Eye of the Tiger: what starting a rock aerobics class taught me about how to run a business
Great tune this, isn’t it? Stick it on and just see what happens. You start tapping your foot. Maybe you start punching the air. Maybe you get up out of your chair and start fully rocking out.
I love those songs that give you ants in your pants. The ones that are guaranteed to get you moving. No thought required. It’s involuntary.
In my early twenties I got really into fitness, signed up to one of those big fancy gyms. I was in there every day, tried every class. So began a life-long obsession.
But I could never work out why the only music they played in there was really bad dance music. Trance in spin class, happy hardcore in Body Combat, Ibiza anthem compilations on the gym floor.
Where were the classes for the punky rocky kids? I didn’t understand it. I would go out to rock clubs at the weekend and everyone was sweating it out to metal anthems, going absolutely wild. This stuff made you want to move.
Fair enough, alternative music was a little more dynamic and unpredictable, but there was still plenty to choose from with a consistent beat that would keep you pumped and motivated. But where was it? And what was this unspoken rule that said if you were a fitness instructor you could only play dance music? And not even the good stuff?
Then, in 2009, I got made redundant from my job in telly.
I retrained as a fitness instructor.
During our personal trainer qualification, we had to complete a business module and I came up with the idea of having a fitness class set to alternative music. Not totally original — turned out there were a few similar classes in the US — but none had the mix of music I wanted. It was so different to anything you could do in our area.
None of my muscled, super-fit classmates understood the point and neither did our tutor. But the seed was sown.
I procrastinated for a while, taught some other classes, got a badly paid part-time gym job, split my trousers teaching squats in a power-plate class, got bollocked relentlessly by my shitty boss, cleaned the ladies loos, ran round the park and did endless tricep dips off the edge of park benches.
My business was limping along. It was ok. I wasn’t really feeling it if I’m honest and that was reflected tenfold (or minus tenfold) in my earnings. I still loved fitness but I didn’t love selling myself. It felt icky. Maybe, I thought, running a business isn’t for me.
Then, in January 2011, I launched Aerockbics.
Aerockbics changed my life. It terrified me. It pushed me so far out of my comfort zone that I wondered if I’d ever find it easy — I’m not sure I ever did.
It was a performance. Every week — twice a week for a while — I would draw on my inner Jack Black and take room full of Aerockers on a journey of mosh. Even when I was feeling like death, even when I was broken-hearted, even when I was still rough from partying too hard at the weekend, even when there were only three people in the class and I knew I was losing money and we were already broke.
Regardless. Every week I would bust out the devil horns, punch the air and proceed to sweat my mascara down my face as I led a bunch of people in a riotous dance to our favourite records.
I am not naturally coordinated. Choreographing and learning those routines well enough to teach them was hard and scary for me. I didn’t always get it right. But it didn’t matter. I knew fitness, and I really knew the music. I could tell instinctively which tracks would work, and because I was a bit rubbish at the dance bits I generally kept it simple enough for anyone to come and have a go.
And that ended up being the ethos of Aerockbics. It didn’t matter who you were, what you looked like, whether you’d ever exercised in your life. You could just come and wiggle about at the back without judgement. As long as you were having fun and wailing on your air guitar, all was good.
At its busiest, the church hall was packed and I would have to climb up on the high stage to teach — narrowly avoiding falling off a couple of times. We were featured in local press and radio (I will never forget being summoned by BBC Radio Leeds to appear on a show as an air guitar expert — a career highlight for sure).
The routines took on a life of their own, materialising in clubs and on wedding reception dancefloors. I remember lying on the sofa on a Saturday night and getting a frantic text from my friend: “Penny I’m at a house party and there are a load of girls in the kitchen squatting to ‘Sabotage’!”. We’d made it.
The pinnacle was dressing up as 80s zombies for Leeds Light Night 2012 and stumbling down the town hall steps to give the city an undead aerobics performance — with enthusiastic, boozy crowd participation. Probably one of the most fun things I’ve ever done, despite being appropriately zombified with morning sickness at the time.
Yes, that’s me down the front.
I learned how to market Aerockbics as a brand, how to get coverage. I started to grasp the beginnings of social media strategy. Inadvertently, I acquired skills that steered me towards what I do for a living today.
Aerockbics was barely six months old when I took a step back from my other fitness classes and started working as a freelance copywriter. A year later I’d landed an in-house copywriting role. But I kept up Aerockbics when everything else dropped, still teaching in the evenings, teaching til 30 weeks pregnant and then coming back to teach when my baby boy was three months old. Aerockbics had become part of my identity that I couldn’t let go.
I folded it, at last, in October 2015, just shy of five years after starting. It outlived everything else in my fitness business by a long way. When it finished, I was pregnant for a second time, looking after a two-year-old and working a full-time job in communications. I didn’t have the energy to put into teaching every week after work. I was exhausted, gut-wrenched from the time I wasn’t spending with my eldest child and still grieving a miscarriage from earlier in the year that I had not recovered from emotionally. My mental health was piss-poor. That was reflected in my teaching and in attendance, not to mention the rest of my life.
It was time to give myself permission to stop.
It was a lot to give up — probably why I clung onto it for so long. I learned so much in those years. The power of community — how good it feels to get people with a similar outlook together in one place having fun and making friends.
It taught me I can have a positive impact just by doing my own daft thing — I cried when someone messaged me to say they used to hate exercise before they started coming and now they were running 5ks. I also got the joy of introducing people to some great bands — I would always get asked what our cool-down track was (‘Waiting Room’ by Fugazi) among others. I know those discoveries, and subsequent ones, will have brought so much joy.
Aerockbics taught me about the power of an engaging idea. The strength of having values that connect deeply with your audience. Body acceptance. Good times. No judgement. And some fucking loud music — when the stereo was working properly anyway.
It also taught me that when you believe in your product, selling becomes easy. I never felt anything but delight telling people about Aerockbics. It grew a life of its own, it became the people who loved it. I still bump into those I taught regularly. Some don’t recognise me, but they always remember the class. They remember the feeling, and their faces light up. Then I think — I did that. I made that happen for them. It’s a powerful thing.
My only regret is that I was so hard on myself. I would beat myself up relentlessly for never being organised, the tech always breaking, never getting the routines absolutely perfect. Consequently, every week before class, I would be wracked with anxiety. Now I see that was actually what Aerockbics was all about. The fuck-ups. Me showing up as my messy, chaotic, enthusiastic self gave other people permission to do the same. Personal brand, man. It really is as simple as not having the right lead for your iPod and having to phone your boyfriend to bring you it. And then having a room full of people who forgive you and wait an extra couple of minutes to start because — it’s Aerockbics — that’s what they signed up for. And soon it will be time to rock.
Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger was UK number one for four weeks in September 1982. The song was recorded as the theme for Rocky III by actor Sylvester Stallone after Queen denied him permission to use ‘Another One Bites The Dust’. It’s also the first track ever used in an Aerockbics class, at the Cardigan Centre on Monday, January 17th , 2011. It made people move, and for that I am forever grateful.
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I’m Penny Brazier, a freelance writer, content strategist and air guitar expert. You can find me on Twitter here and Instagram here.
