Our Founding Passion

The Exercise Coach was created by a passion for encouraging and empowering people to achieve their fitness and health goals.  Many of our clients had a strong desire to get in shape and live healthier lives but felt disqualified by conventional fitness wisdom and prescriptions that didn’t match their schedule or their bodies.  From the very first workout, it’s apparent that we are a perfect fit for those who don’t love working out, and don’t have time to spend hours at the gym.

This passion is just as foundational to our strategy of franchise growth and development.  We intentionally seek out entrepreneurial people who would love to own their own business, have a passion for helping others, and feel that there must be a better way to deliver high quality fitness and reach those who aren’t engaged in exercise.  Because of this, many of our franchise owners come from non-exercise related backgrounds: from finance and government, health care and the technology industry, human resources and the arts.  You don’t have to be a fitness professional to own a cutting edge fitness business.

From Local to National

In 2010, The Exercise Coach was registered as a franchise opportunity in Illinois, and for the next 2 years, the team focused on opening and establishing new franchise studios around the suburbs of Chicago.  In 2010 and 2011, we launched locations in Schaumburg, Libertyville and Palatine, and in 2012 we opened studios in Bannockburn, Grayslake, and Gurnee.  In January of 2013, Exercise Coach locations opened in Naperville and Wilmette.

We are pleased to announce the addition of 3 multi-unit franchise developments in Texas, Arizona and North Carolina.  By the summer, we will have 2 locations open and operating in Dallas and one each in Scottsdale and Charlotte.  Each of the franchisees have caught the vision created by Brian and Gerianne Cygan, and are very excited to bring The Exercise Coach to their local markets.

According to Amanda Coe, owner of The Exercise Coach Scottsdale, the strength of the business model lies in our unique approach to fitness.  “I was looking for a relatively simple and proven business model with the potential for a good return on investment.  In my opinion, The Exercise Coach technology, fitness and nutrition program is revolutionary and unlike anything on the market today. As a result, I believe the franchise will be successful in expanding across all 50 states over the next 5 years.”

Join Our Team!

As I said, 2013 is shaping up to be a busy one at The Exercise Coach!  In addition to opening new locations in national markets, we continue to work with franchise candidates from more than a dozen states across the country.  If you would like to learn more about becoming part of our growing franchise team, visit our franchise information page, browse the FAQs, and take the first step!

Our last post on artificial sweeteners provoked some interesting discussion on our Facebook page.  We discussed the dangers of using artificial sweeteners in one’s diet, as well as healthier alternatives.

In the same week we made our post, some new news came out about another place we may be seeing artificial sweeteners show up in our food supply (oh, and without it even being on the label).  Where?  In our milk and other dairy products.  Find out about why this might be the case and about studies that show some new potential side effects of artificial sweeteners that may surprise you!

READ ALL ABOUT IT BELOW.
Artificial Sweeteners coming to our milk?  By Naturally Savvy.com

READ ALL ABOUT IT BELOW.

Dairy Industry Wants to Spike Milk with Aspartame (And not tell you) By Care2.com

If you are a personal training client at The Exercise Coach you have no doubt heard our mantra – “Muscle Quality matters more than Movement Quantity.”  For those of you who are unfamiliar with us, our focus is on the science which proves muscle is your primary biomarker.   This science shows that your muscle’s functionality impacts not only your fitness but also your health and longevity.  Guided by this paradigm, it’s our passion to inspire the not-yet-fit to take action and enjoy strength.

Our unique process was built  to optimize results for men and women of all fitness levels.  For 16 years we have been evolving this process and in recent years we have achieved a synthesis of technologies to present our clients with the pinnacle application of exercise science.  You might say the heart of our methodology is feedback.  This includes Professional and Visual feedback.  The professional feedback comes from an encouraging coach that understands how to use “cues that count” and the visual feedback is delivered via “digital effort displays.”  I’ll touch briefly today on why we think this feedback is so important.

“DIGGING DEEP” ENOUGH TO SEE CHANGE

I’ve already said that Muscle quality is a vital marker of health.  It’s also the only pathway by which we can access the rest of the bodily system through exercise.  Enhanced Muscle quality (strength per unit of muscle mass) is triggered by several key stimuli.  We will look at these in another post.  For today what I want you to understand is that the one factor – the key common denominator among these stimuli – is something called fiber recruitment.  This simply refers to the number of muscle fibers that your central nervous system is required to contract (ie., produce force) at once.  Higher effort requires the recruitment of a greater number of muscle fibers and therefore provides greater over all stimulation of one’s adaptive mechanisms.  It’s also important to note that if effort, (and therefore fiber recruitment), remains below a threshold level then no stimulus is applied.  In layman’s terms, if you don’t exert enough effort during exercise you don’t get any beneficial result from it.  So how do we know if you are exerting enough effort?  Is there a way to motivate higher effort?  Enter digital feedback.

THE POWER OF FEEDBACK

There are numerous factors that are considered by our coaches when they use our digital displays and give verbal encouragement to our clients.  For today, I just want to share two important beliefs about this dynamic and point out a supportive research experiment.  At The Exercise Coach we use instantaneous digital feedback displays to help our clients “Dig Deep” and it is an absolutely revolutionary approach.  Based on years of hands-on research and development I have a couple beliefs about the effectiveness of effort feedback when combined with verbal encouragement for the average person:

1. I believe that we expedite (and in some cases make possible) our client’s experience of meaningful/optimal muscular exertion by weeks and in some cases months.
2. I believe within a single exercise set, at any moment,  the methods we use lead to anywhere from 10-100% more effort from our clients.  This varies greatly based on individual factors.

It might be suggested that we see these differences only in novice clients and those that are less naturally inclined toward exertion.  This is not case.  Research findings corroborate our observations about force feedback and verbal encouragement on trained and untrained individuals.  Studies have found the impact of feedback to be similar among trained and untrained individuals.  It’s true that optimal muscular effort will have a disproportionately positive effect on untrained and older individuals.  This is great news for the not-yet-fit.  Feedback and encouragement are more than just training wheels for the untrained.  Our experience leads us to believe much more.