I taught a Spinning class today. The class was full and there were lots of things to attend to. Two women were seated dead center. As water finds its level so do people. They both had bad form, bad attitudes, both unwilling to take direction and arrogant. Ofcourse they should be best friends and workout partners. Laverne and Shirley refused to surrender to the workout and loudly bitched back and forth to one another. I have a policy of not engaging adults behaving badly. I focus on the athletes in the room of varying ability instead.

After 20 minutes of spinning their yarn, they finally fostered enough righteousness between them to walk out together in a huff. You could feel the energy shift in the room like the end of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy when Frodo banishes evil. I was glad to see them gone but it also bothered me I couldn’t reach them. This flashed me back to a conversation I had with Johnny G over a decade ago when I first started teaching Spinning.

At the very beginning of my career, I spent a day with Johnny Goldberg, the creator of the Spinning bike and the Spinning program, when he was doing a seminar in NYC. I was a newbie and was apoplectic about how fortunate I was. I wanted to know everything about teaching Spinning, being an athlete, a motivator, the exact coordinates of the fountain of youth, the secret to Life, you name it. Sitting at the left hand of the guru of Spinning, it was just he and I eating lunch talking. I was at the edge of my seat soaking in every word without question. I expressed to Johnny that I was frustrated teaching group fitness sometimes because I occasionally encounter members who show up and resist learning anything the entire class, sort of like the aforementioned women. I wanted his advice as to how turn these people around.

Johnny looked me in the eye. He leaned forward, and said in his South African accent, “Erwin, Fuck ‘em.”

I remember my eyes widening and thinking, “What? Fuck ‘em. That’s it.” Johnny explained that no instructor is going to reach everybody. Let them be. Let them stay exactly where they are and continue to do what you do. People change when they are ready, not when you are ready. Ofcourse, me being me, it took me years to accept this simple truth. I banged my head against a lot of walls, knocked on lots of closed doors and generated a world of frustration that eroded my confidence before I gave up. Johnny G was right.

For Students: Listen for what you can learn as opposed to what you can reject.
Being an obstinate bitch/bastard in a room full of people is a choice. (It is a more convicted choice when you bring a like-minded friend with you.) You will not win fans and you will lose more than you ever stand to gain. There is always something to learn even if it’s tolerance. If you think life’s all about you then make it about you, grow. We all need to emotionally leave high school eventually.

For teachers: You can’t empower people who are choosing something else.
It is simple physics that two objects can not occupy the same space. The same works with thoughts. The people in your care must be open to learning for you to reach them. When you are teaching to a large group, you gotta focus on the people who love you and ready to receive what you have to offer. (This is not one-on-one training. A one-on-one training experience requires a different skill set.) Try to create group cohesion amongst the listening. Sometimes the reluctant feel the energy and come along slowly and sometimes they don’t. You have to know when to fight the good fight and when to say, “Fuck ‘em.”