Category: Blog

personal trainers

Finding Time to Combat Epic Gym Fails

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Most gym enthusiasts will, at some point, observe an ‘Epic Gym Fail’ whilst working out. With smart phones in hand, there is plenty of supporting evidence that more and more people are being captured executing what can only be described as ‘Gnarly maneuvers’. These videos range from misfortunate to downright stupid. To add insult to injury (which is very likely) these videos end up online for all to see.

Putting aside the ethical debate of posting these videos in the first place, it’s clear from reading viewers’ comments that some people find these clips comedic gold. On the flip side, there are others that suggest the people capturing these videos would be better off giving advice rather than jeering at these poor souls’ lack of education and safety training.

Other than the humiliation and obvious risk of serious injury to the gym member, you have to ask what it’s saying about the facility these events take place in. Imagine signing up as a new Gym member and then witnessing some crazy guy doing a Tarzan impression with a weight machine on your social media feed? I know I’d certainly question whether the staff are giving the right advice, let alone, if I’d made the right choice in signing up for this gym.

Having witnessed several gym fails for myself, I’ve often wondered why there are no staff members monitoring the floor at all times. Surely if more staff were around they would step in to educate, combat and eradicate these events from occurring in the first place.

So how does one go about finding time when resources and budgets are already stretched thin? Make no mistake; it’s not easy juggling schedules, payments, memberships, attrition rates, marketing, disparate systems and other managerial duties involved in running a Gym. It’s no wonder some Gym’s find it hard to balance a good mix of monitoring their members whilst adhering to all the other business processes required! I’m sure, if given the chance, all Gym owners would love to find more time to nurture the wellbeing and success of their clients’ goals by giving hands-on help at all times – sadly that’s not always an option.

So my point is this: How do Gym owners and their staff free more time to spend with customers, ensuring safety, good customer care and, most importantly, no Epic Gym Fails?.

There are two very simple answers: The more obvious one is to employ more staff, which we have already established isn’t always a viable option due to lack of funding. The second less obvious answer is to work out how to streamline, consolidate and automate some of your business processes to free up valuable time and resources. As with any business the first place you can always look to do this is by assessing the software you use to run your business.

Generally speaking, finding an all-in-one software solution is usually the way to go. Having a unified system to manage all aspects of your business will always significantly increase efficiencies/productivity, save time and, ultimately, money.

Luckily, here at EZFacility, we offer exactly that! If you want to benchmark your existing systems to see how much time we can save you, then sign up for a free demo/trial and assess for yourself what EZFacility can do for your business! Streamline, grow, nurture, inspire – it’s EZ

motivation

Keeping Members Motivated

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A musically talented friend of mine recently joined a band and was thrilled to have the opportunity to create new songs and practice regularly with other musicians. But after a while she found it difficult to keep going. “It’s hard,” she said, “when you have no goals and no ambition.” She meant that without a set date for an on-stage performance, the band’s enthusiasm and drive were flagging. My friend is prone to exaggeration — in reality the band has plenty of ambition, and they honed their goals enough that they played their first live gig a few weeks ago — but she was right to pinpoint goals and ambitions as the keys to motivation. Researchers in the field of exercise psychology have long understood that without these ingredients, an exercise program is a recipe for disaster. In a 2009 study, for example, Kylie Wilson and Darren Brookfield estimated that only 50 percent of new members in a gym remain after six months. Without specific goals, they concluded, it’s highly challenging for an exerciser to remain committed to any workout plan.

Of course, it’s in your best interest to help your members stay motivated. How can you get them coming to your facility more than once a week? How can you get them to keep coming after six months, and to return year after year? Here are a few tips for helping them define their goals, feed their ambition, and stay loyal to you and your brand for a long time.

1. Highlight the importance of tracking results. We all know that it’s easier to stay committed to a goal if we can see progress. This begins with establishing a baseline — make it a practice to offer new members a free consultation with a trainer. The trainer should help the member identify exactly where she stands at the start of her new exercise routine and teach her how to measure her progress. Beyond that initial meeting, encourage your members to track their workouts by documenting the machines they used, their weight levels, and the number of reps and cardio routines they’ve performed. Offer them logbooks and workout sheets for this purpose, and promote fitness tracking apps that allow exercisers to stay on top of their performance electronically. Take it a step further by creating your own app or website function that allows for fitness tracking.

2. Design and host collaborative events, and get members to join in. Offering positive challenges that rally your club as a whole allows members to feel truly connected to the community you’re providing. Seasonal hooks can be a great way to get started. For example, around Halloween, host a costume fun-run. During the build-up to major marathons, challenge members to run or walk one or more miles of the marathon until the full distance is completed. Have dance-a-thons on Valentine’s Day, and get a huge volleyball tournament going at the start of summer (you might even cart in loads of sand and set up an indoor beach for this one). Whatever the event, get your members working together. The more fun they have, and the more of a community feel there is, the more likely they’re going to stick to their goals — and keep coming back.

3. Encourage members to think about the kinds of goals they’re setting. Emphasize the idea of SMART goals: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. With goals clearly defined along these lines, members are well-poised for success. In order to set the right SMART goals for themselves, though, members have to understand what types of goals would work best for them: performance, process, or outcome. You can help them determine which goals they’re best suited for. Performance goals use an objective or measurable standard with a specific due date. Process goals focus more on method — how will an ultimate goal be achieved? What are the steps along the way? Outcome goals measure achievement in comparison to other people. For many individuals, identifying some combination of these three types of goals works well; a performance goal might be best relied on at the start of a membership, while process and outcome goals might be more effective later on.

On the whole, seek opportunities to connect with your members, the new ones and the existing ones, to elicit their feedback and create a caring, responsive, dynamic community. If your members know that you’re there to help them, if they feel you supporting their goals and cheering on their successes, they’re much more likely to stick around. In that sense, helping members stay motivated is helping your own bottom line.

Spacious Gym Floor

Do You Need a Redesign?

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On a recent trip to an out-of-state conference, I was lucky to have friends in the area who offered me a couple of free guest passes to their gym. I gratefully accepted the passes and had several terrific workouts at that facility — but I wished I could have blindfolded myself while there. Although the staff were friendly, the instructors top-notch, and the machines and equipment state-of-the-art, the facility itself was so visually and aesthetically displeasing that it felt oppressive to be in there. I couldn’t wait to get back to my own beautiful, thoughtfully designed gym.

Soon after that experience, I found an Athletic Business article by Rob Bishop and Barry Klein about classic health club design blunders. Bishop and Klein, contributors to the magazine and owners of Elevations Health Club in Scotrun, Pennsylvania, offer advice based on their own past mistakes and successes and their observations of clubs they’ve visited. “When it comes to great architecture and design at fitness facilities,” they say, “we defer to former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s standard for obscenity — we know it when we see it.” “Obscenity” may be too strong a word to describe the mistakes some facilities make, but the points Bishop and Klein pick up on are spot-on.

1) First, they say, you have to allow for more space. This was a big issue at my friends’ gym: It felt so cluttered with machines, kettlebells, medicine balls, mats, and equipment that working out there made me feel claustrophobic. I compared it with my gym back home, which has a huge room lit up by skylights that, aside from supplies and equipment neatly lining one wall, is practically empty. This is the room where functional training takes place, and where large gatherings or big Zumba classes sometimes happen. There’s so much that can be done with it — but you don’t even know what you can do with a room like that if it doesn’t contain any open space. Bishop and Klein recommend eliminating old equipment (especially when you bring in new stuff).

2) They also make a strong case for choosing the right carpet. Bishop and Klein learned from a mistake they made in one of their own clubs when they decided to lay down single-color carpeting in some places. In a short period of time, the carpet acquired a worn and dirty look that seemed impossible to vacuum or shampoo away, or merely to hide. As they put it: “Have you ever noticed how industrial carpet typically has lots of patterns and colors? There’s a reason for that….” A multicolored one might have more of a busy feel than you want, but it will appear much cleaner for much longer.

3) They make a strong case for investing in decent lockers, even if it means “investing a bit beyond your initial comfort level.” Lockers, like front desks and group fitness rooms (and unlike equipment and carpets), stay in place for a long time. Rather than install pieces reminiscent of high school gym class, put some thought into what’s aesthetically appropriate for your club. Let your members feel like grown-ups.

There are other elements to consider too: ceilings, sinks and countertops, lighting. I’d add one more: Make sure your front-desk staff greets members with a warm smile. That goes a long way toward helping to create an environment that people want to work out in — and might even make up for some physical deficiencies inside your facility. The bottom line is this: Audit your facility to determine whether it needs a facelift. Figure out what funds you can allocate to a redesign (if you don’t have much available, focus on just one element you could improve). And take the steps necessary to make changes. Your members (and their guests!) will thank you if you do.

Photo by www.localfitness.com.au

different workouts

Attract New Members with More Creative Classes

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I have a dear old friend who’s always been a bit on the chubby side. In high school, he preferred sci-fi films and Dungeons and Dragons to sports or, really, any form of exercise. You get the picture. I hadn’t seen him for years and years and then unexpectedly ran into him the other day — and what a shock. I didn’t recognize him at all. He’s in such great shape that he puts Rich Froning, Jr. to shame. Okay, well maybe not Rich Froning, Jr., but he’s muscular and trim now, fitter than he’s ever been in his life. “How did you do it?” I asked. “Star Wars,” he said. Huh?

Turns out he’s been taking fitness classes inspired by the great epic film series. Several times a week, he duels with a lightsaber in classes at a local gym that incorporate marching maneuvers (a la Stormtroopers), one-handed cartwheels (the other hand holding the lightsaber), and handstands of the sort Yoda makes Luke Skywalker do (not one-handed, though). He learned about the classes through a friend of his who knew how much he hated — but needed — exercise. “My friend thought I might be willing to try it because of the Star Wars theme,” he told me. “I have to admit, I was skeptical at first, but I knew I had to do something, and this sounded like the only exercise I’d ever heard of that I was even remotely interested in. Now, I want to go every single day. I never knew exercise could be so creative and fun.”

Why don’t more people know how creative and fun it can be, I started wondering. Maybe health clubs, fitness studios, and gyms need to work harder to incorporate creativity and fun. What better way to entice non-exercisers off the couch and onto the exercise floor than to give them a way to forget that they’re exercising? That, said my friend, is ultimately what did it for him. “I’d get out there and start getting into it, and before I knew it, I was fighting with a lightsaber — I wasn’t working out. Forgetting that I was in the gym and just letting myself go all out with role-playing made it possible.”

A number of health clubs around the country are starting to launch Star Wars classes, and they’re benefitting by pulling in new members from a population they weren’t able to reach before. A recent article in California’s Orange County Register mentions a gym in Dallas that “developed a workout that included the Stromtrooper march and Wookiee sandbag slams.” The article also describes Star Wars-themed summer camps and sports facilities that are helping to reduce the U.S.’s childhood obesity epidemic by getting otherwise inactive kids interested in lightsaber-fights and related workouts. Appealing to these new populations, those gyms, camps, and facilities are boosting their membership numbers and, by making workouts fun, probably increasing the likelihood of retaining the new members they sign up.

If cult film-inspired exercise doesn’t seem like the right thing for your facility, don’t worry: There are other ways you can kick up your creativity factor. The key, again, is to design workouts that help people forget they’re working out. One trend that’s been catching on lately is 305 Fitness, classes that feel more like a night out at a dance club than like a class: live DJs spin records, strobe lights and colored lasers flash, and instructors incorporate high-intensity dance moves. Another is planting in an exercise studio props that approximate the feel of an outdoor park and letting members race around parkour-style. There are also always good, old-fashioned dance classes. Take the time to consider the ways in which your facility might appeal to new audiences with fun, unique, and creative classes. If you do, your audience will find you. Or, as Yoda might put it, the force will be with you.

gym community

Encouraging Exercise Partnerships

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Thomas Acquinas said, “Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.” The corollary, of course, is that with friends even the most disagreeable pursuits become less tedious. As far as exercising goes, whether one sees it as an agreeable pursuit or a disagreeable pursuit, one thing has been made adequately clear through both rigorous research and personal anecdote: Doing it with a friend makes it more effective.

Studies have shown, for example, that we lose weight better when we work out with a partner. At Miriam Hospital/Brown Medical School and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, for example, researchers found that participants in a weight loss regimen that included exercise lost more weight when their support partners took part in the same program and were successful at dropping pounds. Others who participated alone, or whose workout partners did not lose weight, did not lose as much weight themselves.

It turns out that even just spending time with fitter friends helps. In the book Friendfluence, journalist Carlin Flora writes, “We seek out health and weight-loss advice, but the most effective plan might be to hang out with fit friends. Not only do they make it easier for us to eat better and work out by setting an example and dragging us along on active outings, but they also provide the human connection that fosters robust physiological characteristics, such as lower blood pressure and increased immunity.”

And, perhaps even more surprisingly, we don’t even need real-time interaction with friends to make exercise more effective; even just being part of an online group can help people achieve their workout goals better. For example, a Northwestern University study published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface found that people who actively engage in online weight-loss communities lose a higher percentage of their body weight compared with users who participate less. In the study, the most active participants, who recorded their weight and engaged with other members of an online forum that grants access to weight-loss tools, lost more than 8 percent of their body weight in a six-month period. The least active users, who had the fewest online friends and social interactions, lost only about 5 percent of their body weight in the same time span.

The question you should be asking yourself is clear: How can your facility capitalize on friendship? The more you can encourage your members and prospective members to come in and work out with friends, the more you’ll be leading folks to success in their exercise goals, and the better your retention numbers will be. It’s as simple as that. So, consider offering special “friendship deals” — classes half off for members and their friends, if they bring them. Or launch membership drives during which anyone who becomes a member by a certain date wins a month’s free membership for a friend? Or start a weekly “Friend Day” initiative: Members bring a friend to the gym for free on that day. Make sure that your club management software handles guest passes as well as robust reporting on membership data.  Also, consider whether you can build an online community for members to offer each other support. There are endless variations on these possibilities, and the potential benefits for your facility are huge — as are the potential benefits for your members and their friends.

gym community

Creating Opportunities for Better Mental Health

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Philadelphia’s Drexel University recently installed a mental health kiosk in the lobby of its recreation center. Part of a pilot program initiated by the nonprofit organization Screening for Mental Health, Inc. and the Philadelphia Department of Behavioral Health & Intellectual Disability Services, the kiosk enables users to conduct quick, anonymous self-assessments to gauge their risk for mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and eating disorders, and provides information about the next step to take if treatment seems warranted.

Gyms, health clubs, exercise boutiques, and sports centers could take a cue from Drexel. After all, creating opportunities for fitness is about more than just encouraging people to keep their bodies in great shape. And retaining members requires efforts above and beyond simply providing the equipment to help them meet their weight-loss or fitness goals. It’s also necessary to promote overall wellness, so that your members leave your facility recognizing the degree to which it enriches their lives. If the physical part of the wellness equation is taken care of but the mental part is ignored, then they won’t feel they’ve achieved true fitness.

So maybe it’s time to consider how your facility could help members and clients work on their mental health alongside their physical health. Installing a kiosk like Drexel’s is one way to go. When your members come in for a workout, they could stop by the kiosk and take a self-assessment to determine whether their mental wellbeing is at risk. If so, depending on their results, they could get specific guidance regarding helpful steps to take for prevention or healing. Another option might be hiring a full- or part-time psychotherapist or licensed social worker. It might sound strange, but if you conceive of your facility as one with a mission to provide a holistic approach to health and wellbeing, it makes good sense. After or before a workout, or after performing a self-assessment at the mental health kiosk, members could sit down with the onsite therapist to discuss what’s troubling them.

Can your facility accommodate a pet room? If so, consider taking on board a therapy dog; this, in fact, is another approach that Drexel has undertaken. Drawing on studies that have shown that playing with a therapy dog can reduce blood pressure and lower anxiety and depression, the university’s recreation center hosts its own therapy dog (Jersey), who is available for sessions to help students cope with stress.

Other possibilities: Invite speakers knowledgeable on mental-health topics to address an audience made up of your members (and prospectives) and answer questions they might have. Hold a mental health fair, inviting local agencies, mental health providers, and meditation experts to come set up booths where your clientele can explore options for mental health upkeep. Increase your yoga, meditation, and other mind-body offerings, explicitly pitching them to members as initiatives designed to help them identify and/or address mental health issues.

For several years now, as gyms, sports centers, and other fitness facilities have expanded their offerings and redefined the concept of the health club, colleges and universities have been similarly expanding the role of their campus recreation centers. The campus rec center model, with its focus on providing educational programming and activities that aim to introduce lifelong habits for a healthy lifestyle, might be a good one for the fitness industry to adapt. The better our members and clients feel, and the more attention we pay to their overall health, the more likely they are to retain their memberships. And that’s ultimately what we want: for them to feel good enough that they keep coming back and keep coming back.

Brand identity

Your Mission: To Think About Mission Statements

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Recently, a post on IHRSA’s blog gave me pause. It features Fred Hoffman, owner of Fitness Resources in France, and it focuses on the relationship between personal trainers and member retention. What struck me is that Hoffman talked only a little about that relationship; what he emphasized is the importance of mission statements. As he put it, “Policies, procedures, performance standards—all should be based on [a] company’s mission statement and represent its core values.”

This got me thinking. Really, what is a mission statement? Hoffman argues that “whatever takes place in a club is a reflection of the company and its management.” In this conception, a mission statement is like a mirror you hold up to your club to make sure that it looks the way you want it to look. If you glance into the mirror and what you see doesn’t match your ideas about what you should see, then you know it’s time to make changes. If you don’t have the mission statement—don’t have the mirror—then you have nothing against which to compare your reality, nothing by which to judge how close your reality is to meeting your ideal. How then do you know what to change? How do you assess the “whatever takes place in your club” to ensure that it is a true reflection of your company and its management?

So, as Hoffman says, “If you have a mission statement, revisit it, and, if you don’t, draft and fine-tune one.” Your mission statement should do several things:

• Provide an explanation of what your club does

• Include a description of your corporate culture

• Incorporate examples to show how your corporate culture manifests itself

• Enumerate your club’s core values

• Explain how the core values are used to obtain desired results for members, staff, suppliers, and the business as a whole

Thus, it’s not enough to state your goals. As they say in the journalism business, “specific is terrific”: You need to explicitly state what you are, what you do, what activities and attitudes define you. You need to provide concrete examples, avoiding abstract language that ultimately doesn’t mean much. And you need to pull it all together to show how you accomplish everything that you want to accomplish.

How then do you use the mission statement, in practical terms? During your hiring process, share it with potential employees. Make sure that they understand it. If it doesn’t make sense to them, or if they can’t see how it forms the basis for everything the club does and every decision management makes, they might not be the right employees. If they do understand it, make sure they see how the role they would play within the club aligns with it. To use the personal-trainer-and-retention example, if one of the core values your mission statement outlines is member retention, make very clear how the responsibilities set forth in the job description relate to member retention. Show how each core value jibes with the various job responsibilities described.

Finally, make sure employees never forget the mission statement. There’s a reason why grade school children used to have to recite the Pledge of Allegiance every morning. You don’t have to make your employees recite the mission statement daily, but do post it prominently in a staff lounge. Do bring it up during staff meetings. Do discuss it with employees when you meet with them one on one. If your employees see how important the mission statement is to you, they’ll believe how important it is to them.

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Behind the Curtains—Mike Vidal

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Welcome to the first edition of EZFacility’s Behind the Curtains series! Today’s guest (or victim) is Michael Vidal, Product Owner and self-proclaimed family man. Mike is here to give us the inside scoop on EZFacility’s development team, the product development process at a growing company and how to juggle the needs of customers, prospective customers and the team players at EZFacility.

Read the full interview here

Keeping Your Facility Germ-Free-- And Your Members Happy

Keeping Your Facility Germ-Free—and Your Members Happy

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In 2008, IHRSA published the Guide to Health Cleanliness, which highlighted the startling results of a survey: More than 90 percent of survey participants said they were more apt to renew their membership with a health club facility if the facility was clean. That might not be so surprising, but here’s the shocking part: Only slightly more than half said they would renew if the facility was not clean.

Keep in mind that this was six years ago, before the Ebola scare, before enterovirus D68, before super-strong strains of the flu were floating around. With these threats around us, and with media hype that frequently blows such threats out of proportion, it’s little wonder that health club and sports facility users are even more cautious than they used to be. Add to that the fact that we’re smack in the middle of cold season, and you’ve got potentially a lot of skittish members on your hands who want assurance that their health is protected when they’re using your facility.

What can you do to reassure them? First of all, make sure you’ve got a plan for keeping your place as clean as possible. Review your cleanliness policies and procedures. Are they up to date? Do they follow best practices? Are they generally in keeping with standards set by the Centers for Disease Controls (for example, wash hands with soap and water for 20 seconds or rub an alcohol-based sanitizer on hands for 15 seconds before and after workouts; shower after workouts; avoid walking barefoot across exercise floors and locker rooms)?

After you’ve polished up your policies, start thinking about your staff. Do they know the policies? Do they know what to do if they’re sick (best practices say they should stay home)? Do they know what tasks they should take responsibility for in order to help maintain the highest standard of cleanliness possible? Organize a mandatory staff meeting solely around these issues and make sure everyone is on board. Do frequent walkthroughs with a cleanliness checklist to make sure rules are being adhered to.

Finally, communicate directly and explicitly with your members about cleanliness in your facility. Send out an email explaining your concerns during the season, highlighting the steps your club is taking to stay as germ-free as possible, and asking members to remain aware of ways in which they can help contribute to a cleaner club environment. List specific tips, like the Centers for Disease Control standards shown above. A post on IHRSA’s blog describes an email Newtown Athletic Club recently sent to its members. Linda Mitchell, Newtown Athletic’s director of PR and Marketing, devised a letter with the subject line “Healthy Facilities Initiative.” She and her team carefully worded the letter, avoiding making any promises but being sure to explain procedures. They assured members that maintaining a clean facility is a top priority. Then they described new procedures being implemented and outlined member responsibilities. Mitchell told IHRSA that the email had an unheard-of 35 percent open rate—to her a clear indication that members were hungry for information about facility cleanliness.

Ultimately, you want to make your members feel secure, and you want them to know you welcome their questions and can answer them satisfactorily. Over and above that, you want to keep your facility as germ-free as possible — for your members’ sake, but also for your own and your staff’s. Provide a safe environment, clearly communicate the details about how you’ve done so, and keep everyone feeling strong and healthy all winter long.

Transform Your Space—And Maybe Even Your Identity

Transform Your Space—And Maybe Even Your Identity

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So, you own an ice arena and you worry about lost revenue in the summer. Or, you run an indoor soccer facility and you can’t justify having all soccer, all the time. Or, sometimes you just wish your basketball court had turf. Well, put your mind at ease, because it can. According to an article in Athletic Business magazine, there’s been a recent boom in portable synthetic turf, and new, updated models have hit the market just in the past six months. As the article puts it, “The turf is temporary by design, boasting an ability to be rolled up, removed and later reapplied, or…stacked and stored for future reconnection.”

Portable and temporary turf—it’s a game changer. Manufacturers like AstroTurf, FieldTurf, Ecore, and others report to Athletic Business that demand for the product has exploded. The business director at one such company, Sporturf, said, “It’s one of the fastest-growing segments of our business… The upfront cost to purchase this turf is minimal compared to the cost of [a] facility just sitting there empty.”

Many different kinds of facilities are employing the product these days, from Houston’s Reliant Stadium—which removes natural grass on which the pro teams play to lay down synthetic turf for high school games—to independent personal training spaces, where, facility owners might want some weight-room flooring on one side and some turf on the other. The Edward Jones Dome in St. Louis, Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, the Milwaukee Wave’s Major Arena Soccer League—all these are big-time facilities that regularly use temporary turf to change their floor surface depending on the changing needs of various players.

Interested in portable turf for your own facility but not sure where to begin? Keep in mind that the product comes in two basic forms: rolls and panels. Rolls can vary in width, with some of them measuring 15 feet wide and 200 feet long—great for creating an instant football field. The gigantic ones can be massive enough to require heavy machinery during installation and removal (but even with the cost of machinery factored in, the product saves money in the long run). Panels tend to range in size from seven and a half square feet to 32 square feet, depending on the manufacturer. These can be installed and uninstalled relatively easily, with just a couple of employees—or players—handling even the largest ones. Some temporary turf is held in place with heavy-duty Velcro. Other versions fit together with peg-in-hole fasteners or puzzle-like interlocking edges.

On the whole, manufacturers see portable turf as a way for smaller venues to maximize programming. Consider how such a product might help you maximize your own programming. With a temporary turf surface, could you hold drills for sports teams you’ve never before imagined hosting? Could you keep your facility running for an entire season during which you usually shut your doors? Could you expand your offerings and thereby revolutionize your entire brand identity? With a product that has the power to transform both your physical space and your customers’ ideas about you, it’s worth considering exactly how you might make use of it.

Rethinking Reception Areas — in Real Life and Online

Rethinking Reception Areas—in Real Life & Online

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We all know the cliché: First impressions matter. Some social scientists have suggested that we size up new people, places, and things within thirty seconds of first encountering them, making decisions about them then and there. Of course, first impressions often are proven wrong — but sometimes, depending on the content of a given impression or the person forming it, there’s no chance to prove it wrong. Fact is, clichés are clichés for a reason: They tend to touch on some kind of truth. In the fitness and sports facility industries in particular, first impressions really do matter. Potential members might decide in a split second whether to sign up with your facility or not.

What gives someone a first impression of your organization? Your reception area, of course. Or, I should say, your reception areas, because in this day and age you likely have two: a virtual one and a bricks-and-mortar one. If you want to sell memberships effectively, you have to consider both carefully.

Let’s think first about the old-fashioned one, the bricks-and-mortar reception area. Remember, this space represents a transition from the outside world — that is, the world that contains a potential member’s stressors, responsibilities, and aggravations — to your facility. How do you want people who walk through your doors to experience that transition? Chances are, you want them intuitively and immediately to grasp that they’re entering a sanctuary, a safe harbor that will hold the stressors, responsibilities, and aggravations at bay. The more they feel that, the more likely they are to keep coming back. In other words, you want your reception area, that first-impression space, to do the work of fulfilling what are likely two of your facility’s main goals: signing up new members and retaining existing ones.

How do you accomplish this? First, ask yourself how warm, welcoming, and calming your reception area is. Is it a carefully designed space, with colors, lighting, fixtures, and signage that let people know you want them there, you’re friendly, and they can relax? Maybe you have a fountain, plants, yellow lighting angled just so. At the same time, is the space energizing enough to help people get into a workout mindset — a splash of bright color on one wall, say, an image that suggests intensity and power? Does it look generic, as if a person standing there could be anywhere, or does it look like it could be only one place in the world: your facility, reflecting your identity? Do your front desk employees smile? Do they know members by name? (Of course, needless to say, the space should be uncluttered and impeccably clean.)

If you answered no to any of these questions, it’s probably time for an overhaul. An architect or interior designer can help you get started. One step you can take right away is researching current design trends for fitness and sports facility reception areas — and then being sure to avoid them. Part of the first impression you want to aim to create is the sense that your place is different, in a category all its own.

Now, what about your virtual reception area, a.k.a. your website homepage? In the old days, of course, this wasn’t something a gym owner or manager had to worry about. But the fact is that nowadays, people form an impression of your facility before ever stepping foot into it, and they do that by looking you up online. Take a good, hard look at your homepage ask yourself some questions. Some of the questions are similar to the ones you want to ask about your physical space: Is it warm? Is it welcoming? Does it set you apart from other facilities? But you also want to consider the following: Does the page load quickly? Does it avoid being overly busy? Does it reflect and reinforce your facility’s brand identity? Does it efficiently answer questions people are likely to ask, or provide obvious links to answers?

A final key point to keep in mind: Online impressions are formed not only through your facility’s webpage, but also via reviews on Google, Yelp, personal blogs, and other such pages. If you’re concerned about potentially negative impressions these kinds of sites might leave, or if you just have no idea how to begin approaching the issue, consider hiring an online reputation expert, someone who combs through existing pages about your business and strategizes ways to emphasize the good stuff.

Staying hydrated

Encouraging Proper Hydration

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Last weekend, my nine-year-old asked me to pack three bottles of water for his soccer match: one he could drink before the game and at half-time, one that I’d stuck in the freezer that he wanted to let partially melt so he could have it cold after the game, and one he could dump over his head when he felt too hot. When we got home, to my astonishment, I found all three bottles empty.

It was a good reminder for me. Athletes — whether they’re kids, varsity level, or pro players — get thirsty. The same goes for everyday exercisers. There’s a lot in the news about preventing and treating concussions, teaching gym members treadmill safety, setting swimming pool limits to prevent overexertion, and the like, but you don’t hear enough about the risks of dehydration. The fact is, fitness facilities, sports centers, coaches, trainers, and health club managers have as much of a responsibility to keep their members, clients, and players educated about hydration as they do to protect them from muscle or head injury.

So how do you do that? First, realize that many exercisers and athletes do not know that it’s dangerous to wait until thirst kicks in to take a drink. Studies have shown that most people underestimate their water needs; one researcher found that 98 percent of the members of one college football team started out daily workouts underhydrated. It’s important, then, to begin by reminding clients to drink water frequently. If you run a gym or other kind of fitness facility, have your instructors or personal trainers make periodic announcements reminding folks to take a swig. At sports centers, mandate frequent water breaks. In all facilities, put up posters that highlight the National Athletic Trainers’ Association’s rule of thumb: Drink 7 to 10 ounces — about one cup or a little more — of water or a sports drink every 10 to 20 minutes during a workout. And consider installing a water cooler next to the exit with cute signs that draw attention to it.

Of course, social media is a great way to get the message across too. Start a hydration awareness campaign on Twitter, posting a daily tweet with facts about how much water the body needs. Put up relevant videos and photos on Facebook so anyone visiting your page will see that you’re serious about hydration. Another possibility: Consider partnering up with a bottled-water company for innovative ways to spread the word. Perhaps the bottled-water supplier would agree to giving away free bottles to your members and clients one day, or to co-hosting a hydration awareness day fair at your facility.

The more creative you are about getting the message across, the more effective your message will be. And your campaign will benefit your facility as much as it does your customers: It’ll give you a new platform for getting your name out there; it will establish your facility as a caring, community-minded one; it could help lessen your liability if an unfortunate event involving dehydration occurs; and it will give you chance to help improve the lives of exercisers and athletes everywhere.

Now please excuse me while I go fill up a dozen bottles to stick in my refrigerator and freezer for my son’s next match this coming weekend.

Row class

Creating Space for New Fitness Fads

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When I was in college, there were two stationary bikes in the gym’s cardio room. One of them had a tiny little screen that allowed you to set the number of miles you wanted to log or the amount of time you wanted to exercise; it also had a primitive graphic, like something from an Atari 2600 video game, that let you visualize your course: up “hills”, down “valleys”. That was the high-tech bike. The other one had a wheel that looked kind of like a giant fan. There were no screens or graphic-based interfaces attached to it; you just got on and pedaled.

I haven’t seen my college gym in, ahem, a very long time, but, given the pressure on colleges and universities to supercharge their fitness and recreation offerings, I imagine it’s a much more polished (and much more visited) place than it was back in the day. Two stationary bikes, one of which apparently was built in 1897? There’s no way they’d get away with that anymore. What with the growing popularity of spin classes in the past decade, I imagine the college rec center has a whole room dedicated to sleek-looking stationary bikes now, and the bikes are probably equipped with the latest digital enhancements that give their riders a full dossier of personal health data.

My point is, fitness centers have to keep up with changing fads, and this is true whether they’re on college campuses, independently owned, or part of a corporate wellness program. They have to do aerobics when people want aerobics, host Zumba classes when there’s excitement about Zumba, and so on. All well and good, but how exactly should a fitness center keep on top of changing trends when those trends involve deep-pocket investments in big, expensive pieces of equipment? Athletic Business magazine posted an interesting article on this topic a couple months ago, focusing on the growing popularity of rowing machines. One fitness industry veteran interviewed for the article put it this way: “Rowing will never be group cycling, but it is gaining its place with more hard-core fitness enthusiasts.” CrossFit aficionados have brought it nearly into the mainstream, and more and more gyms and fitness centers are increasing their stock of rowing machines, even lining them up and creating classes à la spinning classes.

But what if you’re a small outfit that can’t afford a whole roomful of new rowing machines? What if you don’t have the space for many large pieces of new equipment? How do you give your clientele the most up-to-date, exciting workout experience — the one they’ve been hearing so much about from friends and through advertisements, the one being touted at a rival fitness center down the street — if you don’t immediately have the resources for that kind of development?

As Athletic Business says, “To be sure, fitness facility owners needn’t run out and invest in a fleet of rowers, but nor should they continue to assume their current mix of cardio equipment is adequate to meet their members’ expectations.” That is, you have to focus on finding a balance. Then you have to make a plan for growth. Maybe you can start out by making space for one or two rowers. Keep close tabs on them: Make a note every time someone uses them. Note when they are empty for long stretches of time. Observe whether a line of people waiting to use them frequently forms.

Survey your clients to find out whether they’ve used them, when they did, for how long, and how they liked the experience. Ask whether they would sign up for a rowing class if one were offered. Set up a temporary class with a very limited enrollment (even just three or five would be okay). How is it received? What would participants change? Do they want more?

A business can’t change its programs and equipment the way teenagers change clothes — adoption of new fads should happen slowly, after testing, focus-group research, data-gathering, and trial-and-error. After you’re convinced that a fad is here to stay, and after you’ve conducted adequate research among your user base, then you can take the plunge and buy the equipment. Just make sure that when you do you’re keeping half an eye on the next emerging trend, because you’ll want to start researching that one too.

Oh, one last thing. After writing this I got curious and called my alma mater’s athletic center. I was told they recently ordered four new rowing machines!

nutrition complete

Add to the Client Experience with Nutrition Complete

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Over the last decade our industry has seen a boom in the latest gadgets and innovations revolving around fitness equipment within the club. However, the same old problem remains – your members are leaving. The fact is, approximately 80% of members who join a gym are coming to lose weight, but rarely do they ever succeed. Although members may lose 400 calories by running on a treadmill for 60 minutes, they do not always meet their goals. Why? One reason is that, when members leave the gym they often times consume twice as many calories as they have burned, mainly by eating the wrong foods. Achieving weight related goals is 20% exercise and 80% nutrition. “We are what we eat” and your members need a helping hand to achieve their goals. Otherwise they are going to become disillusioned and leave, again and again.

Nutrition Complete is the only proactive nutrition tool designed specifically for the health and fitness industry. While members enjoy the benefits of improved health, saved money, achieved goals and a more organised lifestyle, the clubs are benefiting from a value added upsell to existing membership fees, extra revenue and better retention:

  • Personal Dietary Profiles will help your members to discover their nutritional needs by displaying recipes and meal plans that will suit their age, weight, height, gender, activity level and diet types for each day.
  • Personal goal setting will allow members to enter their goals and keep track of their progress.
  • Powerful recipe search–powered by Yummly.com–will allow users to filter and search through millions of healthy recipes by meal type and preparation time.
  • Add beverages to your meal plan and know how many calories are consumed with each drink.
  • Shopping list generation and delivery. Nutrition Complete integrates with mySupermarket.co.uk allowing members to purchase ingredients online from their favourite supermarket and delivered directly to their door. On top of saving time on shopping, it also helps members to compare prices across all major supermarkets, resulting in massive savings on their grocery bill.
  • Meal plan/ Recipe Printing. Members can save their meal plans, create shopping lists, and print both.
  • Controls portion sizes allowing members to lose weight effectively.
  • Dietary option templates to suit everyone`s dietary preferences including: vegan; vegetarian; pescatarian; red meat free; gluten free; dairy free; nut free; shellfish free; seafood free.
  • Meal statistics will show the percentage of RDA for each member that their current meal provides, for the selected day.
  • White Label. Want to create your own brand and use your own color schemes? Nutrition Complete can be fully tailored to fit with your brand image.
  • Add your own recipes and meal templates for your members and decide which locations and members can view them.
  • Integration with Fitbit makes goals tracking just easy. No need to record your progress–everything is done automatically.
  • Members can subscribe to free motivational e-mails to keep them going.
  • Recipe rating will show you the most favorited recipes and allow you to rate them.

Learn more by visiting https://www.nutritioncompleteonline.com/.

Social media

How to Leverage Social Media to Attract and Retain Members

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As a new business–specifically in the health and fitness industry– resources and budget tend to be limited. Social media is an inexpensive way to both attract and retain clients. Follow these steps to start crafting a successful social media strategy to grow your business.

1. Identify your audience

With any social media/marketing campaign, knowing your target audience is the key to success. How does one identify their target audience? As a small business, look at your local neighborhood. Is the facility located in a baby boomer community? Middle class? Or is most of the population between the ages of 20-35? Different images and messages should be marketed to each segment.

When marketing to Generation Y and/or younger age groups, social media is woven into every aspect of life, making it possible to reach them through various channels. This generation is all about doing research before committing to something new. So, pay attention to the fitness trends! A recent study from Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association (SGMA) indicated a rising interest in group classes among this segment. Highlight group programs by posting videos of your kickboxing, aerobics or group Zumba classes. Use hashtags to make content more searchable!

2. Engage and Build Relationships

It’s not enough to strive for “likes” on posts; the conversation must continue. Actively engage with customers and require actions. Ask them to like a post, retweet, add a comment, subscribe, or share a video. Use these opportunities to offer promotions. Maybe a certain number of “likes” or shares will result in a free group class. This opens the conversation to your client’s friends, and social circles.

Social media creates constant communication between you and clients. Strive to build a relationship through feedback. Feedback is a two-way street; it’s important to respond to both negative and positive feedback-whether on Twitter, Facebook or your own personal website. Post client success stories to demonstrate your brand’s personal relationship with clients and programs with REAL results. If clients feel heard and respected, they’ll WANT to share your content and message, often times resulting in new lead and member acquisition.

3. Develop a strategy

Develop a schedule for posting content and be consistent. Encourage clients to get an early workout in Sunday Mornings at 8am to start the day off with a bang. Or, post “free” information once a week such as, “10 steps to a healthier heart”. Remind clients that your facility cares about them even outside the gym walls.

4. Measure the effectiveness of your social media strategy:

Social Media platforms measure your reach (followers), traffic (visitors), leads from referral sites, customers, and conversion rates. Utilize these metrics to identify what is working and what isn’t. For example, you can determine if promotions offered on Tuesdays at 12pm are more effective than Fridays at 12pm.

Identify, Engage, Develop and Measure to begin growing your small business. These days, you would be hard-pressed to find a successful business NOT using social media to expand their client base.

Moto 360 in Cafe

Making Your Facility Wearable-Friendly

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After the recent release of the Apple Watch and continued release of Android Watches, wearable technology (wearables) seems to be all the buzz these days. With the involvement of these major players and their cult-like following, it’s clear that wearable technologies are not going away anytime soon. If you haven’t already, it may be time to start thinking about how to make your facility more wearable-friendly.

Wearables are electronic devices that are physically worn, either incorporated into a piece of clothing or as an accessory. Their capabilities make it easier to monitor certain aspects of your life, such as calories burned, distance ran, emails, and even messages. In essence, wearables aim to make life much more convenient.

The wearable tech market is filled with a variety of products, with the two popular ones being fitness trackers and smartwatches. But what’s the difference between the two? A fitness tracker monitors physical activity without the need to manually input data, while smartwatches act as an extension of your smartphone. Despite their differences, fitness trackers are slowly being developed to display time, incoming calls, emails, and notifications—much like a smartwatch.

So why should this matter to your business? According to Business Insider, it is expected that in 2019 there will be more than 145 million wearables shipped worldwide, as compared to this year’s 30 million. With Google and Apple in the mix, it’s believed that many mobile users will gravitate toward the Apple Watch and devices that operate Android Wear. A common thread among those adopting smartwatches into their lives is that a majority will be using them for fitness purposes. Keeping that in mind, how can you incorporate wearables into your facility?

Opening your facility up to wearables can be done by making a convenient device even more convenient to use. For example, a recent Android Wear update allows users to escape the tethered range of Bluetooth and operate their smartwatches without their phones being near—as long as both devices are connected to Wi-Fi. Apple Watch is expected to incorporate this feature in the near future. Consequently, it’s a great idea to offer your clients free Wi-Fi so they may take advantage of such a feature.

In addition to free Wi-Fi, send your members who have wearables with displays their ID card via email. Having their ID card (compatible with your club management software) in their inbox encourages them to use their device to check-in, and it’s also one less thing for them to carry. Technology is always changing, as are consumer preferences, which is what makes it so hard to predict the next big thing.

One thing that is clear is all signs point towards the continued integration of wearables into daily life—which makes this the perfect time to make sure your facility is accommodating these devices and their owners.

devices

Train Employees Efficiently—Online

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If you run a sports facility, fitness center, or gym, you’ve probably embraced technology—these days, it’s impossible not to. You have your social media sites streamlined and constantly updated. You have your employees carrying around tablets for instant accessibility and communication. You have gym members uploading data from their personal fitness devices into your club management software. You might even have your fitness studios hooked up so members at home can stream classes. But have you thought about online training for your employees?
In this industry, training is crucial for some skills and types of knowledge. Think of pool management, for example. No matter what type of facility you run, if you’ve got a pool, your aquatics team needs to know, for starters, how to circulate and filtrate water, how to test for contamination and handle disinfection, and how to understand water chemistry concepts and calculations. Maybe you have the in-house resources—the time, the personnel—to pass this knowledge along.
If you don’t, signing your employees up for online training courses is the most efficient and effective way of getting them up to speed. Athletic Business runs a pool management course in partnership with the National Swimming Pool Foundation. Eight hours long, the interactive class promises to give your employees all the information they need to operate a pool expertly. The Aquatic Training Institute also offers a course, culminating in pool technician certification. Universities and MOOC (massive open online course) providers, such as Coursera, edX, and Udacity, are likely to offer free online pool management classes of their own.
In fact, universities and MOOC-providers are go-to web presences for all of your facility’s training and professional development needs. Personal trainers can find specific classes to address areas of knowledge they may be lacking, such as how to work with elderly or disabled populations, how to incorporate high-intensity training into existing workouts, and how to work with injured athletes. In this age of the Internet, almost any skill you or your employees need to develop can be learned cheaply and effectively online. You might have to invest some time into researching the options, but the investment will pay off in spades when you find yourself with a crew that knows what it’s doing (or knows how to find out what to do when it doesn’t know what it’s doing).
So how do you begin to incorporate online training? Whenever it makes sense, require new hires to educate themselves via courses you specify or allow them to choose from. This is an excellent way, in fact, to use inevitable downtime during the first couple weeks of employment, when new hires are learning the ropes. For existing employees, offer incentives. Give them a day off in exchange for completing a course, or throw a giant staff appreciation party—maybe even consider paying a small amount for each class an employee takes. It won’t be long before your staff realizes that, in addition to boosting your facility’s overall performance level, you’re offering them an opportunity for personal growth.

different workouts

Boost Retention: Help Your Members Achieve Their Goals

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There’s a powerful little word in our industry, one we love (when things are looking good) and hate (when things aren’t). I’m talking, of course, about “retention.” The word carries some kind of magical power. If retention is working in our favor, that’s an indication that business is good and we’re making the right decisions. If it’s not, it’s an indication that something is off, but often it’s mysterious what that something is.

The thing that makes great retention an especially slippery goal is that it depends so much on factors in the lives of our individual members; factors that we couldn’t possibly control. Whether each member is happy or depressed, employed or suddenly unemployed, in a good relationship or in a psychologically draining one — each of these factors, and dozens of others contribute to a member’s decision to stay or go.

Fine. Some stuff you have to let go of right? No sense in getting worked up over things you can’t do anything about. But what about the things you can do something about? That’s what you’ve got to focus on, and for gyms, fitness centers, health clubs, and the like, that really means one thing: helping members achieve their individual fitness and weight-loss goals.

The key here is the word “individual,” because the fact is that no two bodies are alike. There’s no one-size-fits-all fitness or weight-loss program. Diet books, workout videos, and advice blogs might want us to believe otherwise, but the fact is that what works beautifully for one health club member might not result in any improvements for another; the HIIT routine that allows one person to become mean and lean in four weeks might not show results for another person until after six or eight weeks. This, incidentally, is the beauty of the gym. The gym is staffed by real, live humans: trainers, concierges, nutritionists, class instructors, and cardio equipment experts who can listen to members express their goals, worries, and limitations, and help them chart out the best possible course for themselves. The best, most successful businesses in our industry do just this: They listen and respond accordingly.

So, back to that magical equation: improving retention by helping members achieve their individual fitness and weight-loss goals. If you want members who keep coming back, you have to offer them human attention. Employ knowledgeable, caring staff who are trained to:

1) Ask your members what their goals are; these can be tiny or huge, about health or about weight, short-term or long-term. The important thing is that they have goals, and that your staff knows how to help them define those goals.

2) Construct a realistic plan of attack to help them meet their goals. This means finding out what they enjoy in a workout and what they can’t bear — if they aren’t enjoying it, they’re not going to do it. It also means determining what kind of commitment is sustainable for each member. If they can’t keep up with the schedule, they’re likely to quit.

(3) Offer them support and guidance throughout. You just can’t do this kind of thing without a community, without someone cheering you on.
(4) Revise the plan if it’s not working. Help your members check their progress and make adjustments as needed. Can they handle more reps? Should they be doing less? Is there any measurable improvement? What are they struggling with?

It is also crucial to have a gym management software that allows you to track this critical data. With an all-in-one software that allows trainers and staff to create client profile pages, scheduling for both trainers and clients, as well as client fitness assessments, you will be making your lives and the client experience so much better!

Again, the purpose of all this — in addition to helping your members — is to keep them coming back. With the kind of attention outlined here, and the kind of help that will lead them to a better understanding of the individual plan that’s best for them, they won’t be able to help themselves.

senior workouts

Designing Senior Fitness Centers for All Seniors

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When my father went for his routine checkup with his doctor, he was sent straight to the hospital for a triple-bypass operation. Needless to say, my family started focusing hard on getting him to exercise. We found a weekly cardio class for him at the senior center in his small town, but it wasn’t enough. He felt uncomfortable and self-conscious in that setting — too exposed to the non-exercising seniors — and he didn’t like the routine of the one class that was offered. When the instructor began poking fun at him for being the only man there, he quit on the spot-and while my family all understood- we didn’t want him to quit exercising altogether.

So we sent him for a trial session at a local gym. He took one look at the young, pumped-up clientele and turned tail. It was intimidating and overwhelming for him to think of learning, or re-learning, how to exercise among such a crowd.

What did my father need?

What he really needed was a senior center that incorporated a fitness facility focused particularly on the needs of an older adult population. We found this harder to locate than we thought would be the case. There were many senior centers in the towns surrounding his, but few of them incorporated adequate exercise facilities. They either offered meager pieces of machinery that seemed older than the population they served, or classes that attempted to be one-size-fits-all for a community that was really quite diverse.

This, it turns out, is a common problem: As a recent article in Athletic Business magazine states, “One of the greatest misunderstandings about senior centers is that they serve one generation. In fact, as currently configured, senior centers target members of the so-called Silent Generation, Depression-era babies who are now between 69 and 89; the remaining members of the Greatest Generation, the youngest of whom are now 90; and increasingly, the Baby Boomers, who are now in the range of 50 to 68 years old.” None of the offerings at the places we checked out seemed to fully target my father’s generation.

Eventually, we found a gym that isn’t perfect for him, but is a good enough fit. It has a special “Senior Room,” where older adults in particular are invited to gather for classes — and one of those classes is particularly for men in their seventies who were recovering from heart surgery. That kind of specificity is rare and welcoming. A corner of the room, overseen by trainers who specialize in older adult fitness, is equipped with free weights and cardio machines that allow my father to undertake the independent, free-weight sessions he likes best, but without the pressure of younger adults killing it on their reps all around him. He still wishes he had access to a center that would cater solely to the needs of older adults like him, but he’s making it work. Maybe eventually we’ll find a place for him like The Summit, located in Grand Prairie, Texas.

The Summit was “specifically designed for active adults ages 50 or older.” It operates on the principle that senior centers should serve all seniors, whether they’re in their 50s or their 90s. It strives to incorporate spaces for socializing, but to keep those spaces separate from the workout areas. For now, we’ll settle for the fitness centers that consciously create spaces for seniors.

Maybe it’s time to consider how your own facility might better serve an older adult population. How can you create a space just for them? How can you cater to the varying needs of the many different generations who make up “older adults”? How can you design a program that benefits both that sizable population and your own facility? Do you currently have a health club management software that utilizes senior discount programs like Silver Sneakers? My father will thank you if you figure out good answers to such questions.

Gym community

Retaining Employees

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Some of the challenges fitness centers, gyms, and health clubs face are seasonal: getting members into the facility when the weather turns warm, dealing with the New-Year’s-resolution rush, running a member-recruitment campaign. But the challenge of holding on to valuable employees is perennial. After you’ve invested in a costly advertising and interviewing process, you spend a great number of resources training your staff and giving them time to acclimate. How do you then hold on to them for as long as possible?
Some club managers focus on keeping personal trainers happy. Gerard Oliver, General Manager of the Al Corniche Club Resort & Spa in Kuwait told IHRSA in a blog post that his facility keeps its fitness team incentivized by deemphasizing the revenues generated from personal training sessions. Without the pressure from the club to chase money by packing in as many sessions as possible, trainers are free to concentrate on the quality of their work. As Oliver says, “They have the desire and the time to education themselves, and interestingly enough, they have increased our revenues… They help members achieve the results they want and this helps with member retention, which is our top priority.”
For Aydin Buyukyilmaz, General Manager of Renewaclub in Turkey, the key strategy for successful employee retention is establishing a performance system that depends not on the budget of the club, but on the relative performance of the employees. Offering a competitive salary and a strong benefits package, while paying attention to market dynamics and making frequent adjustments accordingly, makes employees feel valued. But most of all, Buyukyilmaz says, the club works hard to create a sense of family among employees, which keeps them feeling connected and also benefits the club.
Lisa Welko, President of Ellipse Fitness in Appleton, Wisconsin, says the key is mentorship. “Build confidence in [employees’] abilities and allow them to grow within the organization,” she told the IHRSA blog. “We place special emphasis on training and continued development of everyone’s skills.” Fostering employees’ professional development increases their loyalty and keeps them motivated, Welko says.
One strategy might be to fire all these guns at once: Free your personal trainers from the pressure of increasing their number of sessions, focus on your employee compensation and performance packages, consciously create a sense of family among your staff, and emphasize mentorship and the development of specialized skills. Doing any one of these things takes time, money, effort, and a certain amount of vigilance; doing them all certainly will complicate a manager’s workload. But the potential payoff is huge: money saved, investments coming to fruition, and loyal expertise on staff. What more can a fitness facility ask for?
No doubt you have your own strategies for retaining your best employees. What are they? Share your best practices, and others will share theirs.

Trade Show

Why Conventions are Good for You

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It’s almost that time again, folks—IHRSA convention and trade show time. The upcoming event, slated for the mid week of March in San Diego, will mark IHRSA’s 37th year of gathering industry members for discussion, exploration, learning, marketing, and all-around celebration of the health and fitness world. Here’s why, if you haven’t registered already, you should consider doing so; if you have registered, here’s why you’ll be happy you did.

1) Connection. First and foremost, attending a convention or trade show—any convention or trade show, but especially the industry’s largest—gives you the opportunity to connect with others in the field. Sure they may be competitors, but your competitors have something to teach you. Happily, participants who choose to attend events like conventions generally do so with an open attitude. Through casual conversations, over meals and beverages, meetings and introductions, ideas are transferred and transformed. Want to know how the gym down the street handles retention issues? Want to understand why that other baseball center is so successful at attracting new customers? Here’s your chance to find out.

2) Education. The latest industry news comes out during conventions like IHRSA’s. Statistics on the health of the industry, trends to keep an eye on, threats to look out for, and the most up-to-date word on major players all get talked about here first. Also, conventions can be an invaluable source of information about best practices. How do other clubs handle issues like employee training, member retention, locker-room cleanliness, and difficult clients? Every topic is fair game for discussion at such conventions, and you might find yourself going home with ideas you want to implement immediately.

3) Relationship-building. Okay, this is a lot like the first item in this list, but what I’m talking about here is bigger and deeper than a mere connection. Connecting with others in the industry is important and building relationships with them is crucial. I want to emphasize this. As with any endeavor, you’re more likely to succeed with your business if you’ve got a solid, reliable support system; this is true on all levels. The salespeople looking to sell you products at a trade show are not merely trying to fill their pockets. They really want the opportunity to meet you, get to know you, understand your needs and desires as a customer. Industry reporters, trade organizations, fellow business people—everyone is worth considering as the source of a potentially valuable relationship.

4) Sharing. Even if it’s easy to forget for most of the year, conventions and trade shows can serve to remind you that the difficult work you do is the same as the difficult work others do. And just as you can gain ideas and tips from other facility folk you meet at such events, other facility folk can gain ideas and tips from you. You might even seek to take part in a panel or give a talk. The pay-off might not be immediate, but eventually they’ll become clear, in tangible and intangible ways, you’ll reap the benefits of having been a part of a major event for months to come—at least until next year’s convention.

How to Increase Social Media Reach in the New Year

How to Increase Social Media Reach

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Boosting sales and leads is one of the greatest assets that social media can offer a business.  When done properly, social media can transform into a lead generation monster for your company. To unleash the monster, people need to know that you exist and are ready to make an impact on the social media world. So how do we do this? By building a social media presence. 

The Foundation 

Before you do anything social media related, you need to start from square one — which is building a foundation. The first step towards building a social media infrastructure is choosing the right social networks: Facebook and Twitter. These platforms both have well over 300 million monthly active users, giving them the largest demographic and making them the most popular among all social networks.  To get the maximum benefit of these networks, you need to optimize your bio and visuals. The ideal bio will include a clear and concise description of your company and its URL. The visuals should include an awesome logo that is on both the profile picture and background image; this will further increase brand association. A fully optimized profile will allow customers, who are researching your industry, to see who you are and what you’re all about. Laying a sturdy foundation is just the first step to creating a social media empire. Now let’s give the industry something to buzz about and discuss the art of posting.  

Be a Problem Solver

The secret to any successful social media page —first-rate content. Creating quality posts is vital; it gives followers a reason to come back to your page(s) and an opportunity for potential new fans to discover and follow your organization. What specifically will make people return to your social media accounts and gain new followers? One thing all humans have in common, besides being human, is they experience conflict; which is why many people are attracted to material that pertains to their particular issue(s). For instance, let’s say you’re the owner of a gym whose members are mostly men in their late 50’s and are having troubling lowering their cholesterol. To help your members combat their problem, find and post educational information about the topic; this could include an article on the “10 Best Ways to Lower Your Cholesterol” or a video on the “7 Best Heart Healthy Exercises”. Not only are you helping your clients, but you’re demonstrating an expertise within the field. Content like this will have people raving about you and will aid in building your social media presence. Let’s strengthen that presence even further by getting social.

Get Social

Social media is more than a publishing tool, it’s an engagement tool. The conversation aspect is what makes social media unique, which is why Facebook and Twitter have made it easy with their internal search functions. However, there are also outside search platforms such as www.buzzsumo.com— a website that makes it quick and easy to discover relevant industry content and influencers. Identifying and communicating with well-known industry bloggers is essential to expanding your social circle and gaining some serious social clout. When it comes to an interaction strategy think beyond just industry thought leaders, and stay open to finding industry groups and getting involved with their circle. Last but not least, make sure you’re engaging followers with thought provoking questions and discussions; it will add value to your page(s) and keep followers hungry for more. The more interacting you do, the more of a name you will be making for yourself. Get involved and let your presence be felt. 

The Conclusion…

Start from the beginning and optimize your profiles so people will have no question about who you are and what you stand for. Next, tackle the posting beast to show people what industry knowledge you bring to the table. Finally, use social media for its purpose—to communicate and share ideas with others. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will your social media empire be. Although it might take time and patience, in the end it will all be worthwhile as you see the tweets fly-in and the likes accumulate.

 

Time to Get a Passport

Time to Get a Passport

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Think any of your members have ever tried traveling without a passport? If they do, they risk getting out of shape, inducing an injury when they start working out again, and losing their momentum for regular exercise. I’m not talking about their actual passports, of course; I’m talking about IHRSA’s Passport Program. If your facility doesn’t take part in it, you might be doing your members a disservice.
IHRSA’s Passport Program is a worldwide network of 1,700 health clubs that offer guest access to their facilities for members of participating clubs. Participation in the Passport Program is free for clubs; you merely have to register. Once you do, your members need to follow only a few steps in order to be able to use health clubs around the world. First, they have to obtain a valid Passport I.D. from your facility. Then, they have to check IHRSA’s list of participating clubs to locate one in the area where they will be traveling. Finally, they have to call ahead to confirm the availability of the facilities and find out about any guest fees that might apply. It’s that easy.
When you register, you agree to two stipulations. One, that you will reciprocate and offer traveling members of other clubs access to yours. Two, that you will discount your regular guest fee by at least 50 percent for Passport guests.
Those aren’t small stipulations, but the potential benefit to your club should be clear. Imagine the added value you’ll be offering prospective members when they’re considering signing up for a membership. You tell them that by signing up they’ll be giving themselves access to 1,700 clubs around the country — who can say no to that? What’s more, you’ll demonstrate your commitment to their good health. Traveling can be hard on the body, especially if it means breaking off from a regular workout routine. And traveling around the holidays can be particularly damaging, given all the indulgent treats available. If your members know they can head to Great Aunt Glenda’s place and eat her fruit cake and butter cookies with a clear conscience, because there’s an accessible gym in town—you’ll be providing them with a valuable service.
Keep in mind, IHRSA’s network isn’t the only one out there (though it’s probably the biggest). Look into the available options and consider which ones would be a good fit for you and your members. They’ll thank you if you do.

Face Time

Face Time

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In this digital age, it’s possible to go for days without seeing another person and still be in constant contact with others. Texting, emailing, social media, video-chatting: All which create a level of communication unheard of in previous decades. But guess what? Health club members still prefer in-person interaction with staff than communication via technological device.
A study in the recently published IHRSA Member Retention Report, lays out the details on this topic. Conducted in partnership with The Retention People, IHRSA’s study draws on survey responses from more than 10,000 health and fitness members in the U.K., who answered questions about their exercise habits and membership behavior between July and September 2013. The survey showed that an overwhelming 87 percent of respondents value interactions with fitness staff. The clincher? Less than half—43 percent—of respondents feel they have such interactions.The other clincher? Despite everything you constantly hear about how crucial it is to have an effective social media campaign—to get out there on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, to try to speak personably and familiarly with members via those platforms—only 34 percent of respondents said they value social media updates. Almost twice that number—65 percent—said they value receiving emails.
Considering the numbers, it’s worth devising a strategy for increasing face time between staff and members in your own health venue. This goes for sports facilities, too. The nature of the exercise business is interdependence—whether you’re talking gym, niche studio, or batting cages. Members depend on trainers, instructors, front desk folk, and support staff, and vice versa. So anything you can do to foster interdependence is going to result in a happier customer base—which, in the long run, means better retention, more word-of-mouth advertising, four-and-five star ratings on social media, and ultimately more members.
How do you make interactions between staff and members the norm at your facility? Make proactive interactions a requirement for the job: Staff should know, even before they’re hired, that you have high expectations for warm, interpersonal, and in-person communication with members on a daily basis. Have a greeter at the door, and give them a script that includes introducing him or herself by name, welcoming members, shaking their hands, and offering to help them with anything they need. Instruct front-desk staff to smile and to try to learn members’ names. Trainers and class leaders should also learn members’ names and should go out of their way to talk to members. In the weight room and cardio court, and on the ground at sports facilities, they should circulate and check in with members, ask how they’re doing and whether they need anything.
As for out-of-club communications, remember almost twice the number of survey respondents prefer email to social media interaction. Maybe it’s time to step back from your social media activity and refocus on effective emailing; the more personal the better. Consider a gym management software that allows for direct email blasts and the ability to group clients into categories. For example, create an email group called “New members” to track clients who have just signed up. Then, devise an email campaign where your staff sends a “checking in” email once a month for the first few critical months of the client’s membership.
Service of this sort takes your club or sports facility to the next level. If members feel you truly care about them, they’ll be coming back and telling their friends to do the same.

Retaining Members a Month at a Time

Retaining Members a Month at a Time

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Let’s say you’ve got a prospective member who has shown a lot of interest in your facility. You’ve given her a tour, offered her a free day pass to try the place out, and even had the highest-performing member of your sales team sit down with her for a full twenty minutes, chatting like an old friend and answering a slew of questions. Yet, when it comes time for the prospective to sign on the dotted line, she balks—she just doesn’t feel like she can commit to a year-long membership.
Does this sound like a familiar scenario? With members’ increasingly hectic work lives and a tight economy, it’s happening more and more at gyms, health clubs, and fitness centers around the country. Something else is also happening more and more to directly counteract the phenomenon: Clubs are starting to offer month-to-month membership with greater frequency than ever before.
How, you might ask, could a club stay operational with month-to-month memberships? The better question might be: How could a club stay operational without them? As Geoff Dyer, Founder of AussieFIT in Columbus, Ohio, puts it, “Some 25 percent of all members become inactive within six months of joining a club, and that figure doubles, rising to 50 percent, after one year. Unfortunately, one of the black eyes our industry has earned is its reputation for locking inactive members into long-term retail installment contracts.”
Dyer recently discussed month-to-month memberships on IHRSA’s blog. These options are better, Dyer argues, because they allow the industry to focus as much on member retention as it does on new member acquisition. “If our clients can leave at any time,” he says, “simply by providing written notice, then we’ll likely be much more attentive to their level of satisfaction with our service, programs, and facility upkeep.” That is, allowing for month-to-month memberships will force health clubs and similar facilities to improve the services they provide—the incentive for keeping members happy will increase, and therefore the efforts to do so will increase. As a result, more customers will join. In the end, Dyer says, even if members leave the facility at a faster pace, the outcome can still be a net gain.
Jarod Cogswell, Founder of Enterprise Athlete and President of Fit Academy, Inc., agrees. “The challenge for you,” he says, “is to prove your club’s value on a month-to-month basis, which promotes and produces a higher level of services. It motivates your staff to focus on service, cleanliness, and member retention because every visit counts, and there may not be a second chance.” Cogswell acknowledges, this reality places a lot of pressure on the sales process, because if clients can leave at any time there’s a greater chance you’ll lose them. “You therefore need to be selling at the same or higher rate than the rate of your membership losses,” he says.
Nevertheless, Cogswell believes the month-to-month option can reap rewards for a club. “When people understand that they can leave whenever they like,” he explains, joining your club becomes a comfortable decision—both psychologically and financially—that will tend to drive the volume you need to be profitable.”
Another critical factor to consider is what kind of fitness membership software you are currently using to track membership data. The right club management software will supply you with the ability to access robust reporting as well as the ability to set up auto-billing or auto-pay for membership payments.
So maybe it’s time to consider how you could implement month-to-month memberships at your own facility. The key to success with month-to-month is providing your members with the incentive to return, and instituting such a plan could force you to revisit some of your systems and processes. This presents short-term challenges, but the long-term benefits could greatly offset those challenges.