What Is Alloy's Functional Strength Training Program?

Rick Mayo, Alloy Founder/CEO, and Matt Helland discuss the Alloy functional strength training program. Learn how Alloy’s small group personal training creates a better customer experience and results in a higher retention rate than other fitness concepts. Matt joins Rick to look into why Alloy has the fitness industry’s leading retention rate.

Matt explains our customer avatar initially comes into the starting point session with a weight loss goal, but we find out they actually have additional goals we uncover during the session. While the primary goal may be weight loss, clients’ additional goals include how to move better, feel better, and look great. This is important because we can reframe their expectations and make their fitness journey more sustainable and enjoyable.

In this insightful episode, you’ll hear Matt talk about:

The Alloy Functional Training Program

Reframing the expectations/goals of our clients
Building relationships
The ideal workout frequency
A typical Alloy session
The Alloy retention rate

Reframing Expectations and Building Relationships

During our introductory session, we end up peeling the onion back with follow-up questions to really dig in and find why they’re really here. You kind of find out how they got to their current status, which could be from an injury. From there, we find out what their real passion is, then plan their specific goals to get back to their former activities like running or cycling.

The Alloy starting point session is different for every person. There isn’t an exact list of questions to ask, but there’s a bit of reading the situation and reading who’s in front of you. You need to use some communication skill to ask leading questions and learn about body language. We try to teach some communication and sales skills. In sales, there is an old saying that the last one talking loses. Which means if you are a salesperson and you keep asking questions without listening, you lose. So what happens when you ask a question and stop talking, there is an uncomfortable silence and the customer will start talking to fill the void. If the salesperson talks to fill the silence, they lose and don’t give the opportunity for the customer to talk.

For example, if the salesperson is talking about all the great things that your company and not about the customer, you don’t learn what your customer really wants. So it’s not about asking as many questions as you can, it’s about listening to the customer and letting them talk until you get down to the core of why they’re there. That’s how you build those long-term relationships,

The first day you walk in Alloy and see the culture of this place, it’s literally a bunch of people just hanging out and having a good time. There’s a workout going on., but that’s not why people show up. It’s about those relationships and seeing your friends, that’s why people come in the door,

When you reframe expectations, it becomes clear you need to re-educate people about health and fitness. People have so much misinformation or wrong ideas about what they should be doing. Some think they have to workout seven days a week and change everything you eat. What we teach is moving more and smart exercise. Maybe you need a little more protein in your diet to support the transition of fat to muscle. By just tweaking a little supplemental nutrition and adding weight bearing strength training, people can have tremendous changes in their body composition and have more energy to do all their activities. Fitness doesn’t have to be crazy or brutal to have huge fitness gains.

What is the Alloy frequency of functional strength training?

When it comes to the frequency of functional strength training workouts, at Alloy we recommend three days a week. It’s mainly a strength based workout, then we prescribe more movement outside of the gym, like walk 30 minutes a day, whatever that is. Also, one day a week, get your heart rate up high with interval based training only once a week.

What’s happens in the Alloy functional strength training session?

We start with a warm-up, flexibility, mobility, and breaking down tissue sometimes if an injury was involved. We do enough to get them moving. And then we get into our session. The session can last anywhere from 45 to 50 minutes, typically, including the warm-up, then we do a whole body training. People have tight schedules, so we aren’t doing what big commercial gyms do, working out one body part a day for 5 days a week. We do full body training 3 days a week to get the strength training benefits to be more effective and more efficient. Working smarter and not harder.

So what we teach at Alloy with the fundamentals of our program design is how to apply that to a person and take their goals and everything into consideration.

What type of equipment do we implement in our programs?

We typically have equipment that can be used for different exercises. Some examples of equipment we use can be dumbbells, kettlebells, TRX, barbells, and some bikes. That’s it.

Why no machines? The question is, can you get the workout you need for your everyday life or activities from machines? Look at the level of fitness or strength you want to go apply to a tennis match, pickle ball, downhill skiing, cycling, running or playing catch with your kids. Can you extract the same strength from a machine-based program as you can from functional training? The Alloy brand promise is “Looking Good. Feeling great. Living Life to the Fullest.” So we apply what it’s like to be functionally fit for every workout to apply it to their life goals and build a foundation of muscle and strength.

Alloy’s High Retention Rates

Tune in and learn more about the Alloy programming and customer experience! Little wonder, we have a 97% retention rate which is unheard of in the fitness industry! See why some clients have been with us for 20, 25, and even 30 years!

Podcast with: Rick Mayo and Matt Helland