Clubs & Studios
Bulletproof or Full of Loopholes?
When was the last time you reviewed the documents you require your facility’s clients to sign? What kind of impression are your contracts and liability releases making? Are you doing too much or too little?
Team Development: Re-Inspire Your Staff
When employees feel uninspired, they don’t think about how to improve the systems at their facility. They aren’t interested in sharing their great ideas, and they don’t care about really engaging their clients.
Introduction to Apprenticeship Programs
As the director or owner of a personal training business, you know that your greatest asset is the people you choose to work with. So how do you hire the right team of trainers to join your cause? How can you be sure that every fitness professional you hire will truly help you move forward?
Australian Music Tariff Update
In May 2010, the Australian Copyright Tribunal voted for a significant fee hike (from $0.98 AUS to $15 AUS per class) for fitness facilities that play music in group exercise sessions. The Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA), an organization that protects sound recordings and music videos, requested the increase. Later that year the appeal courts overturned the ruling, prompting the PPCA to file its own appeal, which was rejected.
How Can Clients Keep Their New Year’s Resolutions?
In 2011, TIME magazine named the joint goal of losing weight and getting fit as the most commonly broken New Year’s resolution (TIME.com 2011). You don’t have to be psychic…
Starting From Scratch: 10 Steps to Making Your Business Official
In “Starting From Scratch,” in the previous issue of IDEA Trainer Success, we wore ourselves out with figuring and calculations to create a livable work schedule and doable financial goals that would lay the groundwork for starting your own in-home personal training business. Now that the hardest part of our work is behind us, we dive into 10 organized steps to take to make your business official.
1. Choose a Graphic Designer to Create Your Materials.
What’s Your Objective for New Members?
There are at least a dozen clichés about making a good impression.
Managing Peak Times at Your Facility
We’ve all seen it. The eye-rolling, the foot-tapping, the loud sighing as the member who is waiting in line for the much-sought-after cardio machine stares at the clock. This scene is all too common during peak exercise times at any health club. The lines for the treadmills and elliptical machines get longer and longer, and the group exercise classes get more and more crowded.
Reinventing Risk Management
As both a lawyer and a personal fitness trainer and manager, I have found that laws and regulations often seem incongruous with an industry built on endorphins. I suspect that’s why the topic “Legal Issues” tends to be the concluding chapter of certification textbooks—almost an afterthought. Aspiring fitness professionals get excited about VO2max studies, body fat testing and target heart rates, and it’s easy for them to assume that when a problem arises, someone else will take care of it.
The Anatomy of a Successful Website
Google the words personal trainer and your city. The results will reveal the good, bad and ugly of the Internet, from the stunning to the unreadable. But creating a website that lures customers and conveys the right info is achievable with some structural know-how. Discover the best ways to portray your prices, personality, and perspective online and watch your website work for you.
The Bare Bones
Developing Exceptional Teams
It struck me in the coffee shop. I was having my weekly mastermind meeting with a fellow business owner. I was sharing a book that I highly recommended, and I told him that I had given a copy to each of my managers. After my friend skimmed it, he asked why I would gift it to my staff. He explained that he didn’t want to encourage his staff to dream bigger. They might get inflated egos. They might demand more. They might leave.
The Pay Rate Debate
If you’ve managed a group fitness department long enough, you’ve probably felt like the “red-headed stepchild” more than once. If your facility is like a host of others, your department isn’t considered a separate profit center, but rather a part of membership. Since group exercise doesn’t usually have a “home” on the profit and loss statement, payroll is often the only line item attributed to it. Consequently, when cuts are made, guess which department is most often flagged!
Staffing for Success
The high turnover rate among fitness industry staff is not news. In many cases, staff seem to be coming and going through a revolving door! Having a high-end fitness center with fancy amenities, décor and equipment is ideal, but if your staff is unable to meet client expectations, you will struggle to maintain memberships and meet your revenue goals. The good news is that your facility doesn’t need to operate like this.
The Centralized Portal
Whether you’ve been forced to overhaul your current communication strategy or you’re just making minor tweaks, it’s time to bring this column to a close. Here’s the new reality: If you expect to stay relevant as a manager, you need to think of staff as your “main audience.” Employees will react to your “performance” as any audience would. The challenge, however, is that your audience isn’t captive! You have to be crafty in your delivery and diligent in meeting each person where communication culture exists today. Otherwise, your messages may fall short.
Recruiting Staff via Social Media
As a manager or director, you’re constantly keeping your ears and eyes open at your facility for potential new trainers and instructors. That’s smart. What’s even smarter is also to use social media, such as Twitter™, Facebook and LinkedIn®, to support your search.
For many years, clubs have successfully offered in-house training programs as a recruitment tool. Most of the “fishing” has been through in-house communications: member announcements, one-on-one solicitations of star students, member inquiries, staff recommendations and so on.
Group Fitness Attendance Survey Results
Have you ever wondered how much foot traffic your group exercise programming brings into your facility? Global fitness company Les Mills has released survey data from the world’s top fitness facilities, centered on measuring accurate group fitness attendance:
Of the clubs that participated in the survey, the average club had 676 group fitness attendances per week. The top 20 clubs had an average of 3,880 attendances. The top 10 attracted on average 4,656 weekly attendances.
Lessons From the School of Sales
You’re sold on the importance of an exercise education. But do you equally value the study of sales? Whether you own an exercise enterprise or work as an independent instructor,…
Serving Your Base & Looking for Opportunity in Special Populations
The 16th annual IDEA Fitness Programs & Equipment Trends survey was distributed to member club owners, fitness directors, managers and program directors in order to gather information on current programming and equipment offerings and to gauge industry trends. As club owners and directors have continued to hurdle the challenge of a down economy, they have been forced to get creative with staffing, space, equipment and programming so as to meet the needs of a diverse clientele demanding more economical fitness solutions.
Gym-Pact Charges When You Don’t Show Up
Facility owners and managers recognize that many individuals let gym membership cards collect dust. Many managers offer promotions or incentives to increase membership use. One organization uses a sort of reverse incentive to help motivate the unmotivated. Developed by Harvard students struggling to meet weekly fitness goals, the Internet-based organization Gym-Pact charges users for missed workouts. Participants set up a schedule, and they must check into a partnered gym via text message to avoid a $10 fee.
Host Successful Group Exercise Department Meetings
For a variety of reasons, as a group fitness director you need to meet with your instructors regularly. However, actually getting instructors to attend department meetings can be a daunting task. Ali Helms, fitness director at the Jewish Community Alliance in Jacksonville, Florida, offers tips for hosting a successful—and well-attended—department meeting: