"How To" Tips for Namafit.com

5 Simple Tricks for a Killer Group Fitness Playlist

July 31, 2019 by Alison Hirshan

Are you new to group fitness instruction? Or are you a seasoned veteran? No matter how many years of group fitness training you’ve done, you’re going to want to read this.

As trainers, there are so many things we have to think about before class… preparing the room with equipment, the layout of the class, the intensity level, and of course, remembering all the key instructions. Your playlist should be something that you can throw on and know it will get your audience in the zone.

Know your audience.

What audience will you be training? Teens, young adults, or older individuals? What type of music do you imagine they listen to in their cars? This is the most important factor to address when beginning your playlist curation. If there is a mix of ages and demographics, try to stick to songs you can imagine a variety of people would enjoy.

Ex. If I was making a playlist for middle aged and young adults in Los Angeles, I would make sure to include some current hit songs and classic songs that I know all ages would enjoy.

2. Keep it fresh and CLEAN.

No matter the age, no matter the demographic, it is always considered disrespectful (and sometimes against company policy) to play songs with offensive words. Whatever you do, try to screen the music beforehand to make sure it’s appropriate. The last thing you want to do is offend someone, as it could be their first (and possible last) class with you!

Ex. If I was making a playlist for teens who I know enjoy hip-hop and rap music, I would search for ‘Clean Rap Music’ on Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you create playlists. Tip: there are lots of pre-made ‘Clean’ Playlists on Spotify, all you have to do is search for them in the search bar.

3. Understand the ebb & flow of class.

Although this can differ slightly if you’re teaching yoga or a bootcamp, there is a universal, natural flow of class including warm-up, main portion of work consisting of some high intensity and some low intensity, and eventually a cool down. Try to create your playlist using BPM (beats per minute) to gently increase and decrease music intensity during these portions of class.

Warm-up and cool down: Use songs with 80-115 BPM
Low intensity or mat work: Use songs with 115-140 BPM
HIIT portion of class: Use songs with 140-175 BPM

You can check how many BPM your song has using this BPM counter.

4. Song change = time check!

You’ve taken all this time to pick your songs to naturally match the energy and intensity of class, so why not use the music to help you! This is one of my favorite tricks as a group trainer. If you create your routine based on the playlist, you can match the specific sections of your workout to different songs.

Ex. I allotted two songs to my warm-up routine. Once those songs are over, I know I have to move on to the next portion of class. The third song has a higher BPM and that signals me to get the class moving to the core section.

5. Follow other instructors’ playlists.

Learn from your fellow trainers! We are all each other’s best teachers. Try going to a new group fitness class and observe their style. You will not only learn from another instructor’s cues and routine, but exposing yourself to new music that you might not personally listen to will help in your new playlist discoveries.

Ex. If I train at a group class and I enjoyed the playlist, I make a point to introduce myself to the instructor and ask to follow their playlist. Don’t be shy… who doesn’t love a compliment?

No matter where you are in your group training journey, I hope this helps you feel empowered to create some new killer playlists that you and your clients will love.

How To Use Social Media as a Fitness Professional

July 24, 2019 by Martha Lopez

One thing that many people in the fitness industry need to focus on is really creating their own brand and personality that separates them from all the other fitness professionals in the industry. This really starts with creating a presence where your future clients are, and that’s online. I have worked with some small businesses and have been working on building my own brand as a yoga instructor and here are some tips and tricks I found from both my education in Public Relations and just going through all the trial and error of trying to build my own presence online.

The biggest thing is CONTENT: All other workshops and groups will stress this day in and day out! Content and giving your audience something they can use will not only show how credible you are as a source, but also give future clients an insight to how you work as a professional.
- It’s OK to repost! If you follow someone with similar content feel free to repost that content, be sure to provide the source! This will generate people to your site or platform where you have like minded content.
- Speak to your specific audience! If you have a specific population your are looking to access – talk to them! That’s what social media is about! Use words like Ladies! Guys! Fellow Grads! Etc. to show who your audience is and access them on a more intimate level.
Consistency/Frequency: When thinking about content make a calendar and be specific about your posting schedule: For example, I use for posting that every other day I am using quotes to emphasize my blog topic or podcast topic to keep reinforcing my audience to go back to the podcast or blog post to drive people to continue to view my site and maybe collect people I may have missed on the weekend! This also gives some uniformity to my sites because visually there are positive messages between images of yoga poses, nutrition, etc.
- More on the posting schedule: You do NOT need to post every day! (woah, did I just say that?) There are a lot of analytics out there that say even 1x a day (depending on the platform is enough) Your audience doesn’t need to know the 3 meals and 2 workouts you did each and every day, nor do they really want to! If one day you are focusing on nutrition, post one great meal and give a recipe! If it’s a leg workout, maybe doing a quick video with modifications and going live to show key portions of your workout will be enough to show quality content without just force feeding. No one likes the person who lives on their social media and shows everything!
- The key to a great platform is trying to be consistent – your followers will know you for your content and know what to expect each day and will look forward to those nuggets of wisdom only you can offer!
- Personal tip: I set on my to do list a posting schedule and try to set alarms catered to the schedule based on when I know my followers will be on. I do this without using an organized platform like Hootsuite, but you can definitely look into these automated posting websites that will help relieve some of the hassle of trying to make your posts on a deadline!
Make your profiles “business” profiles: this mostly is catered to Instagram, but this allows you to look up analytics to see who you are accessing, how many people you are accessing, and even location. These insights allow you to really hone in to who you are reaching out and maybe seeing what areas you need to focus on.
- age group: try to keep content within the age group of your niche and do some look as to what content that age group wants.
- location: use the location tab and incorporate location of your business to get people looking at local businesses to find you!

Screenshot of my insights from Instagram

Hashtags: USE them! You are allowed to use 30 hashtags per post, I recommend using them as a comment after the post so it’s not in the forefront of what your audience sees, but use them to drag people to your content.
- I personally like: All Hashtag they generate for you the top 30 hashtags based on the word you use and you are able to just copy paste into a comment! You’re also able to see analytics as to how well certain hashtags are doing if you want to get super techy with your marketing!
Know how your audience functions and when they are looking for you!: Look up peak times that people view certain posts on social media. Also what platforms are they on?
- Don’t waste your time!: This is the time to really find your audience and post during those times where you know people are searching for that content. Typically this is around lunch or after work in the evening. If you are posting at 6 am and there’s no one watching, what good will that do? Here’s a great review of times for social media on SocialSprout!
- Pick a/a few platforms: you don’t need to be on ALL the platforms, and all the time! If you know your audience research where to bring your focus on. Also have a feel for different types of platforms. If your jam is on Facebook and creating Facebook content focus on that and maybe start to play with another social media platform that is more evident for your age group.
  - 22+ : Facebook still highly ranked with Instagram coming in close second. If you have a high visual content you may want to play with both but bring your focus to Insta. Pinterest is also emphasized for clients over 50 because it allows them for more searchable content.
  - <22: Snapchat is growing and Facebook users are steadily declining. Recommend access through more visual social media platforms due to need for high quality visual content with this age group.
  - Source: Business Insider
Be SOCIAL: Don’t just respond with emojis, actually respond to people, reach out to similar profiles and businesses and connect.
- Follow like businesses and profiles: When I mentioned this to a small business there was a lot of hesitation, and I get it, why would you like and share content so similar to you, wouldn’t people go shop or take their business there? There is power in creating a network of like-minded business people. You support each other! Sharing each other’s content creates a broader outreach which means more clients to all! It also gives you insights as to what is working within your niche or field and what is not. This helps you for content creation as well!
- My personal rule of thumb: as you are scrolling through content, which we all do almost every min of the day, like but also comment on one post (be sincere and add more than an emoji!). Who knows, you may spark a convo which brings people to your profile for more?!
Set a call to action!: People want to be involved with social media, so why not involve them? Ask them what areas they want to focus on when it comes to working out, ask what your peak yoga pose should be in the class. Ask questions and engage with people will also allow you to show your personality and get people to trust and want to work with you.
- Personal Tip: I try once every two weeks to incorporate those yoga students who follow me in their classes by asking which peak pose they want. I put the question as either a choice between 2 or 4 different poses. Or, I will ask between two areas of focus (i.e hip openers vs inversions). This allows you to create a personal relationship with your audience and when they see you in class it shows you are actively listening and engaging with them. It’s a nice special touch.

I hope these tips help! Use these steps to get started on making a more uniformed and professional looking profile that will allow you to grow your personal business/fitness personality!

Add Your Jobs to Your Website!

March 10, 2019 by namafit

Let people who visit your website know that you are hiring!

Did you know that you can add a link on your business website to your Namafit job posting? It’s a great way to attract new candidates. Instructors and other fitness professionals frequently visit the websites of businesses where they would like to work.

Step 1:

Step 2:

screenshot of the Namafit business page URL for a namafit customer — Screenshot of the Namafit business page URL for a namafit business.

Then, scroll to the bottom of the page and copy the URL address under “Namafit Business Page URL”

Step 3:

screenshot of a link from a business website to their namafit business page URL and job listings

Add the URL address to your website with text that says something like “View our employment opportunties” or “Our jobs”. Depending on how your website was created this might be an easy WordPress edit or you might need to contact your website designer/developer for help adding that link to your website.

If you have questions or need help adding a link to your jobs on your website, feel free to contact us. We’d be happy to help.

Invite Business Managers To Help Post Jobs and Manage Business Info

March 6, 2019 by namafit

Hiring for your business is a challenge. And in the fitness and yoga industry, it’s an ongoing chore because between the number of classes, instructors and substitutes you need to manager, there seems to always be a need to hire!

Business page header from a Namafit business account page

With your Namafit business account, you can actually invite your managers and operators to help you with hiring. We’ve taken care of it for you by letting you add authorized users to your business page.

Authorized users of your business page can post jobs, respond to candidates, edit jobs and manager your business information. And, don’t worry, you’ll be kept in the loop of any communication by getting CC’d on messages sent back and forth.

To get started, you can go to https://namafit.com/business/admin; or you can login to Namafit.com and click “My Business” in the navigation bar. Then click “Admin” in the second row of navigation. On the admin page, just enter your manager’s email address in the box that says “Invite more people” and click the “Send” button.

Once they accept the invite and create a username and password, they’ll be ready to help you hire!

If you have any questions or thoughts, please send us an email – hello@namafit.com

Linking your social media to your Namafit page is a great way to stand out!

February 17, 2019 by namafit

When you create a Namafit account, you get a professional profile page with a unique URL address that you can use to promote yourself! Take charge of the level or privacy you want, and add your instagram, twitter, facebook and website links to your profile to get more exposure, more SEO love, and showcase your dedication. Stand out to employers and the industry!

Instructors, trainers, teachers, professionals aren’t the only ones who can add social links to your page. BUSINESSES can too! Go to https://namafit.com/business/edit to add your social links to your business page and get more exposure for the business you work hard to make successful.

Link your social media to your professional Namafit page — Linking your social media to Namafit is a great way to stand out

If you have a Namafit account already go to http://namafit.com/profile/edit to add your social links to your page.

If you haven’t created your professional profile page yet, you should! Just go to https://namafit.com/signup – it only take a few minutes and will open up new opportunities for you in this industry!

You can also confirm and adjust your account privacy by going to https://namafit.com/settings

Thank you for sharing your gifts with the world…and happy job hunting

Upload Your Resume & Stand Out From The Crowd – Yoga, Fitness, Dance, Wellness Professionals!

February 11, 2019 by namafit

upload your yoga, fitness, dance teacher resume to namafit — Upload Your Resume for yoga and fitness jobs

I remember a time when LinkedIn.com was just a site that fellow tech workers would say, “You’ve gotta add your resume to LinkedIn. It’s gonna be better for finding jobs than Craigslist.com”. So, I took the bait and uploaded my resume to LinkedIn.com, even though I had no idea what LinkedIn was.

Fast forward 3-4 years. LinkedIn had grown and the professional network had grown. Office professionals were then filling out their job history and skillsets on their LinkedIn page.

But there wasn’t a fit to create a professional resume page for yoga instructors, group fitness instructors, personal trainers, coaches, dance teachers and wellness professionals. Until now- Namafit is the right fit for you. Create your professional web presence now with your Namafit instructor profile page by going to https://namafit.com/signup

If you already have a Namafit profile page, add your resume by going to http://namafit.com/profile/edit

How to Use Yoga to Start Your Day

January 16, 2019 by schimiggy

Every day is a different day. After practicing yoga for over 6 years, one thing that I’ve learned is to have intention in your actions and thoughts. Each new day is an opportunity for us to start with an intention and purpose that will permeate throughout the day. Here are three ways you can use yoga to be more mindful and purposeful in your life.

#1 Visualize Your Day

Start your day with mindfulness and meditation. Before you get out of bed, take a few minutes to visualize how your morning will look. Prior to leaving the home to head to work or to run errands, try to see how you want that to look. Will you need to make coffee? Freshen up in the restroom? Get dressed? What will you wear? Do you have to walk the dog? Vividly think about how you’re going to start to your morning and then begin your day. If it does not line up, that is OK. Try it again the next day until your mind is aligned with your actions. This quick meditation and mindfulness exercise will allow you to move with intention as you go about your day. Feel free to use it throughout the day (i.e. visualizing how your workday will look, and what your preparing for bed process may look like).

#2 Start with Pranayama

Breath is our life source. It’s important to reconnect with breath on a regular basis, either through yoga or meditation. The practice of pranayama allows us to connect to that life source that flows through us whether we want it to or not. A pranayama technique that I love to use is breath counting.

How to Count Your Breath:

Sit in a comfortable seat in a chair or on the ground on blocks or a meditation cushion.
Place your hands on your knees or find dhyana (concentration) mudra.
Close your eyes and take your drishti or focus point inwards.
Take three deep breaths and sigh audibly to exhale them out.
After the last breath, take a pause and then begin to slowly inhale as you count up to 4.
Pause at the top of your inhale and then count down from 4.
Repeat by counting up and then counting down one more time.
On the next two rounds, count up to 6, then to 8, then to 10.
Once you’ve completed your last two rounds of counting up to 10, stay in your seat and breathe normally.

#3 Move Your Body

This last tip is what most people think of yoga, as a way of moving your body. While it is important, the yoga poses, or asanas, or only a fraction of what yoga truly is. Yoga is the connection of mind, body, and the present moment. I recommend doing 8 cat and cows, 3-5 sun salutations, and then a child’s pose (balasana) to start your day. Do this every day and reflect on how it makes your body feel. Listen to it, and modify if you need to.

woman in child's pose doing yoga — Yoga practitioner in child’s pose

Guest Contributor Profile: Alex Tran AKA Schimiggy is a Digital Marketing Strategist, fitness fashion, travel, and food-obsessed raconteuse. She currently resides in Seattle and teaches yoga while writing about her favorite topics. Schimiggy Reviews is a lifestyle blog where Schimiggy shares her passions and interests with the world!

Your Namafit business page has some great features you might be missing out on

January 3, 2019 by namafit

When you create a business on Namafit.com your recruiting goals immediately improve. Once you create a business profile on the site you can post as many jobs as you need to fill for yoga, fitness and dance instructors, coaches and trainers. We’ve made it as simple as possible to create a clear, specific job post in the shortest amount of time.

And when you post your job, Namafit works some magic behind the scenes. The Namafit professional network spans the United States. Based on the type of job and location you post Namafit finds the best matches for the job and send notifications to each of them alerting the candidates that the job was just posted. Namafit also sends your job post to the Google job search engine as well as several other external job boards in the USA. Once on google and these other job boards candidates find the job, click apply, and are brought back to your Namafit post to apply directly to you.

Free Features for Businesses

Add Authorized Users to help manage your business page

In addition to the built in job and event promotion tools for your business, we have added some great features to help you be more efficient in your recruiting, too.Â What I think it our coolest business feature is the ability to invite other employees to be administrators for your business page.Â That means your manager, or lead desk staff or operator can help you post jobs and events.Â They can send messages to candidates, reply to applications, update your business pages, and help take these duties off your hands.Â But don’t worry, you will be kept in the loop, because you, as the page owner will be copied on messages that are sent to and from your business to candidates.

To take advantage of this amazing business feature, just go to https://namafit.com/business/adminÂ and invite your first authorized user.

business settings for Namafit account — You can add other authorized users to help manage your Namafit business page and postings.

Add Multiple Locations for Your Business

Do you have more than one location? Or do you hold classes and events at more than one location?Â You can add all of your locations to your main business page by going to https://namafit.com/business/edit

While there make sure to add and/or update your logo, “About Us”, website address, social media links and phone number for your business to get more SEO exposure for your business and postings.

Use Your Namafit Website Address As A Link From Your Website

Your business page has a permanent URL website address, so you can add that as a link from your business website to lead candidates to your job postings.Â Your Namafit business page is a landing page to showcase your business postings for jobs and events.Â To add a link to your website: Go to https://namafit.com/businessÂ and copy the URL from the address bar of your browser.Â Now add that link to your business website with text that says something like “Now Hiring” or “View our current job openings”.

You may want to ask your web developer for help adding this link.Â It’s a great way to get more candidate applications for your jobs!

permanent URL for a Namafit business account — Your business URL contains your business name for better SEO exposure

Re-post Jobs and Events in Minutes After They Expire

Jobs and events run for one month when posted.Â When they expire you will receive an email notifying you.Â

Just click the link in the email to re-post them.Â
You can also go to https://namafit.com/postings for jobs and https://namafit.com/events for events.Â
Click the “Open Jobs”/”Open Events” drop down selector and switch to “Closed Jobs”/”Closed Events” to see your expired postings.Â
On the left, click on the expired posting and click “Re-post” button on the right.Â
Make any date and description updates you desire, and publish the posting again!

How To Use Your Namafit Profile Page As Your Professional Webpage URL

December 18, 2018 by namafit

Did you know that when you create your profile on Namafit that you get a professional URL so you can share your page?

That’s right. You can customize your profile to highlight your skills, expertise and interests, so you will stand out to prospective employers and partners.

To get your Professional URL address just go to your profile page, https://namafit.com/profile and highlight the website address at the top of your browser window. Then click “copy” (command + c in Mac, windows + c in Windows). You now have a shareable profile URL copied to your clipboard. Go share it!!!!

Of course, sharing is even better when your profile is complete!

Update your profile

Go to https://namafit.com/profile/edit to complete your profile details.
Add your profile photo.
Update your “About Me” section.
Confirm your location city and state.
Update your social links.
Update your certifications.
Add your resume.
Update the styles and levels that you teach and practice.

Update your personal preference settings

Go to https://namafit.com/settings and select the settings you prefer.
You can:
Change the distance for job notifications you receive
Select who you would like to be able to see your professional profile
General Public
Only logged in Namafit members
Only those businesses you apply
Update your password
Update your email address

That’s it- we’ve worked hard to make it easy to make you profile page and keep it up to date. Please email or message us if you have any questions.

The Journey Begins. How Namafit Got Started.

November 29, 2018 by namafit

How I Solved My Own Staffing Problems At My New Fitness Studio

When I opened a yoga, fitness and dance studio in 2010 I was embarking on a journey very new to my family and me. Prior to opening our new studio, I had been a software engineer for over 16 years, a husband and a father of 3 boys. As you can imagine, my wife and I were very busyâ€Šâ€”â€Šon top of being an awesome mother to our boys, she owns and operates a busy local restaurant.

I always knew that I wanted to open a small business close to our homeâ€Šâ€”â€Šsomething that would help contribute to the overall wellbeing of our community. After living in our area for several years, we realized that there was a need for an awesome local dance/fitness studio. We had lamented the fact that there was nowhere in Menlo Park to take good fitness and yoga classes. We also noticed that the dance studios where our boys were taking classes were packed with kids. We have both been active and into athletics our whole lives, and as parents, that segment of our lives had definitely been neglected for years! So, looking back, I guess opening a yoga, fitness and dance studio was a pretty natural thing to do.

Getting the business systems setup, finding a space to rent and getting ready to open was time consuming but all fairly straightforward. I called a contractor to help with the interior build out. They took care of the details. I opened bank accounts. I signed up for MindbodyOnline to handle reservations and payments. Making a schedule of classes was actually pretty difficult because it meant taking into account the demographics in the neighborhood and neighboring cities, figuring out what types of classes were appropriate at which time of day. The initial goal was to offer youth classes, mostly dance, in the afternoons, so factoring in the times that schools let out was important. But in the end, it was all set in place. This was all in motion leading up to an opening date.

Staffing for a new fitness, yoga and dance business

Staffing (hiring professionals who were going to instruct my classes, not to mention represent my business to the public) was something of an unknown. After doing some research online, Craigslist quickly became my go-to resource for posting job ads to find teachers. Being a new business, I had a budget for marketing and advertising, which helped cover the cost of the $75 each job post cost with Craigslist. Everyone knows Craigslistâ€Šâ€”â€Šyou write up a job title and description, pay $75 and submit. The job loads into the â€œfitness/spa/salonâ€ category search results and you wait. At some point for most Craigslist posts, just like anyone else who posts on Craigslist, I received emails from people interested in my open positions. Sometimes I would get an email with a nice paragraph about the person, along with their name, email, phone number and resume attached. Sometimes, I would receive a quick request to be hired, with a name and nothing else. The rest of the responses I saw fell somewhere in between those two extremes.

When I did receive enough information about a person applying, my next step was to google their name and hopefully find out more about their background, where else they teach, how long theyâ€™ve been teaching, etc. After several email and phone call chains, followed by onsite interviews, ultimately, I was able to hire enough professionals to fill my staff sufficiently to run thebusiness.

Connections

A big part of running a business that relies on independent contractors for its staff is the maintaining and building of professional connections. I found out very quickly that my day-to-day staffing needs relied heavily on my ability to search my rolodex in an efficient manner for not only â€œgreat instructorsâ€, but â€œgreat instructorsâ€ that could teach the types of yoga/fitness that we were filling classes for. (I donâ€™t actually have a rolodex, as Iâ€™m sure you may have surmised, but instead have several email lists that I am constantly curating.)

Basically, this is how my current â€œnetworkingâ€ efforts have gone:

Post to Craigslist

Email/phone back and forth

Invite potential instructor for an onsite chat

HIRE them for a class

After hearing feedback from those who participated in the class, add the instructor to my list.
Repeat steps 1â€“5 next time an instructor bails on a class (which happens more often than youâ€™d think)

After going through this process more times than I can count, I started to think that there had to be a better way. After doing a bunch of research, and interviewing a bunch of my instructors and many similar businesses, I came to realize that there wasnâ€™t anything available that suited my needs. As it turns out, the fitness/yoga industry is very word-of-mouth driven when it comes to staffing. Most other studios and gyms follow the same pattern of Craigslist and email lists to fulfill their staffing needs.

Enter Namafit

As I mentioned earlier, Iâ€™ve been a Software Engineer for years, for startups all over the Silicon Valley. After experiencing the above issues for months in my own business, I decided that enough was enough! I hooked back up with a buddy of mine that Iâ€™d worked with for years on other projects and we built namafit.com.

Namafit is a platform that completely solves my fitness instructor staffing problems. Iâ€™m able to quickly post opportunities, which are then automatically broadcast to all of Namafitâ€™s extensive database of instructors. Instructors have the ability to create their own profile, which includes information such as their qualifications, styles/levels they teach, and even their resumÃ©. We have been hard at work building a product that will replace the dreaded email list, and will give businesses such as myself a tool to find quality instructors quickly. And itâ€™s a tool to for fitness instructors and trainers to find more work, and more importantly, have more work find them.

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