Gym Drama

I have come to the internets and blog world for advice yet again. Most folks who read me occasionally know that my alter ego is a group fitness/aerobics instructor. Let me say up front that I LOVE teaching group fitness classes. The experience gives me all the good feelings of teaching, without some of the drawbacks. On a daily basis I get to watch people learn new things, provide them with information and skills to improve themselves, and help them to eventually excel in areas that they might not have felt confident..and all this to music and without grading!

When I started teaching, I was trained through a program at a local facility that has a national affiliation (I know that is really vague, but I am being careful here). During the process of training, the national org and its representatives had an...um...disagreement with the management of the local facility and with some of the more veteran instructors (if by disagreement I mean there was a huge shit storm, yes). The location of the problem was a classic scenario of poor communication during an organizational transition (the gym I was trained at was a new location for the national org and the veteran instructors). Add to this the sometimes drama queen behavior of fitness professionals (if you watched the Bravo show Work Out, you have some idea of what I mean) and the result was that relations between the national office, local management, and instructors fell apart fast. A bunch of the veteran instructors left for new places to teach, the national organization and local management began talks/fights about dissolving their contract and so the rest of us were sort of forced into a position of having to make a choice of what to do, where teach teach. The choice, moreover, felt less about the instrumental goal of simply continuing to teach and more about the drama of “it’s us or them.” It was a really crappy time for all.

Since the national organization had no immediate plans for contracting with another local facility, I stayed at the gym and have been teaching there since. It has been pretty good because the people are cool. There is very little internal drama (maybe because most of the staff are personal fitness trainers and, well, not women???) and I have been able to teach as much and whenever I want to with no micromanagement on the part of my supervisors. I am concerned, though, that a) there is not enough clientele to keep this relatively new facility up and running, b) the management is young and enthusiastic but has really very little expertise in administrating a group fitness program and so makes some pretty serious blunders in hiring and scheduling, and c) class sizes are much smaller than I would like. Besides all this, I have a felt sense of a personal and professional responsibility to both the local gym AND the nat’l org folks who originally hired and trained me.

So...this month I found out that the national org. has found a local facility and is going to be up and running in a local gym again. I went to a meeting to see what the deal was and am now again having to make a choice of what to do. I know this seems really easy and especially so since technically I am an independent contractor and could work at both places. Despite that, the subtext to the meeting due to the continuing pathetic relations between my current gym and the national org reps (and the really almost cult-like mindset of the reps and their adherents) was: “sure, technically, you can work both places, but here is how we are going to make that nearly impossible for you to do.” Besides, the new facility is twice as far away from my house as the current gym and has less perks and equipment.

So, I guess the choice is between 1)trying to work both places to keep all my options open and satisfying all my loyalties to past and current management and clients. Do this, however, despite the bad relations that would continue to infect my daily life and the extra work that this decision would place on me to redesign some of the classes at the current gym. This last task would be put on me because part of the way that the nat’l org is making working both places difficult is by threatening to fire anyone who teaches their brand/style of class at another local facility. At the meeting they even said they might check us out at our other places of employment to make sure we were in compliance with this rule, OR 2) staying where I am at with generally nice staff and loyal (but very few) clients and hoping that the poor management doesn’t both run the group fitness program into the ground and the facility out of business OR 3) go with the new place with the security that I don’t have to worry about designing my own formats or buying my own music and equipment. Also the knowledge that the management knows how to run a group fitness program BUT feeling terrible about leaving my current gym and adding a 40 minute commute (that’s total for both ways) to teaching as well as the pressure of having to conform to the micromanaging tendencies of the nat’l org reps and the worry that this relatively new venture also does not take flight.

I know this all may seem trivial, but teaching fitness classes is a hugely important outlet for me because it is something I have wanted to do for about 20 years, it gets me out of my academic head, it feeds my love of exercise in general, and provides a small amount of extra money that can pay for nice perks like vacations and new toys.

I simply dunno what to do and I have to decide pretty quickly.