PumpOne and Men’s Health Magazine Workouts To Go

As you already know PumpOne creates the best in video and image based fitness training programs for the iPod, iPod nano, iPhone and other handheld devices.  Well now we are partnering with Men’s Health, one of the most trusted sources in health, fitness, and wellness around the world, to launch the Men’s Health Workouts to Go series of video trainers.

Simply go to http://www.menshealth.com/download to get your favorite video, audio and image-based Men’s Health workouts, including the popular magazine Poster series, and download to your iPod, iPhone, nano, Zune or other device that supports MPEG-4 video.

Just like PumpOne’s workouts, the Men’s Health Workouts to Go  consist of a series of video clips with audio instruction and exercise images showing proper form giving you an effective way to learn and perform your workouts anytime anywhere. By combining the best fitness advice with visual iPod personal trainers, these Men’s Health Workouts to Go are the key to keeping you motivated and on the way to losing weight, gaining strength and getting into great shape.

So check out  the Men’s Health Archive at www.menshealth.com/download today!

How do I lose Belly Fat?

It is widely thought that you can reduce excess fat in a particular body area such as the abdominals if you perform a ton of reps of an exercise like crunches. Unfortunately this is completely untrue and is commonly known as the Spot Reduction myth.

Body fat is called adipose tissue and is distributed in different amounts all over the body. A certain amount is essential as it performs a number of very important functions like protection, nerve conductivity and energy storage. We all have a small amount of fat surrounding certain internal organs while most of our body fat is found just beneath the skin. Women typical have a larger body fat percentage than men. Where you store it and the amount is very dependant on your genetics and your gender. Women tend to have more fat in the hips and thighs giving them what is known as the pear shape. Men tend to store it more in their abdomen giving them the apple shape or spare tire.

Where you lose body fat from and how quickly you lose it is dependent upon a number of factors including genetics, gender, age as well as activity level. The only proven way to reduce body fat is to engage in a regular exercise program that incorporates cardiovascular training as well as strength training and eating a healthy diet that provides the right amount of calories.

There is some research that shows that fat is lost from the places it most recently appeared. So if you gained a belly first then this will be the last place you lose it from. So no matter how many crunches you do it will not affect the layer of body fat that is lying above your abdominal muscles unless all those reps are part of an overall exercise plan coupled with a healthy diet. 

Quick and Simple

I am guessing that every personal trainer reading this blog has at least one email account.  The easiest possible way to promote your PumpOne store is to put a link in your email signature. It is very easy to do and now everyone that you mail will be reminded to check out your store.

Don’t simply paste the link in, though, use some creativity. “Get my Workouts on your iPod” or “Your Personalized Workout is on my Web Store” should work much better.

If you have any technical questions, please leave them in the comments or email the office.

youPump Tip # 2

If you thought that Tip #1 (below) was straight forward, just wait. Now that you have designed a program for a client, you need to present your client with the idea and convince them to buy the program.

Hopefully you chose a client that would benefit from an iPod workout in the first place.  Tell your client that the program was designed especially for her and when she should use the program – ie. vacation or on Mondays and Wednesdays while she works out without you. Make sure that your client has a hand-held device and understands how to download from the web (It’s 2007 most people know how.)

The big issue is to write the web address to your online store clearly and tell your client the benefits of this product. The product is easier for you to make, easier for her to understand, more convinient and it’s the newest thing- everyone will be doing it soon. Also, if your client agrees, let her know that you will check up and remind her if it hasn’t been downloaded. After all you want her working out correctly.

Finally, be sure you have priced the workout program correctly. We suggest that the minimum price is $5 per workout included and the maximum price shouldn’t be more than your hourly rate.

Any other tips from existing trainers on how to sell your first program? Email me or leave them in the comments.

youPump Tips #1

If you are a personal trainer reading this blog you probably already know about youPump. Just in case, I will recap of the service before I give some promotional tips.

youPump allows personal trainers to build workout programs using PumpOnes exercise image library. Once your exercise programs are built we post them to your personalized web page. The goal is that you drive traffic to your web store, people purchase your programs and you make extra money without being at the gym.

Easy enough, right? We are starting a program to share some tips we’ve learned in order to make things easier, and of course, help you make more money.

So the big focus of this blog is to help you, youPump trainers, make this a very profitable summer for your youPump store.

Tip #1
By far the easiest way to make sure that your youPump web store is instantly profitable is to build and sell programs to your existing clients. Your current customers use your training for 1 reason, to workout more effectively. Fortunately, this is the mission of the entire PumpOne company. To take it a step further, youPump was designed as a tool to help trainers accomplish this specific goal – communicating effective workouts to your customers.

Design your first workouts with specific customers in mind. Maybe it is the guy that always seems to be traveling for work, or the lady that is always asking what she should be doing when she goes to the gym with her neighbor on Tuesday nights. I bet most of your customers would like more time with you in the gym, they just can’t afford it. Now they can.

Which one of your current clients is the most likely to buy a digital trainer first? After you figure that out, all you have to do is build his workouts.

Tip #2 will be coming shortly so be sure to check back. you can even subscribe to this blog by clicking the little orange button in the top right of the screen (if you have questions just leave a comment and I will help).

Focus and Results

In business, fitness and really every aspect of your life there is a strange yet vital relationship between focus and results. For some reason I always think of the 80/20 rule when these words pop in my head.

I’d be willing to bet that when you focus, probably about 20% of the time, you get the majority of your results (maybe 80%??). Conventional wisdom says that 2 heads are better than one, it’s a numbers game and you should have as many irons in the fire as possible. I’m starting to think that this wisdom isn’t so wise anymore. Sometimes the best thing you can do is become great at one thing and forget somethings that aren’t effective.

With that ultra-long preface I am introducing a new focus to this PumpOne blog. PumpOne is currently the leading technology company focused on personal fitness and more importantly the personal trainer and portable markets. What does this mean exactly? PumpOne is the best in the world at teaching personal trainers to use technology and using technology to teach personal fitness.

From now on, the focus of this site will be exactly that – to help trainers use technology (BTW we make a great product for this – youPump.com) and to use our technology to help people get fit (uhhh, we make a great product for this too). Sometimes things just make sense.

I’ve added two categories on the left to help with these objectives. The best way to keep up with this free advice is to “subscribe” to this site. If you have a yahoo or google email address it is very easy – just click the orange button next to the word “post”. If you have any questions at all, just leave a comment and I’ll help you out.

More to come…