the DoubleVision Conditioning Centres has come about, how we started and what we’ve developed over the years and why we’ve developed these things over the years.
Stephen: Well, we originally started, well, this is quite a few years ago. We qualified as personal trainers and we both set out individually and we…
Mark: We did the typical course, personal training course.
Stephen: We did the typical personal training course which most people go through. They’re all very, very similar. I won’t lie to you and say they’re particularly comprehensive and they don’t actually make a good personal trainer or a knowledgeable coach or a strength coach or personal trainer, whatever you want to call them. But they do give you a bit of background.
Mark: And the qualification.
Stephen: And the qualification which actually allows you into the industry. So we started doing one-to-one personal training in separate gyms, didn’t we?
Mark: Uh-hmm.
Stephen: Self-employed personal trainers and let’s just talk it through, what was the reason we started like that?
Mark: It was kind of the — that is what was taught in the course. That is the kind of the natural progression that personal trainers didn’t — that’s what you do, you go, you rent from a gym and you train clients in that gym. And we were in Big Box Gyms which basically means, you know, the big commercial gyms that have I think let’s you about 3 and a half, 4,000 members in that gyms. We were at the same chain but in different towns effectively. And we did one-on-one training. So we trained people for an hour, one-on-one because it’s just what you do.
Stephen: Exactly, that’s what they taught on the courses, what they still teach on the courses because not much has changed actually apart from the courses are now…
Mark: Shorter.
Stephen: A few weekends long, maybe ours was three months long, full time. But, yeah, they still teach the same thing one-to-one personal training for an hour. And I don’t know why it’s not evolved. We will speak about how we’ve evolved the style and the type of training and that’s all being revolved around results. But I just think that I guess with a lot of things, they tend to say the same.
Mark: Until they have to change.
Stephen: Until they have to change and maybe it’s just the way it’s been apart from the courses get shorter.
Mark: So then, we did that for a few — no, quite a few years, didn’t we? But all the time, we actually realize that, I mean, we’re quite driven so we wanted our clients to be the best, if you know what I mean. We wanted them to get the best results. We’re in a gym. We’re competing with other personal trainers. It was very important to us that our clients got the best results and receive the service out of everyone in all the other trainers there.
Stephen: I mean, let’s be fair. In that style of gym setting, we couldn’t overly measure people. We didn’t have the equipment to measure people. We did do a lot of courses and in the end, we were measuring people in a disabled tool I think it was.
Mark: Actually, unless someone’s been on a — actually, one of the courses we’ve eventually did was very expensive but — a cool biosignature which actually allowed us to measure people accurately what their body fat was and things like that, so we can actually know how our clients were progressing. But for a few years…
Stephen: No…
Mark: Weren’t able to actually see how they’re progressing because, yes, you can put them on a set of normal scales. However, that doesn’t actually say what’s happening to a client’s body particularly to begin with.
Stephen: And to be honest, we weren’t overly offering a large amount of nutrition advice…
Mark: No.
Stephen: Because we trained people for an hour and then trained another person for an hour. We were doing 40 hours a week. There wasn’t really an opportunity to sit down with the clients individually and talk about nutrition. It was all done in a session, in-between sets, that kind of thing. So we didn’t — in retrospect, not that we are doing a disservice, we are giving much better that was available at that time but…
Mark: Looking back to what we learn now.
Stephen: Learn now, yes, it wasn’t, but the fact that we were always striving to improve, it was the key I think. And like Mark says, for a few years, we weren’t able to actually give a proper account of how that client was progressing. Yes, you can measure them because if you realized that using normal set of scales particularly in the first few months actually where clients beginning to exercise metabolically, things happened which means that actually, yes, they may be losing fat, their body shape may be changing but their total weight may not change and, yes, you can use a measuring tape.
However, that’s very, very inaccurate and actually, you have to do a degree and they spend a lot of time teaching you how to actually use a proper tape measuring. It’s not a normal tape measuring that you’d get from a shop. It’s a special type of tape measurement. It takes an awful lot of learning to actually learn how to use that correctly. And even then, it’s still not the most accurate way of actually assessing a client.
So, yeah, for those few years, we weren’t actually able to know how well our clients were progressing. I mean, we could get them stronger, and get them fitter but, yeah.
Mark: Yeah, not as accurately as we perhaps — well, and setting those actions, we can now but perhaps we wanted to at that time.
Stephen: Yeah, and so we did a lot of courses, didn’t we? And we gradually started — we knew we were getting better results with clients and clients were getting very good changes compared to other trainers in the gyms. And as we were learning more and more…
Mark: This is going on lots of courses going to — I mean, we went to America — it must be about six times six different times for courses, Rhode Island, Boston, Sweden. We went to Island of…
Stephen: We were in Sweden for two weeks, weren’t we?
Mark: Staying in a really rickety old…
Stephen: I ‘m just doing three courses,.
Mark: …farmhouse, wasn’t it?
Stephen: Yeah.
Mark: And I learned a lot all on courses and all — generally, the courses that were provided are better in America because they are more forward thinking. There is more money in the strength conditioning industry and sports teams. I mean, you have to look at the NFL and all those type of things you want some money and where money is. Obviously, people put a lot more emphasis on innovation and that’s why we used to travel a lot and we still do to get the latest information.
Stephen: And actually, that was when we first started thinking about training people in more than one-to-one, wasn’t it, because in America or in places like that in sports top athletic type situations, they trained people in groups. And there’s a number of reasons for that. One of the main ones is peer pressure. People tend to work a lot harder. We experienced this now. We know, having experienced both sides, that people worked a lot, lot harder when they’re actually with other people.
Mark: Yeah, so on these courses, that’s when we started to realize that was the group kind of situation setting was better than one-on-one but obviously, in a gym where we were at, we weren’t able to do that. And I pretty much write routines for clients to do. And on a Monday evening at 6 PM, you couldn’t do any of it because all the equipments and everything was used so I’d have to just kind of go and apply and changed it around based around what I had planned.
So it kind of — I mean that was very frustrating and that you’ve spend all the money on courses to be able to know why and what you want to do with a client to get the best results but you just couldn’t do it because of the pure volume of people in one area.
Stephen: And that was actually true. It wasn’t the overall — when we’re looking at different types, so you talk about equipment, but we were looking to use things that actually weren’t possible to use in that normal gym setting, things like prowler sleds, different things like that, things that you wouldn’t get in a normal gym. You get some chest pass machines and things like that, but I would never put a client on there actually because there’s a whole host of different reasons but it’s not the most effective way to get results.
Mark: No, exactly. People have a certain amount of time to exercise. You want to do the best exercises for that time. None of us have the time to do three sessions a day, therefore, those pieces of equipments becomes relevant, only relevant once you’ve done the proper good exercises.
Stephen: Yeah, and that was the — frustration was the keyword as we started trying to move away from the typical treadmill, cross straight — treadmill, on to the treadmill, do some cardio on there and use some machines for certain amount of time. We try to move away from that style of training because we knew it wasn’t the best for results. And we just weren’t actually able to kind of get our clients the results we knew we could get them because it just wasn’t the availability, the equipment wasn’t actually there and it was just not the right environment to do it.
Mark: And the places we were visiting and I’ve got to learn, they all — these prowlers, they could do what they planned and they could get — do better sessions than we could even if they didn’t perhaps know more than we did.
Stephen: And another one of the points was that when we were training one-to-one with people, they just weren’t doing enough sessions, were they, with us?
Mark: No, because it was — I mean, it’s not a cheap service and you don’t want it to be cheap because generally, the cheaper things aren’t worth it and the amount of money we’ve already spent on education would mean we should have to be in charge in a certain amount but you’re doing more than two sessions a week, it is very, very high priced.
And we did have clients. We’re doing four sessions a week but there were few and far between and most would be do once a week, two weeks max. And you can get results but it’s just not what we wanted to be doing with them because we want it to get them amazing results and you can just kind of get average results.
Stephen: You could get as good as you can get.
Mark: And clients can work and going exercising by themselves. So there was a time, we’d write routines for them. But I don’t know, I think if you were honest with yourself, when I’m honest with myself, I know that I don’t ever workout, exercises as well as I should, could when I’m by myself.
That’s why I actually have one of the guys in the Milton Keynes right with me because one-on-one and one-on-two with Stephen, but we simply get better sessions and then that’s why all of the trainers trained together in threes and in the centre because –basically in twos if you’re training with one other person, if it’s a bad day for one of you, the other one is 50-50, then they pretty much will be able cut the session. So if you’re training in threes, fours…
Stephen: We trained in fours, don’t we? Because we’re all working really hard and trying to compete with each other, just basically trying to progress. If someone else is progressing, we don’t want to be able the one that’s not progressing.
Mark: And actually, the best days in the gym when we have two centres training together, when it’s pretty much six and we’re working around because we can’t keep up with the other centres.
Stephen: So, yeah, anyway, that was where we were kind of at where are we at that stage. We were getting frustrated and that’s frustration for you.
Mark: Five years ago?
Stephen: Yes, that would be more than five years ago actually because first seems to be noted for five years in March but, yeah, we were getting quite frustrated. I think we are probably — for a couple of years, if not, two or three years before we actually were able to make the move to opening our own centre, we were getting frustrated knowing that we couldn’t do what we’d actually wanted to do to get the best the results.
And like Mark says, there just wasn’t the ability to sit down with clients and talk through nutrition, really delved into that side of things because we knew that, again, that we did a lot of courses on nutrition and hormones and things like that but we just weren’t able to actually implement that correctly in the environment we are in. And that’s when we actually opened our first centre, wasn’t it?
And the way we looked to everything within that was what is going to get the best results and we could have put treadmills, loads of treadmill, we could have made it look like a normal Big Box Gym from where we came from but we realized that that wasn’t the best results. We knew that we wanted to move to a more effective way of getting results based everything on the success which we’d actually managed to achieve so far being based on getting better results than anyone else could get.
And so we wanted to carry on that trend and really kind of stretched, raised the bar by being able to do things that definitely got the best results rather than trying to make do with the situation like we had been doing in that gym we were at.
Mark: Yeah, so there’s very few machines, abs sensors, prowler sleds, things like Stephen said, you can’t do in a normal gym because you just don’t have the space. You want to be pushing it 10 meters at least. But obviously, in a normal gym, it’s very rare that you have a 10-meter amount of room where you can push without knocking into someone or hitting a machine.
So that’s why we designed the centres as they are and we gradually have changed pieces of equipment and we’ve learned even more that actually some of the stuff we bought is redundant still and that we got rid of them.
Stephen: Well, I just wanted to — I was just thinking then actually how it took us a bit of time to change our mindset, I would say. Remember when we were doing one-to-one and then we were going to — we were in these Abyss courses and they were talking about how being in a group, how social environment gets better results and people work hard a bloody blur.
And we were kind of thinking, is that the truth because it felt like one-to-one, we must be giving them better service. We must be — we were certainly — I mean, it felt like it had the perception to us of being more personal attention. But then we gradually realized that actually what we thought was personal attention was actually just ended up being more talking, wasn’t it, because we got comfortable in that situation.
It’s so easy to just — when someone didn’t want to work, it was — they didn’t want to work and it’s quite hard in a one-to-one situation and people feel a lot more comfortable not to work in a one-to-one situation they do when they’re in a group yet they know that they actually do want to work. So it was just thinking back. It took us a bit of time, didn’t it, to get that mindset. And actually, it took a study from quite a well-known fitness person called Alwyn Cosgrove who works for Nike and different organizations like that, very highly rated fitness…
Mark: Expert.
Stephen: Fitness expert and he showed a very, very good study that showed the group, training gets much better results than one-to-one. And like I said, it took us a bit of time to realize that it was just the perception of getting personal attention but like we couldn’t have the time to do any nutrition, anything like that properly with someone. It was just coming in, training, going away. And as we now know, there’s an awful lot more to making transformations, physical transformations, whether you’re looking to lose weight, lose fat, gain muscle.
Mark: So that was the vision. We started training people in small groups and we also realized that a lot of time when you were training people one-to-one, you will mop with them 10 minutes and that was a waste of time. You shouldn’t really be paying for that, we felt. So we changed it around so that clients will mop in a group but they’re not having to pay for that time because it is that time you can stick anyone on a cross trainer and they can generally will not run themselves after a few — being shown a few times.
So we developed into small group training. And then the results got better. The atmosphere got better and the whole social situation — sometimes, when it’s cold and dark, realistically, no one even, the most driven person, wants to train. However, when you got people that you know you’re going to — you train within the normal session times, you turn up to see them as well because it’s another — the whole social thing, you don’t want to let them down. You don’t to let yourself down. You go there to see them. And then once you’ve done that session, you have — most people are very, very pleased because they’ve come and done some really tasks they wouldn’t have done if they do it by themselves.
We admittedly still then didn’t have — we had a nutrition program and it was £1,000 would be an offering but we didn’t have any specific person to implement it really.
Stephen: Because we were doing too much training, weren’t we?
Mark: Yeah, because we were doing too much training. We were still trying to learn as much as possible. It’s very tough when you’re training people to be going off and about and they obviously have to stop training when you go off to learn. And then we’ve gradually evolutionized to having one sole person whose responsibility is implementing the nutrition protocols.
Stephen: Yeah, and that was one thing we’ve developed and we were able to really spend a lot of time on and that’s developing. And we’ve got a lot of trademark and proprietary protocols now that we used to be able to get results. So like I mentioned earlier, the pain-free shoulder system which is no one can know that is — no one can take that and no one can copy that because it is quite a unique system and way of actually making someone’s shoulder be that much healthier that it doesn’t cause pain.
So like I said, Mark will be using that same protocol, that same system because that comes from a lot of different courses but a lot of high level athletes and courses where the difference between taking three weeks to rehab a shoulder to eight weeks costs an awful lot of money and makes a big difference. So we’ve taken that information. We’re being able to put it into protocols, trademarks, systems that are only actually available through the DoubleVision Conditioning Centres.
Mark: So the whole implementation of all of our nutrition is done by our client’s experience and done in each centre and literally, their sole role is we kind felt we wanted someone who was able just to focus clients and just to give nutrition advice and help with people’s motivation sometimes when it slips as it always does with people.
Stephen: Because it’s tough to keep.
Mark: It’s very tough to keep going but the whole key is you’re not always going to make a — you’re not always going to head towards your goals in a straight line. It goes up, goes down but it’s about the gradual progressing, the key with having someone whose sole role is to make sure that you are heading towards that goal. And they generally need to do a small, a very small amount of training just to enable them to kind of keep the handling basically.
Stephen: And to see what can be improved.
Mark: Yeah, and see what can be improved and they literally implement the protocols that Stephen’s talked about with clients one-on-one.
Stephen: Correct.
Mark: In a kind of a non-training setting.
Stephen: And that was because we realized over the years how important everything other than the other training is is just as important as the actual training. No one will get any results — they’ll get may be a little bit stronger but nothing that like they could be if they only focus on the training side of things.
And there’s so much more to transformation in physical development, physical improvement. And that’s the thing. If you’re not looking to try and improve, not talking having to make a massive change, if you’re not looking to try and actually progressed, to get fitter, stronger, then you’re actually going backwards. It’s like if a flower is not growing, and then it’s dying, that’s what they say, don’t they?
Mark: And the whole mini-group situation allows you to have a lot more sessions. Obviously, you don’t need to do one training if you missed a session; you generally lose it because that is the trainer’s time, they’vpo7uhe lost. And you can therefore, you generally don’t make it up. So by having small groups and sessions throughout the week or at different times, if someone misses it, they can catch up and not having to lose after than session.
Stephen: I mean, I remember dreaming of having an Astro Turf actually to be able to push something on years and years ago thinking, see we go to these facilities and have these great workouts actually, be put through these great workouts and would be, “Aha,” that would be amazing and not just come back frustrated unable to actually implement, thinking, well, that’s a waste of a course because we can’t actually do anything we just learned. And, yeah, I literally do remember having a dream about being able to push a prowler on an Astro Turf.
Mark: Now, we always can.
Stephen: Yeah, now…
Mark: Now, you hate it.
Stephen: Now, I have not missed about doing it.
Mark: Yeah, so I mean, that’s pretty much where we are up to present day. Obviously, we’re continually, like you’re saying, implementing new protocols, going on courses to try and improve things and you never finish out school if you are going to go backwards.
Stephen: Well, that’s actually why we do go on a lot of courses, do a lot of learning. That’s why we actually don’t — we can’t have the time to train people ourselves because to do that, we wouldn’t actually be able to progress things. So, yes, we couldn’t train people but then the program what we — the client’s results would actually stay static. They wouldn’t get actually improved.
So what we intend to do is be trained, be like the clients so that we can see how things are, so we can see how they can be improved and then go on courses and things so that we can actually learn more better ways to actually do things and improve and get better results.
Mark: And in terms of the whole being able to measure clients, we did, like Stephen said, lots of courses where you could use calipers to measure people. But even the courses we did there using calipers, they say you need to do 3,000 measurements to become anywhere near accurate.
Stephen: Visibly accurate.
Mark: And I mean, I’ve done 3,000 and I’ve done, I mean, thousands which that’s a lot of measurements. So we invested in each centre, there’s a £5,000 body fat machine an in body and there’s lots of different types of — I mean, that we went for basically the best because it gets — it’s got highest…
Stephen: Very, very accurate.
Mark: It manages to plot over fat loss, weight loss, muscle tone gain and allows us to really focus on results with clients. And an example is one of the protocols we have now. Stephen, you’re talking about…
Stephen: Maybe a progress report.
Mark: Yes.
Stephen: And basically a way that we’re able to monitor client’s progression, not just physically so they have a visual way of seeing it and tracking it and plotting it but also with different types of test, lot of body structure balance test that could basically to see how your muscles are progressing so you’re not becoming dominant in one way or another that’s going to cause you issues or injuries.
Mark: Yeah. So anyway, we just wanted to give you a little back story onto why the DoubleVision Conditioning Centre is set up how it is. And I hope you found that interesting. And if you do want to come on in and have a little tour without — oh, Stephen…
Stephen: I just think like you were saying, I think — and it’s not the thing being with it. Everything is set up to get the best results as the knowledge is right now.
Mark: Yes.
Stephen: So they will — or probably, it was going to continuously evolved and actually, a few things are being done is evolving at the moment. But what it looks like in five years time…
Mark: Yes, it wouldn’t be exactly what it looks like now.
Stephen: No.
Mark: But I don’t think it should be because it means we wouldn’t have learned anything.
Stephen: Exactly. So, yeah, if you like to come in for a tour, then no worries. What you need to do is, well, you can comment below this video or you can just click on the right. They’ll be a little button that says, Lose my Weight, click on that and you’ll be able to choose a centre and you’ll be able to come on in for a tour and have a look around and you’ll be able to see in more depth what we’re talking about and the feel of the centres that we work harder to create. But otherwise, I hope you enjoyed this little podcast. This is Mark and Stephen.
Mark: Speak to you soon.
Stephen: Bye-bye.
Mark: Bye-bye.
