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technology

Ecosystem of Technology

/25 August 2021/ All MFN blog/

Technology is critical and ever-present. Before the shutdown, technology was a part of gym owners’ strategy, but Covid pushed us to use technology more than we ever have in the past.  As we reset and get ready to thrive in 2022, now provides a good opportunity to review your tech stack. What do you have, what do you need, what do you want?  What is the return on investment? 

I believe in a “high tech and high touch” model for health clubs. Our members come to us sometimes 2-5 times per week, if not every day, so we sometimes resist new technology adoption because we are not just changing a system or process for our internal staff, but also for the 100s or 1000s of individuals that interface with our brand regularly. This is the only industry I can think of, other than Starbucks, Peets Coffee, or other affinity-based coffee shops that patrons frequent daily or 2+ times a week. Maybe in some cases, neighborhood bars…

We are not in a transactional business arena but a service-based relationship arena. Even my coffee example is still transactional – get your coffee and off you go. Neighborhood bars may be the exception for those that go multiple times a week. However, consumers still don’t go to the same hotel, restaurant, movie theatre, cruise, or airline 2-5 times a week. It simply doesn’t happen. This leads to an important aspect of data management and quality control that is unique to our industry. Seeing that we are a destination that members interact with more frequently than most other businesses, it introduces an opportunity for more breakdowns in the member journey. Ensuring that this data is consistent across all systems is one way to help mitigate errors and enhance the member experience. 

Like most decisions and processes you implement, you always start with evaluating where the member journey begins. In 2021, the member journey begins online. If your website, social pages, and review sites (google, yelp, etc.) are where members are beginning their journey, then it only makes sense to have a tech stack that’s conducive to having them complete their journey online. Questions that you should be asking yourself are:

  • What does your member journey look like from finding you online to purchasing a membership? 
  • Can the consumer buy online?  
  • Can the consumer enroll in a trial membership online? 
  • What other barriers exist between your prospective member and purchasing a membership and how can you eliminate them? 

A common barrier that I hear from clubs is having several systems that fail to “talk” to each other. For instance, if your website doesn’t speak to your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, and your CRM doesn’t speak to your Club Management System (CMS) then you are inadvertently creating 3 data silos that you must either sync via API or update manually. 

Ideally, once a member joins online, the data they provided is entered into your CMS real-time. This ensures that they have a seamless member journey. From the moment they sign up, they should be entered into a “Welcome” cadence in the CRM system to provide complimentary workouts to get them started on their new fitness journey. This is just one member journey example that is enabled by having the right combination of technology, or your member journey “ecosystem”. 

When it comes to your return on investment, we need to consider lowering our total cost of ownership. This is achieved by consolidating technology vendors and choosing the right (best in class) technologies that “talk” to each other optimally to achieve a seamless member journey. 

Customer Relationship Management – Member Management (Billing & Collections) – Member Experience – Fitness Engagement – Organizational Data/Dashboard – All are critical to successful operations.  

I’m a big fan of ABC Fitness Solutions, GymSales, Trainerize, Fitness BI, and MXMetrics to handle these critical areas for success. 

Reprinted with permission from Bill McBride.

Bill is the President & Chief Executive Officer of Active Wellness, Active Sports Clubs & BMC3 Consulting. He is a health club industry veteran with over 25 years of experience leading and managing all aspects of commercial health clubs, medical fitness centers, residential, community, multi-tenant and corporate fitness sites. 

diabetes-exercise-feature

How Exercise May Be the Only Way to Curb the Diabetes Epidemic

/23 August 2021/ All MFN blog/

The incidence rate of type 2 diabetes has been increasing in the United States for the past 40 years.  In fact, the American Diabetes Association estimates that at least half of all US adults (over 65 million people) have pre-diabetes or full-blown diabetes.  It is often underreported on death certificates, and is probably the third leading cause of premature death in the US.

So why is there such an increase in diabetes in this country?  The biggest reason is diet.

From a young age, children are eating processed food. When they enter school – lunchrooms in many school districts are sponsored with food from McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and Coca Cola.  In college – most dorm food is also like fast food, and they can eat as much as they want. That and their foray into alcohol, and we have the beginnings of obesity, insulin resistance, and pancreatic damage. The very concept of type 2 diabetes used to be called “adult diabetes”.  Since many teenagers are now diagnosed, it’s now time to change the name.

One would say that if diabetes is a disease of the foods that you eat, then simply change the foods you eat. Not that simple. Once you’re diagnosed with diabetes, you become a ward of the medical system. Doctors will perform a lot of tests, take blood, and prescribe both insulin and drugs to mimic the glucose-lowering effects of the body, and many spend a minimal amount of time counseling on the right type of diet for your needs.

There are, in fact, many good diets to lower blood sugar, like the well-known Keto diet, which emphasizes higher fats and low carbohydrates. This is something that doctors have been prescribing in one form or another since the Atkins diet in the 1960s. What about vegetarian and vegan diets?  If you ask Dr. John McDougall, one of the nation’s leading plant-based doctors, he would advocate that a diet higher in plant-based carbohydrates is better for the body than high amounts of meat and cooking oils.

Both may have a point, but if you look at the food choices that most Americans have, they walk into a grocery store, and if they’re not savvy enough to shop on the outside isles (fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses), they are trapped in an endless cycle of boxed cereals, candy bars, frozen foods, soft drinks and alcohol. It is almost impossible to go to a store and not pick up about 50-75% of food from a box, bucket or bottle.  Many still haven’t put two and two together — that the foods they eat now will have an effect on their physiology and medical status in 5-20 years.

So what’s missing? I have been in an interesting position of working in diabetes research in the 1980s, and watching from the sidelines the work, research, and policy in this area of medical care for the past 30 years. Here are my thoughts.  

First, although exercise is touted as part of the trilogy of treatment for diabetes (along with diet and insulin), it is the first to be discarded for another type of treatment that is expedient and profitable.  

Second, there are little, if any, referrals to the health club sector in order to work on basic exercise programs for persons with diabetes. Even moderate types of programming will results in dramatic drops in body weight (and fat), daily blood sugars, and A1c levels. It simply is not being done. Many in allied health scream that personal trainers and fitness instructors are not qualified to teach exercise programs for diabetes. With the advent of medical fitness over the past 20 years, this simply isn’t the case today. I would think that having a mechanism to get patients into health clubs through their health plan, or Medicare, or a revolving door policy with their physician group, would be an outstanding way to get more patients into the exercise routine.  

Third, people who work in the fitness industry should be looking very carefully in getting diabetic persons into their facilities in their communities. This takes an effort with health club trainers, club managers and company owners to reach out to the medical community through health programs, lectures, fairs and membership discounts in order to get patients in the door.  It may even entail home exercise visits, or online coaching where patients are taught programs, and keep their exercise routines times and exercise notes. 

Lastly, the fitness industry needs to move into the technology realm and look at the effects of exercise on patients both over 3-4 weeks, but also 3-4 years. This will be done through outcomes-based software programs that can be detailed to physicians, health plans, and sports medicine journals. Once the majority of medical fitness centers and health clubs are on board, we will see a changing of the guard in terms of what Americans think is the best type of treatment program to reduce diabetes symptoms, and look at the data of how people exercise, and how many of their health risks are being reduced by a challenging and consistent exercise program. This can be done at any age, and at almost every state of diabetes — whether they are newly diagnosed, or have basic complications that they are dealing with regarding long-standing diabetes. 

It is time to embrace exercise as part of a diabetes prevention and reduction strategy.  If not, in 20 years we will probably see the epidemic at such a high level, that a good portion of Americans will not be able to work due to their complications.  The costs to society will be even higher than they are now. It’s a risk we don’t need to take, because of the untapped market of over 31,000 health clubs in the US, there is virtually no reason not to engage in exercise. It would seem that our nation’s health depends on our next steps – literally. 

Eric Durak is President of MedHealthFit – a health care education and consulting company in Santa Barbara, CA. A 25 year veteran of the health and fitness industry, he has worked in health clubs, medical research, continuing education, and business development. Among his programs include The Cancer Fit-CARE Program, Exercise Medicine, The Insurance Reimbursement Guide, and Wellness @ Home Series for home care wellness.

trainer-senior-client-stretch

Why Fitness Professionals Should Join the MedFit Network

/19 August 2021/ All MFN blog/

It is safe to assume that not everyone a fitness professional works with is injury- or disease-free. As a fitness professional, it is your responsibility to ensure that you provide your clientele with safe and effective programming. The question you have to ask yourself is: are you truly qualified and up to date on the latest information to work with your current (and future) clientele? A second question to ask is: are you marketing yourself to those who need you most in this healthcare crisis? If you’re honest, you should at least say that perhaps you are not.

Well, this is where the MedFit Network (MFN) can help! The MFN is both a professional membership organization for fitness and allied healthcare professionals and a free online resource directory for the community to locate professionals with a background in prevention, treatment and rehabilitation in working with those with chronic disease or medical conditions.

As a fitness professional, here’s why you should join the MedFit Network.

1: Raising Fitness Professional Standards 

MFN is dedicated to making sure fitness professionals are highly educated and prepared to work with any medical issue. The name given for this person is a Medical Fitness Specialist (MFS). The MFS helps make the transition from medical management and/or physical therapy to a regular physical activity program following a surgery, an injury, a medical diagnosis or exacerbation of a pre-existing condition. They also possess the training and skills to work with medical conditions like obesity, diabetes, hypertension, neuromuscular disorders and heart disease. So, a medical fitness practitioner is not just a personal trainer but includes wellness- and health-related disciplines such as chiropractors, massage therapists, physical therapists, nutritionists, etc.

2: Continuing Education

The MedFit Education Foundation (MFEF) is the nonprofit partner of the MedFit Network. MFEF is dedicated to elevating the quality and amount of available education for the medical fitness professional and the entire fitness and wellness community through their learning website, MedFit Classroom. For example, there is a Multiple Sclerosis Fitness Specialist and Drug and Alcohol Recovery Fitness Specialist course that are both one-of-a-kind. Continuing education is required for all their specialty courses. This is typically not the case. It is usually continuing education only for your certification. All of their continuing education courses are approved by a medical advisory board of some of the brightest professionals in the nation. MFEF also facilitates weekly educational webinars that are included with your MFN membership. These webinars are presented weekly by industry experts on such topics as medical fitness and active aging.

The MFN is an organization filled with people from all walks of the wellness professional spectrum. For example, they have MDs, PTs, chiropractors, dieticians, fitness and massage therapists to name a few. As a result, opportunities to network are endless. Because of this, current members have developed their own educational courses and even started their own blogs. Also, members have been able to designate their facility as medical fitness facilities by working with a member who specializes in helping people achieve this status.

The MedFit Network is a unique organization dedicated to improving the standards of the fitness and allied healthcare professionals. The ability for the diseased community to go to a directory of qualified medical fitness professionals is something unheard of anywhere else. The three reasons given are just the tip of the iceberg as to why you should be a part of this movement, the MFN!

Click to learn more about joining the MedFit Network as a professional member.

Maurice Williams offers a rare combination of advanced academic training, personal experience as a competitive athlete, entrepreneur skills and 22 years of experience in personal fitness and training. He has a BS in Exercise/Sport Science from Elon College (Now Elon University) and an MS in Clinical Exercise Physiology from Ohio University. Maurice is also a long-time MedFit Network member.

sneakers-walking-in-woods

Gait! Everything You Need to Know

/18 August 2021/ All MFN blog/

Assessing and training clients is challenging but skilled observation can give you important clues about your clients’ condition and readiness—and they don’t need to say a thing! Many trainers, and even therapists and doctors, are missing one of the most valuable assessment tools and training modalities they have at their disposal: the client’s gait.

Stroke-Neuroplasticity

Sensory Input Drives Motor Output – “You gotta feel it to move it!”

/5 August 2021/ All MFN blog/

In our previous article, we showed you this picture to help understand neuroplasticity and how neurons that wire together, fire together. In this blog we’ll use the same picture to understand how sensory input to the brain affects motor output.

The sensory area (purple) is on the front “slice” of the parietal lobe. The neurons here will be activated by sensory input such as touch, vibration, threat, pressure, temperature and joint position. Lying just in front of the sensory area is the motor area (blue), which is the back “slice” of the frontal lobe. The neurons here are activated through volitional movement.

In both the sensory and motor areas of the brain, you can see in the illustration that specific areas are dedicated to specific body parts. And those areas are represented in the same areas for sensory and motor (e.g., where the hand is located in the sensory area is in the same place in motor area along the “slice”).

Why sensory input matters for stroke survivors

The bottom line is that for you to move an area well, your brain must be able feel, or “sense”, the area well. This is why issues like peripheral neuropathy in the feet so greatly affect the ability to balance and walk. Having good sensory input from an area of the body is a prerequisite for good motor control when we try to move an area.

One of the most prominent dysfunctions after stroke is a reduced ability to move one side of the body. This can occur at many different levels, from total paralysis to reduced coordination of fine motor skills. Common examples include limb spasticity, usually in flexion (e.g., a clenched fist held close into the chest), or what is termed “drop foot”, an inability to dorsiflex (lift) the foot, which severely interferes with a safe, functional gait pattern. This happens because the stroke damaged areas in the motor cortex associated with the affected body part.

The good news is that by increased sensory input to the affected area, we can begin to improve motor output. You have likely seen this already if you have ever used things like percussion guns or kinesiology tape. The many new “toys” we see in the fitness industry these days are simply sensory input devices, providing the sensory area with more and novel input, which then allows the motor area to “fire” better and provide better movement (i.e., improved range of motion, more strength, etc.).

A 2017 study found that “kinesio tape application to the tibialis anterior has significant effects on motor recovery of the lower extremity, spasticity, ambulation capacity, HRQoL (health-related quality of life) and gait compared to the control group and baseline.” (1)

The concept of sensory input affecting motor output and how to harness it is not only for stroke recovery, but also for general fitness, performance, and pain clients!

Begin learning a neuro-centric approach to medical fitness and how to work with stroke survivors with our Stroke Recovery Fitness Specialist online course, available through the MedFit Classroom.

Pat Marques is a Z-Health Master Trainer and NSCA-CPT specializing in training the nervous system to improve performance and get out of pain.  After retiring from the Active Duty Army, Pat pursued his education and certifications in exercise science, initially working with wounded, ill, and injured soldiers. During this time that Pat discovered the power of using a neurological approach to training to get out of pain and improve fitness and performance. He currently provides exercise therapy, movement reeducation, and strength and conditioning for all levels of clients at NeuroAthlete, from chronic pain sufferers to Olympic-level and professional athletes.

References

  1. Belma Fusun Koseoglu, Asuman Dogan, Hilmi Umut Tatli, Didem Sezgin Ozcan,Cemile Sevgi Polat (2017). Can kinesio tape be used as an ankle training method in the rehabilitation of the stroke patients? Complimentary Strategies in Clinical Practice, Vol. 27.
KOMPAN_ActiveAgersBalanceStation-640

Active Aging Fitness

/3 August 2021/ All MFN blog/

The future will see an increased proportion of elderly people throughout all modern societies. It is estimated by the WHO (World Health Organization) that in the year 2050 there will be equally as many elderly people in the world as there are children (1).  Not only will there be more elderly people but the perception of being old will also continue to change. Previously, age was seen as a natural weakness process and reduction in lifestyle options.

fitness-savings

Medical Insurance and Medical Fitness or Exercise Therapy Coaching

/1 August 2021/ All MFN blog/

Can you accept insurance for medical fitness/exercise therapy? Can your clients use their FSA & HSA (medical savings account) for your services? The answer to both questions is yes, however, it’s not an easy yes. The only way for your clients to do these two things is if you are billing for qualified medical expenses.

What are qualified medical expenses? Qualified medical expenses are expenses that mitigate, treat, or prevent disease per IRS.gov Publication 502. The IRS narrows the expenses that are deductible even more by limiting the qualified expenses to supplies (example: KT Tape) or an action being billed that will alleviate or prevent disability or illness. The catch for medical fitness/exercise therapy is that general health and well-being are not qualified medical expenses.

So, how can your client use their insurance or medical savings accounts for your services? The client needs their doctor to provide them with a prescription that identifies your services as medically necessary. The doctor saying you really need to lose weight is not a prescription.

What expenses or activities are covered per the IRS Publication 502? One example is a weight loss program for a client with a medical need for weight-loss. The weight-loss program becomes medically necessary when the doctor has diagnosed the client with obesity, heart disease, or some other disease and has determined that your weight-loss program or something similar will help the client improve or alleviate the disease or condition. What isn’t covered as a qualified medical expense are the dues for your club, the weight-loss program for a client without the prescription from the doctor, or the sessions to maintain good health after you fixed the problem your client had a prescription. The key is that a doctor or medical professional has diagnosed a disease and given the client a prescription for your services.

Accepting FSA & HSA is as simple as contacting your credit card processor and making sure you are set up correctly in their system. Most of the time this is as easy as answering a few questions about what you do. Making the decision to accept medical insurance at your facility is a much more extensive process, one that will require you to have a NPI (National Provider Identifier) number and a lot of extra time for the processing, filing, and record-keeping that goes along with dealing with medical insurance companies.

In short, if your client has a medical necessity for your services and their doctor has given them a prescription, then your client can use their FSA or HSA for their sessions. They also may be able to submit their receipts back to their insurance company for reimbursement. If your client doesn’t have a medical savings account or an insurance company that will reimburse them for their expenses, they can collect the receipts for the services, that qualify as medically necessary, and submit them with their taxes to their tax preparer. There are minimum limits that clients must reach before they can start using their medical expenses as itemized deductions. Their tax professional can help them with this.

To learn more about exactly what is and isn’t considered a qualified medical expense refer to the IRS Publication 502: irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p502.pdf

Heather Nusbaum is a Certified Management Accountant, Exercise Physiologist, Licensed Massage Therapist, MELT Instructor, and Master Trainer with NASM & ISSA. In 2013, Heather created Paws for Fitness a program to incorporate canines in the workout process. Over the years, this program has become a therapeutic modality within the training protocols of her business Nutree Fitness.

How did Heather go from Accounting and Business to Exercise Physiology? At a young age Heather was diagnosed with ‘Dysfunctional Knees’, this was a label that was attached to describe being in pain 24/7. This pain continued for the next 15+ years. After gaining weight due to age and inactivity, she realized that something had to give in her early 30’s. On her own she picked up and modified a box program and within 1 year had completely removed all the knee pain she’d suffered for the last 15+ years. Over the next few years it became apparent that she could help other people do what she had accomplished by accident, improving their quality of life and moving toward a pain free existence.