Residential Fitness-How to motivate residents
Hi, I wanted to ask if there are others out there that have a Residential Fitness gig? I signed a contract with an amazing Luxury Apartment home that has an unbelieveable fitness center and yoga room with an opportunity to provide bar classes. My contract also allows me to bring folks that do not live in the building. People just started to move in the middle of May. The building is now 85% occupied. I put a survey out to see what they would like offered in terms of fitness classes or other wellness services but I only had 11 people fill it out. Many residents I talked to seem excited for the classes but when it comes down to it I only get 2 or people making the classes. Most of these people are at a higher position in thier job and work long hours. I really want people to get excited about classes, one on one training, nutrition coaching etc? I was thinking to do a fitness fair but that requires money. WIll it be worth it. At this time the building pays me to do 2 fitness classes and 1 yoga class a week. How do I get folks to come to those classes and pay for other fitness class packages. Again I can open it up to the community. I don’t even pay for rent.
Does anybody have experience with this or creative thoughts to get this moving?
We offered a free Barr Class to the community and residents. We had 8 RSVp and everyone canceled. How does that many people cancel. We never offered a Barr class before.
I had a deal like this at one point. I sent a questionnaire to the residents that allowed them to circle times, days and class formats to see what they would like offered. Our demographics are probably similar to what you have. The responses were all over the map. In fact people were very particular about exactly when they wanted class, but there was not a huge overlap. And of course you don’t know till you try what is the best option because there are people who will ask for something and not show up. In practice what worked for me best was 6 am. I found a lot of people were working really late hours, so they liked to work out as early as possible and then get on with their day. Earlyish morning on the weekends also did well.
Are you bringing in teachers to teach the classes, or doing it all yourself? There are advantages to having a couple of people, particularly if you are offering specialty classes like yoga, because then when you do your newsletter you can include bios and backgrounds about how awesome the teachers are and that will also bring people in.
Doing a newsletter and leaving it at the reception area is also a great idea.
Give yourself some time. Bit by bit people will come down, and as they do hopefully you will get a reasonable retention, and build from there. In a way you are in a really enviable position…. no rent….. and an in house local audience. August is always hard. Make some plans for September. I have found in September people get a bit jazzed about starting new things. You could start a healthy changes support group, or put on your fair then, or advertise a new schedule of classes starting after labor day. Lots of possibilities.
Good luck