Your Personal Bailout Plan

Watching and reading about the current credit crisis over the past days and weeks has been fascinating, and to be honest, I’ve not yet reached a saturation point, probably because I continuously learn something new about the issue and finance in general. Even while doing other things it’s been in the back of my mind, so I guess in that context it’s not surprising that a recent discussion with someone about individual health behavior led me to a bailout analogy.

It seems that, unfortunately, some members of congress last week tried to use the need for quick action as a mechanism for adding extraneous things to the bailout bill while trying to pass them off as being necessary to fixing the problem. For example, infrastructure was mentioned as being part of the package – helpful for jobs, but it’s not relevant to loosening credit for businesses and consumers. In the same way – and work with me here – sometimes during a self-assessment people come up with a laundry list of ways they could improve their health, when in reality there may be only one pressing thing that needs to be addressed. Coming up with a comprehensive exercise and eating overhaul is part of a big picture goal, not something to achieve right out of the gate, so rather than going 0-60, maybe the first step is to set a goal of walking for 10 minutes every day during lunch (even if indoors), for example. I’ve been working with people long enough to have learned that this all-or-nothing mentality – “I have to fix it all now and be successful at it now or not at all” – rarely works for behavior change because a) a person can’t solve everything at once, and b) when he subsequently “fails” at that, the tendency is to give up. Not a recipe for long-term success.

So my advice to you and to lawmakers – which I’m sure they’ll take, of course – is to focus on a (the) dominant issue at hand, and then tackle the over-arching issue in phases when there’s been more time for exploration, reflection, and problem-solving.

Weekender: Preservatives Work

A buddy sent me this link earlier this week that demonstrates the power of preservatives. This is so unbelievable I don’t even know what to say. Your thoughts, Ronald?

It’s About Time

It looks like we’re taking an important step toward treating mental health issues as illnesses that should be taken as seriously as physical ailments. Congress is (hopefully) about to pass legislation that requires employers to offer mental health coverage at the same level as physical coverage. The downside is that it will of course raise costs to employers who will then spread that around to employees and customers, but the long-term benefit to employees and ultimately to businesses are worth it.

The antiquated notion that mental health issues are all in someone’s head needs to go. Yes, there are definitely people who have excuses or the ‘victim illness,’ but there are too many people who have been denied the opportunity to address a real problem simply because it wasn’t covered by their insurance. We need to keep moving toward a holistic and preventive model of health and get away from a limited view of health and a repair-only model.

Tarnished Rep

I think the fitness industry is in a lot of ways a very reputable one and is accepted as such by many people. However, stories like this one in Monday’s Chicago Tribune, in which a local personal trainer was convicted and sentenced for sexually abusing two teenaged girls, don’t exactly help the cause. The crime itself was heinous, so I’m not trying to minimize it by glossing over it, but the additional issue here on top of it is the violation of trust by someone in a position of authority, and in particular, a job that some people don’t believe is professional to begin with.

No, I don’t believe that there are people out there who will think this is the norm for people who work in the fitness industry, but there definitely are people who think that personal trainers and group exercise instructors are mostly good looking and superficial people who are looking to “hook up” and treat clients as potential partners. Because the profession is still growing in reputation and esteem among the general populace, a story like this does more damage to it than to a more established profession, such as medicine, for example. I’m not arguing there there would be more or less outrage at a similar story of a physician committing such an act, but simply that the medical profession in general isn’t going to be questioned because of a single rogue doctor.

I have a lot of other thoughts swirling in my head about this story, but I’ll just cut this post short by saying that it’s beyond a shame that someone who was trusted to help better people’s lives violated the trust, and did it with a violent act.

Dwindling Options

For the past few years the health club scene has been consolidating a bit as larger regional and national chains have knocked out smaller, independent operators in areas in which the chains have expanded.  I’m very curious at this point as to how the large clubs will adjust their expansion plans given the credit climate at the moment.  I imagine that some companies secured financing a while back for new facilities that have yet to open, so those will likely proceed as scheduled, however, one would think that they, like a lot of retailers, will have to hold off on opening new facilities that aren’t already well into the pipeline.

This consolidation in the industry is interesting because, much like politicians have been discussing, it’s resulting in a disappearing “middle class” of facilities.  The large chains are filling consumers’ need (especially higher-end consumers) for a one-stop-shop of all things fitness, and provide many amenities to attract and retain people like very upscale locker rooms, full-scale food and beverage service, child care and children’s programs, and more.  The smaller operations and, increasingly, bare-bones franchise clubs, are having to survive by serving a niche market.  For example, the small franchise clubs are providing a facility at very low prices because the services and personnel are minimized, resulting in low overhead.  This squeezed out the medium-sized clubs that offer services and pricing somewhere in between the two extremes.  I think what this means, or will mean, to the general health club-going population is fewer options in the neighborhood, and perhaps fewer options in the way of services provided by the clubs that are there.  After all, less competition means less incentive for the clubs to offer certain perks that they may have otherwise.

The credit crunch isn’t any fun, but it’s a fascinating study in the markets and consumer behavior.  The next two years will tell us just how well various health clubs have positioned themselves.