When working with women or specific groups
I haven’t done this yet — I’m still fairly new as a trainer — but my personal trainer in NH did this a lot. She offered classes based on what her clients told her they wanted — such as Zumba, yoga stretch, Pilates, kickboxing, balls bands & weights, and more. She would switch up the schedule every quarter or so to reflect her clients’ needs and whatever new type of workout clients were clamoring for.
This did a great job in attracting new clients — my trainer knew the trends and capitalized on them with her classes. Some of these new class clients became personal training clients, or went from taking just one class to taking several per week.
If you have the bandwidth and space to offer a bonus class for women, why not give it a shot? If it doesn’t bring in new clients, all you’ve wasted is some time and possibly a small outlay of money in marketing the class.
Linda
I would say that “core” definitely captures people’s attention and will get them in the door. That has been my experience with group fitness over the years. I teach a specific core class that has remained popular and brings in new people each time, even when other classes have gotten smaller. I also teach a interval class everyday over the lunch hour, and whenever I ask my class what they want to work on- the answer is always “abs.” I feel like once I have them in the door with a catchy title or buzz word like “core,” it’s my job to do a better job expanding on what exactly the core is and getting my students to think outside the “crunch box” to do some other great core conditioning exercises for stability and mobility. I think a lot of people have a misperception of what the core is and what good ab work is, so sometimes it can be a challenge to get people to realize there’s other stuff out there above variations of crunches.
If you’re working with post-natal clientele, I would definitely make sure they’ve been cleared by a physician to exercise. I think a lot of moms, myself included, want to get back to pre-baby shape sometimes at the expense of good sense and giving their bodies time to heal. At our gym, I had a girl come in 3 days post c-section to her workout class… yipes.
Best of luck to you!
Well I work only with women and many of them are new mom’s. I give them a full body workout every class (twice a week), but I know a few of them have friends that would be intrigued to come if I hosted a class that focused on ONLY the core muscles and called it a core conditioning class or something along those lines b/c they are all wanting to get their tummy areas back in shape after having the babies. The clients I do have understand the importance of strengthening their core first, while also working the rest of the major muscle groups, but I thought in order to bring in new clients, maybe hosting a “core conditioning” class might help interest them since that is the area most of them would like to see results in right now. Thoughts?
I don’t offer bonus classes, but I do have a focus for each class. This changes it up and allows me to focus on the whole body throughout the week. I try to have games and fun names to go along with the class for that day. For example: racket sports day (we do drills that are often see with racket sports and spend time working the shoulder, core and glutes) or ball day (we do ball drills and work on speed, agility and stability).
What type of bonus classes were you thinking of offering and how would it work? Its great to hear other people’s ideas and to learn from them.