Good everyone. Sam Here, we're going to take today's show in a slightly different direction. We're absolutely talking to an expert in their field, but it was a bit of a field trip to do research for today's episode. And I might do a bit more of this depending on what you guys think. If you like it, I will.
But I took a little visit to a.
Fitness experience, a new sort of phenomenon that's come into the fitness market, the Fitness Arena, and I visited on Tuesday, and I did a workout and it was really challenging, but really enjoyable. And today we have in the studio the founder of this fitness concept. So many of you may have heard I'm sure of pilates, and this turns pilarates on its head.
So stick around.
We're going to hear from Michael Ramsay, the founder of this new pilarates phenomen And then, speaking of Jim's I'm going to help all of you out there that have been thinking you need to join a gym. You'd like to join a gym, but you don't know where to start, and you're a bit petrified by the experience, which is completely normal, completely natural. I'm going to help you choose the right gym, get over those fears and get yourself moving.
That's all coming up next on the Woodlife. So it's nice to be joined in the studio today by not only someone that I look up to enormously from a business perspective, but someone that I'm proud to call a mate. It is Michael Ramsey.
Now you might not.
Know Michael by name, but you will know his company by name. I would think if you haven't been living under a rock here in Australia and other parts of the world now. But we'll get into that. Michael is the co founder of Strong Pilates. He would have seen the big, beautiful branding black with the white writing, awesome logo. And I won't tell you what Strong Pilarates is. I'll let Rams do that.
Rams.
Welcome to the wood Life and congrats on all of your.
Successte my pleasure, Thank you for having me on.
Maybe let's start by acting like our listeners don't necessarily know what strong Pilarates is. How do you explain it? What's your elevator pitch? If someone says, mate, what do you do what strong pilarates?
Yeah, it's interesting because my answer today is very different to what it would have been three years ago. It's developed, but effectively we are a pilates conditioning hybrid concept, so pilarates with cardio. We use a machine called the row Former.
Which is your concept.
Actually through a friend of a friend, I've found the machine itself in the US on social media, I believe.
It or not having a scroll one night, Yeah, it's this interesting contraption.
Yeah, my friend came to me and she said, have you seen this? At the time, I'd actually broken my ankle. I was doing a lot of Reformer pilarates. Really loving it as the first workout I think I'd done where I felt better leaving the workout, but I always wanted a bit more so I wanted to sweat.
I wanted some conditioning.
My friend showed me this contraption, the Reformer in the US, so it's like stuff. I'm jumping on a fly and I'm going to LA I'm going to check it out as you do. When and did it, absolutely loved it. Probably one of the toughest, most excruciating workouts I'd ever done. Just this euphoric feeling post workout of really elevating heart rate for getting that all those sort of benefits of pilarates, you know, very tough resistance, spring loaded pilarates. So I said, okay,
I need to turn this into something. At the time, I owned a bunch of her forty five franchises, so I was enfranchising in the fitness industry. I thought, how can I bring this back to Australia. So I end up negotiating the rights to this machine now globally and it under the Strong brand.
And now, yeah, so let me just go down that rabbit hole.
So you ain't the Instagram handle at Strong yep, which just blows my mind.
It's like, how on earth did you get that? It actually wasn't as tough as you'd think. I started buying up one word Instagram names.
But when about.
Five or six years ago, before I even had Instagram.
Yeah, probably, yeah, because I remember I had friends in the tech space that were buying one word domains. So say, for instance, remember the Choialer dot com the Mattress company. They had to acquire Choala dot com for quite a lot of money. Like that's just an example of how these things can. You can purchase them early on and then they're worth a lot of money down the track and I don't know if you remember, but I ran an event.
At the Woodshed.
I do remember, and it was called strong Events, and so she still didn't know what you're going to do with that exactly. And ironically, when I tried this row format, I were thinking, what can we call this concept? And it just made the workout just made me feel stronger, not only physically. It's such a durable word, but mentally as well, because you are you sitting there holding a plank under resistance and you've just done a row set, so you're out of breath and you mentally have to
be resilient. So it's it's all encompassing. It's a strong workout, and so like, okay, it's called strong Pilarates and that's.
Sort of how it was born.
So let's paint a little visual for our listeners, because if you haven't done a strong class or seen it on social media, we're literally talking about a normal or standard or as you'd expect, reformer pilarates bed. You know, top of the line, all the springs, all the places you put your feet or grab the hand, grab the little cables with your handles, with a rowing machine attached at the front, of it, So it's all one machine.
You don't have a rower next to a reformer. It's all one long bed and you can jump between your core work and your strength work cardio core cardio, cool cardio. I'm within a forty five minute window. And I'm not just speaking from viewing. I did a class on Tuesday night. I was talking to Michael today and absolutely stuffed me. But you now have bikes as well. How did that evolution happen?
Yeah, so you've got to imagine these things are four point one meters in length, so they are massive. And after a year or two, I mean we launched just pre pandemic, so we're efectfively closed for a year and a half anyway, launching your business, Yeah.
But I mean after a while.
We work on an unlimited membership, so you pay seventy dollars a week, you get unlimited classes, and you've got people training in there seven days a week. So if you're rowing every day, it's a lot. So I mean, personally, I found it to be a little bit monotonous, and so we said, okay, how can we continue to diversify and innovation is.
A big part of our business.
We keep including changing, improving, and then we figured out, all right, let's do a bike let's do a bike former. And now at the start of the class, the client and actually they picked their weapons choice.
I had about eight bike yeah reformers and eight row reformers or reformers.
Yeah YEAHI the row or you ride.
It's all along our philosophy of low impact and high intensity. So you'll never see your treademill a't strong because of the impact of running. You know, one day we may bring in a ski urg or something like that. But yeah, now you have the option of rowing or riding, and it's been brilliant so far.
So let's talk about that because I don't mean this disrespectfully. And you're never going to slam hit training because you had enormous success with all of your forty five studios. What are your thoughts, because I think this is really interesting education for our listeners.
I've got my own opinion. I'm sure you do too.
People I believe put impact and intensity together in their head.
They're the same.
You know, I can't have a hard workout unless it's a high impact workout, which is clearly not the case. I did a strong workout. It was very low impact. I was totally cooked. What is your thought on why a high intensity, lower impact workout is such a good option for people.
I think I'm assuming that's what you do think because that's what you've.
Created as a business.
Yeah, I mean there's a few points on that.
I think.
You know, just seeing our clients come in and hearing from them, you know, they've come in with busted saw backs, low and sore knees, things like that, and hearing that they really have had enough of high impact was sort of proof enough for us to persevere with this.
No more burpy.
Is not that there's anything wrong. I mean, one thing I don't really like in the fitness industry is fear mongering workouts because over six percent of austrain.
Population is overweight. Right, people should be.
Moving, so that that's that's fine, But longevity is a huge piece that we're seeing. You only need to train once a week resistance training to show that you know we're going to be living longer. There's a lot of stays out they're now showing that resistance training proves longevity in life. I think if you're going to be training for longer, you need to focus on low impact exercise. There's no point doing a high impact and getting the bustard. It's all loll back or the bad knees or you know,
the ankles. We want to be training for longer and sustainably, so.
And this is the thing.
Forty five and these other hit workouts are getting a bit of a bad rap at the moment.
But they're brilliant for a lot of people.
They're just not great if you're fifty and have a history of ailments, and you know, and you're not warming up properly. You know, there's a lot of But you're right, we shouldn't fear monger, and we shouldn't tarnish one brand or one particular style of workout, good or bad, because there are so many other variables of player.
I do agree with.
That, yeah, I mean, when I own my forty five's, I was probably the fittest I've ever been, but you know, I'm not breaking my ankle. I had so many knee problems and it's from that impact and jumping and going over and over. I think they've since forty five, I particularly, have since sort of refined their workouts a little bit more. I think this space is getting very educated people know now you can't just do touch jumps on the spot for two minutes. It's just not sustainable.
But strong in particular, let's talk about it from a physiological perspective. What's the theory behind it, why do you love it so much? And who's your customer?
Yeah, I mean you can tell with the branding, we're completely gender neutral, so very we see men as our biggest opportunity. Plarts has traditionally been female dominated, and so it's hopefully something that we can change. In terms of the workout. It's really interesting because not only have we kind of picked apart hit training, but we've also picked apart pilates. Now, it's very hard to build muscle when you're working aerobically right, you're in your aerobic energy system,
you haven't rested. Let's say you've been doing a play's flow for ten to twelve minutes, it's very hard to build muscle. So the way we program we have plays component we know plarties is brilliant for us in so many different ways. We have a progressive overload component throughout the week, dumb bells, even spring loaded tension. I would suggest I'd love you to come and do an upper body class, a chin up on a reformer gets greater
activation than say a lap pull down. And then we've also got the cardio conditioning component, so we're sort of bridging the gap between hit training, reform, polarates, and strength and conditioning. And I think because it's this all encompassing workout, it's low impact and enables people to train longer with longevity.
I think that's why it's been so popular. It's just really interesting how it's developed because initially, you know, our slogan is down for more, and we thought we're more than just polarates, so we're going to get all the plarties people coming in. But what we're actually seeing is we're getting everyone. We're getting people from the functional training studios who do spin, people who do yoga, people who run.
Our biggest consumer right now joining Strong is actually someone who just goes to a regular gym, which is really interesting data because they.
Now come to you as well, so they do some weight because that's where I'd see it fitting me personally. I like doing my weight training. I like to run a little bit, but I think doing a strong class once or twice a week would be the perfect compliment for how I like to train currently, Whereas I totally get that the other people that this ticks all the boxes for them and they don't need to do anything.
Yeah, we get you get a bit of everything.
There's a lot of people will call them like the new age fitness consumer that have two three four gym membership, the class class Yeah, the class pass junkie. But yeah, I'd say most of our members only do strong. A lot of the guys particular, even myself, I still lift heavy weights. But if I took you into a today's class, which is strength, upper body progressive overload, you wouldn't want
to do an upper body workout tomorrow. You wouldn't want a bench press, you wouldn't want to do any sort of one single arm rows anything like that.
It is enough.
We're still predominant female, was still sort of in the eighty percent mark for female. But we've just recently launched with four male ambassadors, which I think is a very.
Yeah.
Trav Bogue, two rugby guys, Nico Hein Shawan Johnson now that five the year he won the Brownlow attributes that to when he started pilarates. Trav Bok, who's an incredible player. He's still, you know, deep into his thirties now I'm playing. He attributes his longevity to pilarates. So these guys have been incredible ambassadors for us and also breaking down that mold of polarates is for women, because it's not for everyone.
Why do you think pallarates is so popular and not even strong? Why do you think polaratees is growing and without slamming anyone? Where do you think pallartes can improve?
What?
What do you think the downside, if any there are to pilarates and it doesn't need to be of an uplift.
Yeah, I think pilates is incredible. Again, going back to that example of when I broke my ankle and I rehabbed my ankle through spring loaded tension and slow movements and just getting back to one hundred percent. There's so many benefits of pilates you'd be surprised how many people aren't activating their core and aren't activating their glutes properly. So that's sort of the basis, and I think it's
been so popular for those reasons. And now people do want low impact options, and they do want longevity, and they do have banged up bodies after doing high impact for you know, periods of time. So I think that's a big reason why it's so popular. Where we think it can improve, where I think it can improve, just
see areas that we've kind of included. One of the biggest criticisms to pilarates is it's really hard to burn body fat, you know, it's hard to elevate heart rate, and you get a lot of dynamic poalais concepts now where they're trying to elevate heart rate through you know, jump boxes and things like that.
So now we're just.
Spike the heart rate on the roller or the bike, go back. We actually don't do any dynamic work, so it's always heavy spring loaded tension four seconds now and four seconds up.
The slow control movement.
The time under tension was severe, like what you were just on ten squads.
You're doing ten squads, yes, yeah, for minutes.
And then and then you go back and you spike your heart rate again, and because you're holding resistance under tension, your heart rates elevated the entire time, so you end up burning you know, huge amount of calories, which is one of the big goals and one of the big criticisms of pilates is you know, I haven't been dropping body fat and I want to get a sweat on.
So yeah, I mean the other one is, and I spoke about it before, is that sort of if you want to build muscle, you probably need to stop rest work in your anaerobic energy system, lift a little bit heavier. And it's it is tough to do in a in a Pilarates flow as such, and there're a genuinely.
Heavy weights there, Like you've got twenty twenty big heavy you know in each hand. You know you do on squat some forty kilos on a reformer bed trying not to do the split like it's it's a really proper strength workout. The other thing that I think you do that I've never seen in a polarate space the atmosphere, the music, the lights, the headset like it was it was soul cycle.
It was energy.
It was like it was awesome. You know, it's contagious in a space like that. You feed off the energy of the instructor, You feed off the energy of the people.
On your right and on your left.
And I don't think historically that and pilarates have gone hand in hand.
I don't think the traditionalists like us too much.
Disrupted, shake things up.
It's good. It is.
It's literally you know you're doing R and B when you're on the strength side, and then you're rowing and it goes to deep house and the lights come down. That's blasting the instructor terms of music up. And you know when you finish your workout, you get a tower that's cold and being soaked in eucalyptus, all that your face and you know the lockers have phone charges. And we even created a scent. We play a lot of
jay Z, so we put Konyak in the scent. The number one reason females left gyms in one year on a survey with cleln, So we put saffron in the scent, which sort of smells like a chlorine. And it's the best thing about doing your own concept is you can be ultra creative for.
Someone who's got their fingers so close to the pulse. In the fitness industry, where are there any breakout innovations or directions that you think the fitness industry is going to?
You know, where do you see the fitness industry going?
Almost taking your strong hat off to answer this question, where do you see the fitness industry going in the next three to five years.
We saw some we got some data from class pass last year actually that polarateis is now the fastest growing genre in Australia. There's an increased by two hundred and fifty percent in terms of class bookings year on year, which is huge. So that's bigger than strength boxing all different classes. So this is a space that we're really happy and feel very privileged to be in. But in terms of I think where it's going, I don't know. I feel like tech is going to be integrated somewhat
into every studio or even home workout. There has to be some element of heart rate or gamification going in there. So yeah, we're going to all these conference theres, we're doing all the fun things, seeing what's out there, but eventually we're going to have to consider a big tech investment that we can incorporate into our concept.
Do you mean that where it complements what they do at home with what they do in the studio.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
So right now we're working on a napp where you're doing a thirty day challenge and you tick off your if you've had your seven to nine hours of sleep if you've had three to more.
Approach, yeah, which I totally agree that that's where wellness is. It's just it's not fitness anymore. It's what it's your nutrition, what's your recovery, what's your stress, what's your mental health. It really is all encompassing, isn't it.
I totally agree, And it has to be for someone who's paying seventy dollars a week to train with us. We need to deliver more than just an in studio experience. So I mean, mate, you would know this back to front. I mean with what you guys do. There's so much there that defines how we're healthy. And it's everything.
That's the beauty of tech, because I think that's what gyms and personal trainers and anyone else that's in that face to face bricks and water space doesn't typically do very well, and you do it absolutely well already.
But I really care about you.
For the three hours that you're in my studio, you're my best friend, and you get the red carpet rolled out. But for the other one hundred and sixty five hours, I leave you to your own devices, and there's no support, there's no nutrition, there's no sleep, there's no little check in, there's no accountability. And if someone's great for three hours a week but they're not leading a healthy lifestyle for the rest, they're never going to get any results.
And you see that.
That's it.
But there is a big difference between our best operators and you know, our sort of lower performing ones, and the best ones are always the ones that are in the communities, working the businesses. They know their clients by name, they know what their client's dog name is, they know what they did on what they did on the weekend, and they know.
You know, if you're training for a run, I know you're training for a run. If you're trying to get in check for your wedding, I know that. Yeah, and it's important you know that.
I agree.
It's not rocket science, is it?
Like?
It hasn't really changed that much in how long. I mean, you've got the tech and the innovation and everything like that, but really it's a care factor, isn't it exactly?
And I wish you the best of luck, mate, You deserve everything that comes away. And thanks for coming on the podcast today.
Thanks mate, I really appreciate it.
So there we go a bit of a different discussion. For the Woodlife we normally talk with a technical expert rather than a business expert, but I just think the I think the technical grounding of why you would combine pilates with strength and cardio is really interesting, as we're always talking about the different and best options to get yourself in shape on the show. And I also think there's something really powerful about knowing the story behind the story,
or behind the brand or behind the product. So I thoroughly enjoyed that, and I hope you did too, And if you did like it, let us know. We're going to move away from business now and we're going to get into some technical advice.
It's an area that I'm really passionate about.
I often say with my twenty eight program, the thing I'm most proud of.
Is we're not here to get fit people fitter. We're here to.
Get someone that's a one out of ten or a three out of ten to a six out of ten and a seven out of ten and really get themselves going. So our next question from one of our Woodlife listeners is about gym beginners, and that's something next. So recently we received a message on our wood Life Instagram page and The question was, and I'm paraphrasing, but as a beginner who steps into the gym, never been to the gym before, how do I do that without looking clueless?
And I just thought, I love this question because I bet it's what thousands of other people are thinking, and isn't it Isn't it a shame when the thing that will stop you taking care of yourself is the fear of the unknown, or the fear of the embarrassment, or the anxiety that you get because we've got this perception and it's partly based on truth that everyone else knows what they're doing, because gyms typically have a huge percentage of people who have been for years and go seven
times a week, so they do.
Know they're doing.
If you walk in and they're clicky, you know, I know even when I go into gyms that I've been in before. When I travel, you can tell the guys and girls that know each other and they're there at the same time on the same day every week, and it can be a lot. I think there's a few bits of advice. The first is you've just got to go.
You've got to get past your fear of not going because you're driving past that gym probably twice a day for seventeen years, and telling yourself one day unfortunately isn't going to get you any fitter, any healthier, any stronger take care of yourself. So you do have to jump in the deep end a little bit, get uncomfortable. The second bit of advice I would say is honest is
the best policy. I think going in there and pretending you know what you're doing, or being too scared to ask for help or too scared to be vulnerable, and tell them this.
Is actually the first I know.
I'm forty seven, but this is the first time I've ever been in a gym.
I'm shit scared and I don't know what I'm doing. That's okay, that's the best. You need to be honest.
You're not going to get the support and the help and the advice and the program that you need if you pretend that you kind of know what you're doing and you can be left to your own devices. So you've got to be open. You've got to be honest about it. That's I think the most important. Don't assume that the first gym you walk into is going to be the right one for you. I think different gyms
are for different people. I think you will know based on the people, based on the field, based on the atmosphere, based on the amount of.
Help that you get.
There's a myriad of things that are important to different people, and everyone has their own sort of list or hierarchy to what's most important to them. And every gym says the same thing. Fantastic trainers, stay to the art equipment, you know, like wonderful facilities, you know, great bathrooms like blah blah blah blah. Like you know, it's very hard to distinguish what's good and what's not. Everyone says the same stuff. It's almost the intangibles. That person remembered my name,
They genuinely cared about it. They didn't talk about the gym. They talked about me. I think the best people at gym's don't care about.
Their own gym.
On look at the you know, fast Runner seven thousand, it's our new treadmill.
Who cares treadmill is a treadmill? Really?
You want someone who says, sally, tell me about you. Why have you never been into a gym? How do we make sure we get past those barriers? What are you trying to achieve? Physically, What are you trying to achieve mentally? How much time do you have, do you have kids? What do you do for a job. How often can you train a week? How long can you come in for Do you like waights?
Do you like place?
You want someone who genuinely cares about you. That's a massive tick for me. All of the other stuff they're kind.
Of much of a muchness.
The other thing I think that's really important is geography. There are stats that say if the gym is not within five minutes drive of either your home or your route home, so you don't have to make more than a five minute detour, if it's from work to home, then you will not go, and eventually you will cancel that membership. You've got a great percentage of canceling. They're not cancling. I think it's seventy two or seventy four percent or something like that. So convenience and location are
paramount in long term success. It might be the best gym in the world you've seen on Instagram and it's ninety minutes away, Do not join? All right, go there once for fun on a weekend and see if you can get a one session pass. That's not going to be the answer for you. So don't just sign up to the first gym you walk into. It's your money, it's your body, it's your journey. You have a right to be picky, but make sure they notice and make sure they care.
All right, there you go.
So after today's episode, every gym is going to hate me, except for perhaps strong gyms who were given them a good plug today.
But rightfully so. And I was only jagging.
Not every gym hates me, but I think it's good to just keep them on their toes, keep the industry strong. Have a fantastic week. Everybody.
Have loved chatting to you today.
As always, send in your questions, send in your eye is. If there's any other fitness concepts you'd like me to get out there and check out, or speak to the founder or speak to a trainer from that particular space, I'd love to. I think it's really interesting. There's so many interesting concepts popping up in the fitness industry all of the time.
Until next week, I'll see you there.