Health & Fitness Industry Awards - we say well done!

by Ryan Hogan | Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Some people consider the granting of awards to be a slightly pretentious or unnecessary ritual. Those same people say it is impossible to recognise only a small group of players in an industry of successful businesses and people.

However, at Network we beg to differ. For many years before Fitness Australia began hosting the current version of the industry awards, we were heavily involved in organising and delivering them. Every year we sifted through an incredible amount of highly qualified and deserving applicants who, mostly, were nominated by others. It was an exhausting process but also incredibly rewarding for both the awardees and for us.  ...read more

PPCA wins substantial increase in fees for group exercise classes

by Ryan Hogan | Sunday, May 16, 2010

After years of legal wrangling, the Copyright Tribunal has today awarded the PPCA (Phonographic Performance Company of Australia) a huge increase in fees payable by fitness facilities for playing original artist music in group exercise classes. The new fee structure dictates that fitness facilities must now pay either $15 per class flat fee, or $1 per class attendee.  ...read more

Will Fitness Australia’s change to the REPS registration system benefit our industry?

by Ryan Hogan | Sunday, November 29, 2009

The following post was written by author and industry presenter Andrew Verdon.

I was very interested recently to see the release of the new exercise professional registration levels by Fitness Australia (FA). This is to be known as the Exercise Professional Registration System (REPS). Since starting in the industry in 1995 this is the biggest change I have seen to registration and re-registration.  ...read more

Sarcopenia . . . do you suffer it?

by Ryan Hogan | Wednesday, November 18, 2009

The following post was written by industry leader and Network friend, Justin Tamsett in consulation with Jamie Hayes. You can visit Justin's very informative blog at www.justintamsett.com

I recently had a conversation with one of the most passionate fitness industry individuals in Australia, Jamie Hayes the Managing Director of Healthy Inspirations about what is Sarcopenia – accelerated loss of muscle tissue from insufficient physical activity.  ...read more

In addition to fitness centres, the PPCA now looks to increase music royalties in cafes and restaurants.

by Ryan Hogan | Thursday, August 06, 2009

It appears that the always money hungry PPCA (the organization that represents recording companies and artists in Australia) is not content with increase of fees they are now enjoying from the night club industry, and the potential increase in revenue from the Fitness Industry, they have now decided to attack cafe & restaurant businesses.  ...read more

CECs and Fitness Australia Re-Registration, the lowdown

by Ryan Hogan | Wednesday, June 10, 2009

One of the areas that seems to baffle trainers and instructors around the country is the process of renewing their registration with Fitness Australia and accumulating CECs. We thought that this blog would be a fantastic platform to set the matter clear and hopefully help fitness professionals keep their registration current and not spend any more time than necessary on this! So, here goes:

What exactly do I need to re-register?  ...read more

Record industry tries to impose $100m tax on fitness

by Ryan Hogan | Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Fitness facilities around Australia are facing an unprecedented hike in the fees they pay for music – a huge increase of more than 4,000 per cent in many cases – if the Copyright Tribunal upholds a record industry claim to change the rate of music licence fees. If the record industry gets away with it, a typical fitness club with 1,300 members will be forced to pay $140,000 in annual fees, a massive increase on the $2,654 they currently pay. Many of these fitness centres are small owner-operators and this increase will have a disastrous impact on their businesses and on jobs – all because record industry bosses are looking for easy targets to plug the gap left by declining CD sales.  ...read more