Programming at TTS EP | 187

0:00Welcome to the Transformation Station podcast. I'm Christina, owner, operator, and founder of the Transformation Station and this is where we talk about getting stronger while navigating real life. If you're trying to stay consistent through the ups and the downs and everywhere else in between, this is for you. All right, something that we haven't actually spoke about on the podcast episode is the programming after Transformation Station and I know there are some places that love to buy their programming. However, I like to really be hands-on in the programming, insane that Coach Nikki has been interested with my programming as well. I have a set particular way. I like everything to be programmed. So the number one thing is that it needs to be inclusive and it depends on what class you're doing. So the way that strong fit is, I'm going to talk about strong fit first because I know that that is one of the most favorite classes that we have. The way strong fit is structured is that everything works to a timer. That way if someone wants to go a little bit quicker in their

1:02rounds, they can go lighter and go faster as long as their form is good, of course. And we definitely help with that. It is a class that people who are brand new to fitness, they love to come and experience that class first because it kind of reassures them of what we're already advertising is that you can come in in whichever way, shape, or form that you have and move in a way that you can right now in this moment. And once they realize coming through the door, they're like, oh, this is actually an inclusive space. So we can come to any class like we advertise. So that is something that strong fit is on a timer. So 30 seconds on 15 seconds to transition. Sometimes it's 40 seconds where if you want to go heavier and take your time and have more time under tension for a little more muscle recruitment, that is your time to shine. There's sometimes if people are going a little bit lighter or they're going body weight, they're like, oh my gosh, 40 seconds is a big difference from 30 seconds. I kid you not that 10 seconds can go a long way. So that's how we program strong fit. So you might get squats and then 15 seconds to transition another 30 seconds of bicep curls 15 seconds

2:06to transition back up to squats. So you squats and bicep curls back to back for four rounds. We'll take a little bit of a rest and then we'll go into the next superset. I have designed strong fit. Strong fit is our name at the transformation station. People cannot just copy it and copy how we program because I have solidified that in our market in our industry. Strong fit is a Christina Romita designed program. Same like butts and guts that we have. There are some gyms that use the name butts and guts and they can. That's what it is. But our programming is very unique for what it is that we offer. It is written. It is not bought. Same with power burn. Power burn is our term is our name power burn and the way that is structured. So power burn and butts and guts are literally program the exact same way. It's funny because sometimes you're like, oh, power burns sound scary. And some people like butts and guts sound scary. So just depends on what your perspectives are and what your experiences with fitness are. Buts and guts and power burn any class that you come in in our

3:07space. You'll notice that if you're doing something different, the person besides you might be doing something different too because we are primarily people over the age of 40. I have members up to past 80 years old and someone can walk in tomorrow and maybe they have a home workout foundation. Maybe they are just starting to build their foundation and maybe sometimes they've actually been an instructor and they just need something different and a different type of a community. And they're coming into the transformation station the same way. So everybody can work to their unique body. If you're doing a standing option, you're actually not the only person in the all of the gym doing a standing option. Like you might see three people in a class doing that standing option. And we always say this is not to make it easy for you. It's to make it different because all it is is literally a change of gravity. And everyone's version of hard is going to be different. So guess what? It's all hard at the end of the day because we're there to challenge ourselves. And when I say it's hard, I mean, it's not impossible. It's going to be challenging. I know for me, I can do lunges and I'll complain. Don't worry. I can do walking lunges.

4:10I like walking lunges more than I like back lunges and I like back lunges. But they get me every single time. I will tell you that a line leg lift for me is hard just based on my anatomy based on how I carry my weight based on what I do on an everyday basis. Line leg lifts for me are hard. I would rather also not that we program burpees. You will never see burpees in our program. I would rather do a burpee than do a plank because that's just me as a person, same with a single leg glute bridge. Oh my gosh. But there's some people that love it. There was a woman in circuit and she and I looked over and I'm like, wow, a marching glute bridge. Okay. And I told her, Mike, that's my least favorite exercise in the entire world. I'm not going to pretend like I'm perfect. Yes, I love that. No, I hate that actually, but you do it so great. And it also humanizes me as a person. I don't have I don't have every single I own a gym and I love to work out. It's a part of my lifestyle. I haven't not worked out in at least 15 years. Like that's my ammo. That's my drive. That's my energy. I love it so much.

5:10But there's still things that I do not like to do. So power burn and butts and guts. We use rounds like 30 second rounds. We have transition time. Similar to like you would see in strong fit, but it's of two exercises back to back. You might get four or maybe five sometimes. I always like to add in like a cardio movement. Sometimes it'll be cardio choice. So some people might grab an aerobic step. Some people might march on a spot. Some people might do toe touchers or skaters or they might grab a skipping rope or some people were like, you know what? Skipping makes me peepee or sometimes they don't just want to two episodes in a row saying pepees. So like everyone moves differently. Not a lot of people are jumping right now in the in the moment. Sometimes they plan to never jump because they they're like, you know what? I don't need this to hit my goals and I don't need this to have my bone density. They're going to move in a different way to hit their target needs. And there's some people that are like, we love to skip. So we're going to grab a rope. And there's everybody else in between. So cardio movement choice. That is a personal choice for you. Maybe we're going to do 30

6:14seconds. It's going to set your heart rate a little bit on the higher side for heart conditioning. And then you might get squats. I'm just using squats and bicep curls. So it's pretty generic to just so you get the picture of how I structure it. It's not always squats and bicep curls. So you might get in power burn or butts and guts. Again, program the same way. Power burn has all the muscle groups. It has compound muscle groups, which is things that use more than one one muscle at the same time. So think squats, lunges, push ups, dead lifts, chest presses, bird dog, dead bug. Those are more compound movements. And then isolated movements means it's isolating one muscle groups like bicep curls, tricep, back, calf raises. That's going to be more of the what we call accessory movements because they are additional. They are isolated movements. So in power burn and butts and guts, you may get both compound movements and isolated movements. But in butts and guts, obviously judging by the title, it's all core movements. There's some cardio conditioning in there.

7:15And it's all lower body glutes. Core strong glutes is strong back. So less back pain as we strengthen our core strength and our glutes also strengthening the pelvic floor in there as well. So power burn butts and guts, you might also have am wraps like an am wrap 10. So that means as many rounds as possible or as many reps as possible, depending on what your Google gives you when you search am rap. So the time clock is program for 10 minutes. We start together. Everyone has their different changes. If you're not going to the ground, you can do standing. It is our standard. I make sure I write the recipe of how I want coaches to coach. They bring their own unique flare and their own personality to the gym floor. But we have standards to be a coach at the transformation station. And you must always say, okay, if you're not going to the ground, this is a standing version. Everybody does it. We're making the same recipe. My my rule of thumb is no one should ever say, excuse me, I need a modification and nobody and as a coach, nobody should ever say, hey, does anybody need a standing option? We don't do that in our space because we don't

8:17want anyone to be singled out because fitness can look very different for so many people. It doesn't mean that they're less than just because maybe they're doing a leg lift instead of a lunge because there's trying to strengthen their legs. Sometimes they have different different surgeries or different reasons, not excuses. Oh, you can't do a lunges and excuse. No, some people have medical reasons why they're not doing lunges or why they're why they're not doing deadlift. So we cannot just put our own personal experiences inside of the 10 members that are standing in front of us because everyone has somewhere different that they're coming from in their life experiences. Also, fitness is for everybody. Movement is good. So power burn in butts and guts. Amra 10. Everyone starts at the same time. Everyone finishes at the same time. By the time you look around the room in the first two minutes, everyone's doing something. They're at a different point anyways and everyone's moving. So no one knows how many rounds you've done. People aren't going to notice if you're doing something different because they're so fixated on counting 10 squats. Yes, I got 10 squats. 10 by sub curls. Yes, I got that.

9:1810 bird dog. Am I going to go to the random? I'm going to do the standing. Christina said I can do that standing. It looks like that. Oh, Christina's here. Hey, I'm doing bird dog. What was that again? Oh, yes. Here you go. I'm right here with you. It looks like that's awesome. How does it feel? It feels great. Sweet. Keep doing it. High five to you. So that's what a power burn or strong fit. It looks like the time clock starts. We all move. We can move differently, but we're all moving. And I always say to people, if you need to be here because you need your mental health and check and you don't even feel like it, I don't care what you do as long as you're challenging yourself. If marching on a spot for 40 minutes is going to challenge you and that's what you bring to the table today, then I don't care if you march on a spot for 40 minutes because that's what you need to be here and to stay in routine and it's good for your mental health. Then you show up and you march in a spot and guess what? Everyone's going to high five you. Everyone's going to be excited to see you. They're all going to ask how you're doing. So like that, not on the gym floor. I was like, oh, you're just doing marching on a spot. How are you doing? We don't do that here either. But everyone's going to treat you equal. There's not, oh, you don't do the workout like everybody else. No, because no one does the workout the same in our gym. And that's the beautiful thing about the

10:19transformation station. It doesn't matter what your background is or your history. You can come in and thrive. And people are still kind to you. And if they're not, it feels like the last podcast episode I kicked them out. Poo, bye. I mean, not like that loosely. We don't often. I very transparently market the transformation station as it is when you walk through the doors. So there's no surprises. We usually don't ever get the mean girls that come in maybe once a year if that. And I see them. And I'm like, okay, bye. There's a better space for you. That's not going to be here because you will find your people. So yeah, so like everyone is super kind in our space for that set reason. So that's how butts and guts and power burn is, is written is done. Something that is super important to me is adding in different styles of movements. So I talked about compound exercises versus isolated movements. So if someone is coming to the gym, let's say three, four, five days a week, because that's what they want to do. A, they'll never do the same workout twice. B, we're not spending a whole 40 minutes working on biceps and triceps, especially when our total goal for the

11:23our generic members. Everyone can work on their personal goals inside of our space. But most people are not in our space. Nobody actually is looking to be a bodybuilder to step on stage to make sure that their one bicep is some, some symmetrical to their other bicep. Most people just want the function in their biceps to be able to pick things up and put things down. And they want to be healthy and they just want to be stronger at the end of the day. They want that longevity. They want to know that if they fall in the wintertime knock on wood, we're not going to do that. But let's say someone falls on ice in the winter, they're not going to fall down and break their hip because they happen to have muscle in their glutes and their core around their hip or skeletal muscle. We see that on the in body when we do that in body composition analysis scan your skeletal muscle. We make sure that that is at that average and and then some because that's our longevity. That's our lifeline right there. That's the key to being mobile. So there's sometimes we will we pretty much do almost every strong fit have isolated movements. But we also incorporate quite a bit of compound movements because if you're in the gym every day, why would we spend an hour working on just

12:27biceps and triceps two of the smallest muscle groups in the body when we're coming there to get stronger in our whole entire body. And I'm not saying that that is a bad way to train. I'm saying that that's a different style of training that we don't have within our space because the goal is different. If someone's goal is to step on stage because they want to be a bikini model or maybe they want to be a men's body builder and they want to take off their shirt and check their posing because that's a whole part of the sport and 100% is. I'm not going to say it's bad but again, it's very different. We do not have that in our space and people will know that just by how how we show who we are and what we are there's no secrets. What you see if you see someone in a video because we do our content creation days we no longer film during classes when you see someone doing a push up from the wall. You might see five people in in the class doing a push up from the wall. Guess what a push up is a push up if that's how it's going to challenge you a push up to push up. It's going to make you stronger. You might see people doing push up from their feet. You might see people doing push up from their knees but it's not anything weird or different to

13:29see someone doing a push up off the wall because that's going to be normal and that's what people challenge themselves individually. That is part of the way I do the programming at the gym. Of course we also have Zumba and Tempo which is like a martial arts inspired music driven flare cardio class. People normally if they don't have the high choreography of Zumba they love Tempo because it's more simple movements like punching some kicking some people don't kick so they do something that we call knee crunches. There's always different ways again to switch in some of our other classes. Zumba is what it is but you can still change your intensity for whatever it is that you need to be in Zumba and saying that as well. If you want I'm also certified in Zumba. I've been certified in Zumba about four years now. I think maybe over four years. I don't know, give or take and you can always up your intensity. I don't love jumping and twisting in my Zumba classes that I teach and some people love that. So people can add a jump in certain aspects in my classes. If they want to we have a couple other Zumba instructors and they like jumping

14:32in their classes and you'll see people don't always jump the same way. One of our other fun cardio classes we have is step and there's times in the past that I have done a step class and I have not used a step and that's normal in our space. We actually have rubberback math and I say okay if you want to use a step today you can if you want to add risers you'll see people sometimes set three risers on each side of their step in our step classes very few in far between but I have people that are in their 40s and 50s that have been doing steps since they've been in college and university and they just are so in love with step and they like the choreography so they grab the high steps and now there's some people that are just beginning so they're using the step platform just the step solo and then sometimes if people are like well I want to get in my steps for the day and I want to be a part of the team and a part of the group and they don't want to use a step they can also use a step and now saying that there's some people that don't love the high choreography of Zumba and they love tempo there's some people that love step step has its own following there's not a whole lot of traditional build method step instructors out there anymore it is a lot of work I know because I teach it and I thrive in it because it sets my soul on fire because I love

15:36doing 10 things at once and in step that is the ultimate class of doing 10 things at once so people that don't love step maybe they're gonna love Zumba if they don't love step and they don't love Zumba they're probably gonna like tempo and if they don't like tempo they're gonna love our strength training classes they're gonna love our circuit classes that we have they're gonna like everything else that's in between like butts and guts power bird we got matplaudis going on we got chair fitness that we just are we are just launching this week and we don't use the flimsy chairs actually made a post on instagram about this we don't use the flimsy chairs speaking from experience because your ass will fall through folding chairs especially when you have people that are working on their mobility and sometimes they have to crash and burn to sit down and sometimes they have to hoof themselves up to stand up when you have a $20 ikea chair bless ikea bless those $20 fold out chairs are there for other people but they're not there for us so we have metal bank with chairs for that exact reason so i always look at the bigger picture in size and gym it's easy to slap a

16:37label on it and say okay we're gonna have just chair fitness sure pull out the the fold out chairs it's easy to say okay basic programming it's easy to coach we're doing jump squats and burpees and bicep curls and we're gonna do reverse crunches and all these things and that's it that is such an easy and very normal way that people coach in the fitness industry and i shouldn't have laughed there because again not everything is for everybody but that's not how we do things at the transformation station because that's not what fits what i want to serve with within the fitness industry there's some people that love that basic programming and there's some coaches that are like you know what it's a lot of work to have to have all these different versions for everybody i don't want to coach that way that's way above my pay grade i only want to teach what i want to teach and that's it and that's gonna be okay because we also need those style of instructors in the fitness industry we just don't need those style of instructors in the transformation station so i'm gonna wrap it up that's how we do our programming at the gym we do have a set standard we have a little bit of a higher standard because we do believe that fitness is for everybody and when you are

17:42having a lot of people that have different diverse needs we like to adapt and coach the person actually is talking to my friend Holly who's also a trainer and she owns uh berry mighty moms and she said about coaching the person not just coaching the room and we had such a good alignment conversation about that so that is what i'm launching off of we are coaching the person not just the room if people need that individual attention they want it they got it we have such a good energy in space for people to move in a way that feels good for their unique body and they're celebrated for it they're not looked at like they're a nuisance because you're not especially because when i was at that age and i had and i had no mobile at that age i said when i was at that part in my life where i didn't have a gym to go to because i couldn't squat i couldn't go up and down from the ground i actually needed the gym one more than anybody that i do in my circle at that time which was like school but like even as an adult like there there are places i didn't belong in a gym and why did we go to the gym we go to the gym to get stronger so you don't you don't have

18:43to wait to be perfect and to move like everybody else on instagram you can just join the gym and you can do your very very best and that is going to be more than celebrated and way more than okay all right friends on that note i'll talk to you tomorrow