REAL motivation

I am working on expanding our message to market our fitness products so we're not only appealing to a person's desire to look great in low rise jeans or look great walking around a swimming pool in a bathing suit. There are other - more compelling benefits which seem kind of obvious, but we hardly ever talk about it.

So this week I posted this request in a forum on the Beachbody message boards: What specific benefits have you gotten from getting fit other than how you look?

The response was quick and compelling. For anyone looking for "chicken soup" type motivation to workout and eat right, or if you have any doubt as to the heart of the membership Beachbody community, it's worth the fifteen minutes of reading the entire thread.

There are recurring comments: "No more back pain" is a big one, like Charline's weight loss and back pain story which is amazing. She wrote: "Pre-Beachbody, I had a doctor tell me, "you are overweight. You have a bulging disc on your lower back and will continue to have debilitating pain until you either lose weight or have surgery." I chose to lose weight starting at over 200. To my amazement, once I strengthened my abs, and lost over 50 lbs of weight, I have not had lower back pain at all. And I used to be down 2 weeks at a time with back pain." For me, back pain sucks the energy out of me like nothing else - so i know what kind of relief that can be.

Improved relationships is another recurring theme. I can only imagine the lifestyle change experienced by Chris Girard who has lost 135 lbs - yes 135 lbs - not by eating Subway sandwiches, but by working out and eating smart. "More spice"/"better sex" was listed by a bunch of people, and even contributed by Dr. Dale, who also listed less sickness because of his boosted immune system - Awesome! A doctor who gets it!

Another theme was getting out of depression. Mahala said her Post Partum Depression cleared up within a week of starting her program.

And then there are the specific stories of triumph, like from Kathy who summoned the courage to end a bad marriage, Virginia who ended her fight with self-esteem issues, Mary (a frequent visitor to this blog) who just completed a round of Power 90 who points out that she is "learning to love myself more".

Dawn ("absmom") summed it up so eloquently with her post, where she actually took it a level deeper than attributing her life-change to the fitness or the weight loss: "Being fit and losing weight didn't change my emotional well being. Being RESPONSIBLE and ACCOUNTABLE changed my weight and made me fit. They are somehow intertwined and cannot be separated. For me the ultimate benefit was becoming a WHOLE person."

How awesome is that? While I'm doing what I can to attend to the operational, financial, and human resource issues of the business side of Beachbody, this is si the human side of what my job comes down to; Creating programs that get real results and elicit this type of feedback from customers. I am grateful for the responsibility, and I don't take it lightly.

But let me be 100% clear -- this installment is not a gratuitous Beachbody tribute. I am not jumping up and down to celebrate the business or urge you to order -- this is a celebration of what happens when people take action, exercise and eat better, and overcome their own patterns in order to succeed. All the information you need to get these same results is available on the internet, in the library, and by using good common sense. Go for a walk. Join a gym. Control your portions. Of course, Beachbody is also a resource for the guidelines to achieve all these results. But no matter what, the proof is undeniable -- the slightest change, combined with perseverance, can have a dramatic change on the quality of your life.

Oh, and you will happen to look great in low rise jeans and you will look great walking around a swimming pool in a bathing suit too. So be it!

"Hit It!"

Water skiing is my first love. I was on two skis by age six, I was lucky enough to train at the legendary McCormick Ski School when I was twelve, meet champion Camille Duvall-Hero through business, and even have my ski signed by Sammy Duvall. The day my family bought a Mastercraft ski boat I felt the love most kids feel when they get a new puppy.


The only accomplishment that overshadows the first time I ever succeeded at gliding across the water on barefeet, is the day I did it backwards. While I never competed or had anything but a smile to show for my passion for this sport, to know me is to know that I am happiest on the water.

Frankly, waterskiing was one of my motivating factors for the development of P90X. I had never had a fitness program that would prepare me for the bursts of power and stamina required of the sport. Selfish, but I figured if I needed something to train me for my sport, there had to be others out there who wanted a solution for their sport as well whether waterskiing, snow skiing, bowling, hurling, curling, etc.

Now generally, I have not seen many people share my intense enthusiasm for the sensation of waterskiing. "Neat" or "yeah that's fun" are about as compelled as I hear most people get. For me though, it is a supercharged experience every time I get pulled up for another run across flat water. No matter how spent my legs or my grip, I'll find a way to get another run in. It is my one true break from whatever is going on in the "real world". Nothing feels as gratifying as a crisp turn into a hard pull across the wake, over and over again. There's just nothing like that sensation for me.

So last week when I was on vacation, and my five-year old daughter Ava asked for the first time, "is it my turn to ski now?", I was shocked, and ready to support her completely. We started on the boom, and she nailed it right away. Then we added a five foot extension. And the next day, it was long line off the back of the boat. I asked her to yell "Hit It!" when she was ready to get started. I barely had to put the boat in gear and this little peanut was up. She is a natural!

And I could not be more proud or excited about the fact that for the rest of my life I can share my favorite sport with my favorite person.

The Huddle

When Jon Congdon, President of Product Partners, leaves the country on business/vacation each year, I sit in on his regular staff meetings for a couple weeks. This year has been especially eye-opening!

From Monday to Friday, it seemed like I kept having the same meeting, with the same 7 people, plus or minus two, discussing the same activities! As I looked around the room and added up the burn-rate per hour, it seemed clear I had found a leak. "This has got to change" I thought.

But by the weekend I realized I was completely informed as to what was happening within each department on key decisions we had made. When marketing makes a move - and they make a lot of them, telemarketing, operations, and customer service generally are in on it because of these meetings. When information systems contemplated cutting over this weekend to a new processing platform, the company was informed, and everyone who needs to be in on that process has been alert to it all weekend, despite the holiday.


These were not "meetings" where the suits talk, and the staff is twiddling their thumbs to pass the time - these were critical "huddles" on highly detail-oriented maneuvers. Just like a football team will circle up into a huddle to make sure everyone is in on the play, my team was doing the same.

If you have good people ("players") and make sure everyone understands their assignment in whatever decision is being made (the "play") then out of the huddle everyone can split-off and perform their function. The key is to make sure you have great players, and then to keep the huddle brief so everyone shows up ready to get the information and then get back to execution.

As I consider the metaphor of the huddle across other activities, this regular perspective on group communication started to show its value in motivation. What we're doing with the 100lb Club can be seen as a huddle of sorts. In fact I intend to discuss with our motivation staff how we might create regular "huddles" so people know that if they check in on these sessions, they will be likely to stay more consistent.

Today I searched around the web to see if I was late to the concept -- if "huddles" were being applied elsewhere. I read how the Fellowship of Christian Athletes was using huddles to describe weekly bible study and how the Institute for Healthcare Improvement in Boston, Massachusetts was using their concept of huddles to promote faster communication in shorter meetings.

For anyone who loathes the concept of a meeting when the demands for productivity are piling up, to think of the meeting as a huddle might change your perspective. It might even help you determine if your presence is really needed. I can remember when I was on the Beachbody Across America trip on a chartered plane a few years ago, gathering testimonials for the Power Half Hour program, the production crew at Mega Mace would get together every night to discuss the way the shoots from the day had gone, and to discuss the plan for the next day. I remember being critical of all these meetings. But in retrospect, that trip went incredibly smooth because of their nightly huddle. I didn't need to be in on them, but they were critical for the key players of that frenetic ten day trip.

The concept of the huddle has shifted my judgment on meetings, from thinking of them as a creeping virus of bureaucracy, to a management opportunity for better team execution. In fact, as a guy who generally prefers to work on his own, the concept of the huddle actually opened me up to embrace a more collaborative role.

Sometimes I get weekend ideas and insights that fizzle by Monday, but I wouldn't be surprised this one is a turning point for the quality and quantity of productivity I am able to accomplish, thanks to a simple shift in perspective on the need for intra-company communication... Huddle up!