Talking About A Revolution

Rob, John and Giuseppe in the Islington Gazette, 21 July 2005

A few days ago on 24th June we celebrated our sixth birthday and I thought it would be a great idea to share our story so far.

Giuseppe, John and I set up the business on 24th June 2005. We were young, incredibly enthusiastic and rather naive. Some have said stupid. We agreed a 5 year lease (seriously, 5 years?! what were we thinking!) at the Business Design Centre, and were armed with our start up funds. This included money scraped together from close friends and family, as well as personal loans since the banks thought that lending money to Revolution was too much of a risk. Bearing in mind that this was back in 2005, when banks were giving homeless people loans to buy a house.

None of us knew the first thing about running a business, but we knew that we didn’t want to work for a large gym chain anymore. We wanted to show clients that by setting goals, giving nutritional advice, taking measurements, assessing progress, and perhaps most importantly having fun, we could help anyone achieve what they wanted to physically.

The early days were exceptionally tough and the three of us worked 16-17 hour days regularly. John had boundless energy and Giuseppe had an unbreakable belief that we would succeed. I was just rather nervous and pensive, although after a while I realised that people mistook this for a savvy business brain.

It was tough getting clients through the door initially, as we hadn’t formulated any kind of marketing plan. So when people did try our free introductory offer, we had to be on top of our game. It wasn’t easy to convince people that they needed what we were offering when there was no-one else in the studio training. However, we did manage to convince people to train with us due to our real passion and desire to help them transform their bodies. This is part of the culture that is still at the core of Revolution today.

In those early days, we even heard on the grapevine that certain companies within the Business Design Centre were taking bets on how long it would be before we went bust. Fortunately, other businesses and people within the BDC gave us a chance.

Paul Morris, one of the five brothers who own the BDC, started training with us a few weeks after we opened. Paul is a fun guy and liked to take the mickey out of us, and I think it surprised and pleased him that we gave him just as much banter back. In some ways this set the tone for how things were to go forward at Revolution.

We made it to our first Christmas and invited all 12 of our clients to a party at the local pub in Camden passage. After a few drinks too many, one of my clients (an Irish girl who will remain nameless) started shadow boxing in the face of one of John’s clients, who it’s fair to say was no shrinking violet. After a bit of laughing and joking, they suddenly got serious and started swapping punches for real! We had to pull them apart and apologise to the pub manager who was understandably unimpressed.

In early 2007 we took on our first trainer, Peter ‘the cowboy’ Sullivan. Peter had built a personal website that included photos of him striking poses in cowboy outfits and other bizarre costumes, as well as some of his homespun philosophy. One piece of gold dust read “unless we have the right teacher in life we will forever crawl within the boundaries delimited by our own ignorance”. In May 2007, Peter hit the headlines in a big way. After chatting up a young lady who worked in a unit opposite Revolution, we asked her out on a date on his behalf. We emailed her a link to his website and said “before you decide if you want to go on a date with me, check out my website”. To cut a long story short, this website went global and within 24 hours Pete was being made fun of from Dubai to Australia to New York. His website received 100,000 hits and he found himself on page 3 of the Evening Standard, in centre page of Saturday’s Mail and featured in many other national publications.

Pete left us to become a world star and in November 2007 Aaron Brandon-Tyrrell replaced him. Aaron has a degree in Sports Science and played rugby for Scotland in the Under 19s Rugby World Cup, so obviously he came with a great reputation. He became a huge hit with the clients at Revolution due to his high standard of training and more importantly his willingness to get involved in the studio’s banter. After one night’s drinking with John, Giuseppe and me, Aaron missed the last train back to Essex, so proceeded to run the 12 miles home at 3am in the morning. This kind of legendry performance set the bench mark for all other trainers to follow.

Sometime towards the end of 2007 we stumbled across a way of advertising that was to prove successful beyond our expectations. Marc Morris, the son of Paul, lost an incredible 5 stone in 12 weeks and we felt we had to share this story with as many people as possible. After calling the local Angel magazine, they agreed to run a feature and for the first time our phone rang off the hook.

Our marketing plan then became very clear and simple – to help people transform their bodies in 12 weeks and advertise their results everywhere within a 1 mile radius of our studio. We displayed a succession of 12 week transformations on the huge billboard outside the Business Design Centre and we continued to increase our client base rapidly. One of our first 12 week transformation 'before and after' posters was of Jon Archer who lost 3 stone:



With the increase in clients came an obvious need to increase our number of trainers. In the summer of 2008 we brought on Will Cloke and Neil McGuigan, or as they are otherwise affectionately known “Bevis and Butthead”. Neil and Will continued the theme of helping clients achieve outstanding results whilst having fun, and they are an integral part of the success Revolution enjoys today as well as our plans for the future.

With a great team developing, in 2009 we doubled our working space by knocking through to the unit next door, and then our goal became to gain more clients and add more trainers. We found two top class trainers in Bex Maslin and Tim Wise. Bex and Tim both work an incredible amount of hours, and Bex I believe has become the best female personal trainer in London. At this point John, Giuseppe and I had the business we’d always dreamed of - happy clients achieving fantastic results in a studio with a buzzing atmosphere.

We continued to help more and more clients transform their bodies in 12 weeks and strived to improve our methods to do it better. Our personal training team was improved further when two cool customers joined our team - Ryan Pickard and Ollie Vandenburg. Ryan is one of the country’s top amateur boxers and has represented Great Britain on 48 occasions, winning a Junior Commonwealth gold medal and a Senior bronze medal at the European Championships. And Ollie is an absolute natural when it comes to personal training, and some of the results he has guided his clients to are truly exceptional. Here is a before and after picture of Ollie's client Sarah, who lost an incredible 5 stone whilst training with Ollie:




The team has been completed with the arrival of Alex Giannini, Anya Russell and Jay Copley, and the skill and enthusiasm that these guys have brought to the studio has been far more than we could have hoped for. Their story at Revolution is just starting, but they undoubtedly have the ability to achieve many great things.

The future at Revolution is bright. We regularly deliver over 400 hours of personal training per week, and are in plans to open our second site within the next 12 months. We’ve also set up a white collar boxing company in partnership with Tim Wise.

Revolution’s success has been built on clients achieving amazing results with 12 week transformations whilst having a lot of banter and fun. Just as importantly, we have happy and talented trainers. Our challenge is to continue to grow whilst maintaining the principles that make us unique.

Our latest 12 week transformation

Well done to Dan Larcey who achieved this amazing transformation in just 12 weeks.

Mexican eggs - a high protein breakfast.

Mexican Eggs! A really simple and tasty high protein Breakfast that would benefit those aiming to gain muscle mass or as an alternative to eggs on toast. Egg protein is considered to be of the purest forms available, and there's limited amounts of processed carbohydrates in this meal to maintain a steady blood-sugar level.

Ingredients:
3-4 Free Range/Organic Eggs
Semi-Skimmed/Whole Milk
2 Wholemeal Tortilla's
Fajita Seasoning
Salsa (if you wish)

Basic Directions:
Crack the eggs into a mixing bowl and whisk until smooth.
Add a small amount of milk and whisk the two together.
Pre-heat an oven to 200 degrees Celcius or use a microwave to heat the tortillas to make them pliable. Pop in the tortillas.
Heat a frying pan and use a small knob of butter (not margarine) to grease the pan.
Add the eggs and gently stir in the fajita seasoning to your taste and cook until your preferred consistency.
Remove the Tortilla's and spread the salsa. Add the cooked eggs and roll the tortilla into a tube.

Enjoy!

Aaron 'keano' Brandon Tyrrell

Sarah's amazing transformation

Although Sarah's complete transformation took longer than the 12 weeks that we normally work with it is still truely remarkable. Sarah lost 5 stone and 10 inches off her waist! Well done to Sarah and trainer Ollie!

Amazing 12 Week transformations!

Congratulations to lucy and Les for their amazing 12 week transformations. Also big well done to their trainers Will and Tim

Motivation Made Easy

I have been a personal trainer for 10 years, and in that time I have lost count of the number of people who have said that they either lack motivation to train or that they felt very motivated over the first month or two of training, before gradually feeling their interest slip.

I’ve also met and spoken to many people who have moved from one big chain gym to another, tried pilates or power plate sessions or continually switched the personal trainer that they use – all in the vain hope that this time things will be different. They hope that this new gym or this new exercise class will change their body and that they will be more motivated than ever. Very rarely does this prove to be true.

In fact, motivation is much easier to achieve than most of us have been led to believe. Staying motivated is not some magical formula, but rather a simple process to follow.

The key to becoming motivated and staying motivated is as follows:

1. Your goal must really excite you
And I mean really excite you. Which is why it’s best to try to avoid setting goals such as to ‘tone up’ or ‘get fitter’. It can be very hard to get excited about something as non-descript and lame as that. Your goal could be to attract a new partner, to keep a current partner interested or it could be to look good in your favourite item of clothing or to run a marathon. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter what your goal is – it just matters that you are excited about achieving your goal.

2. Know exactly what you want
When setting your fitness goals, this is no time to be vague. The more you can be descriptive and use emotional and powerful words, the more motivated you will become. Be totally specific. Don’t say ‘I want to lose a bit of weight’, say exactly how much weight you want to lose and over what time frame. The combination of setting a goal which excites you and knowing exactly what you want to achieve will not only motivate you to train but it will also help you to make the right nutritional and lifestyle choices, such as saying no to that packet of crisps, chocolate biscuits or glass of wine.

When setting your goal, avoid using the word ‘but’. This is generally the word which gets used just as excuses are made.

3. Visualise yourself achieving your goal and how good it feels
This can be done by simply taking a quiet moment and imagining yourself looking the way you want to look and how your friends and family are responding to the new you. If you’re someone who doesn’t find visualisation easy to do, then you can use a couple of simple techniques:

a) I had a client who owned a very expensive pair of jeans that she could no longer fit into. She would bring the jeans with her to every personal training session, and I would measure how close she was to fitting into them again. Before her 12 weeks of training had finished, she was able to wear her jeans again and the visualisation process that she had used was one of the main reasons that she achieved her goal.

b) Most of us are familiar with the feeling of looking at ourselves on holiday in a pair of swimming trunks or a bikini where we are not happy with how we look. When one of my clients said that his goal was to have a six-pack and look great on the beach on holiday, I asked him to look through some holiday brochures and find a picture of somebody who was ripped and looked just how he wanted to look. My client then superimposed an image of his head onto the photo, and stuck the picture onto his fridge. Over the following few months he trained harder than ever to reach his goal and when his summer holiday came he was in the best shape of his life. When he returned from his holiday, he showed me a photo of himself on the beach and his physique was just as good as guy from the brochure.


If these three simple steps are followed, then motivation is guaranteed and it’s also much easier for a good personal trainer to write the correct training programs and nutritional plans for you. Much more importantly, you’ll actually follow the training plans that are written for you. In fact, getting up in the morning to train or eating healthy nutritious food will seem really easy.

Finally, it is important to assess your progress as you go and to really enjoy yourself on your way to achieving your goal. When you are highly motivated, it is surprising how much fun training can be.

Good luck.

Rob G

All you need to know about Revolution in 500 words

Revolution was set up in May 2005 by brothers Rob and John Grim and their friend Giuseppe Di Credico. Over the past 5 and half years the company has grown from 3 personal trainers through to the 11 who work there today.

“We wanted to create an environment which was totally different to a standard gym because so many people that we knew had had a very negative experience with standard gyms. Revolution’s culture is a friendly and supportive one, which allows many different types of people with very different goals to train in the same place and consistently achieve great results.

We have built our reputation on 12 week transformations and have guided thousands of people to achieve outstanding results within this timeframe. We write training plans which are tailored to each individual client’s needs, and also take an in-depth look at what and when they eat and provide personalised food plans for them to follow. Each training session is always conducted with the expertise and guidance of a fully qualified personal trainer.

Our clients are highly motivated due to the simple goal setting that we go through with them before they start training. We ask each client to write down what they want to achieve and most importantly why they want to achieve that goal. A weekly training schedule is then planned and measurements are taken to evaluate progress. Along with the nutritional support mentioned above, this is the Revolution formula to success.

We break down our 12 week transformation into three 4 week training phases. Different training phases are used to keep the body guessing and to create a new stimulus.

First 4 weeks of training – conditioning (flexibility and core strength)
In the first 4 weeks of training, we focus on full body compound movements and flexibility training to enable the body to go through the required range of movement. We teach the body to squat, rotate, push, pull and twist. These movements have an immediate effect on changing the shape and composition of the body.

Second 4 weeks of training - hypertrophy (improved muscle tone)
The training phase changes at this point to give the body a new stimulus. This training phase is called hypertrophy, which means using resistance based exercises to increase the body’s lean muscle and also to increase muscular tone.

By adding lean quality muscle to the body, the basal metabolic rate is increased. This is the rate at which you burn calories at rest. For every pound of muscle you have, you burn 16 calories at rest per hour. For every pound of fat you have, you only burn 2 calories at rest per hour.

Third 4 weeks of training – circuit training
This training phase is where we ramp up the intensity, get the heart rate high and reduce rest periods. After 8 weeks of training, our clients will be ready for this and the body responds by burning fat fast! A lot of our clients are also put through boxing training at this stage, which not only allows them to take out life’s stresses with various punching and footwork drills, it’s also one of the most fun ways to get fit.”

Our new poster boy is trainer Will with his amazing 12 week transformation. An inspiration to all his clients. Congratulations!

Moshe interview about how he lost 3 stone in 12 weeks!

Revolution's new poster boy is Moshe

Revolution has just unvieled our new poster boy across London's billboards. We would all like to say a huge well done to Moshe and underneath his before and after is his testimonial .

12 weeks ago I weighed 100kg and at a height of 5"7 that's a heavy! My everyday suits no longer fitted me, size 42 waist and expanding... I was in trouble and had no idea of how to lose or control my weight?

I am now 80kg and size 34 waist and seeing the reaction of people who knew me before is priceless.

Revolution has genuinely changed my life. I now understand what to eat and when to eat. The nutritional advice combined with the tailored exercise programme has given me the results I wanted in a very short period of time. I am grateful to the team for giving me the tools to succeed.

For me revolution combines knowledge, motivational support and a personal approach to fitness, offering genuine care and a true desire to achieve results.

If you listen to what they say you will go a long way. I would recommend revolution to anyone who needs help in knowing how to lose weight and how to get fit for life.

Thanks

Moshe