How to Add Value to Your Fitness Classes

Let’s assume you already offer amazing skills, content and leadership with the fitness classes you teach. What else can you do to make your classes extra special and enhance the community feeling? Bring added value to your participants with minimal or no cost, a little creativity, and a desire to connect. 

Many caring instructors add their unique touch to fitness classes in clever ways. Could their ideas work for you? Maybe their small, meaningful actions will spark you in different ways. The offerings are low-risk, and the reward is members who are even more bonded to you and each other. Most likely, none of the following actions are expected or part of your job description. However, these tips reflect a desire to go the extra distance. Perhaps this is already something you do!

Acknowledge Birthdays in Your Fitness Classes

Celebrating birthdays is a simple and popular way to make participants feel special. The idea is not uncommon, and it’s one you can implement at no or low cost with a high return of happy people. The trick is finding out whose birthday is when, tracking those dates, then celebrating all birthdays so everyone feels included. In addition to singing “Happy Birthday,” consider some of the following actions.

Deborah Autin calls herself “a group ex teacher of many flavors from a suburb of New Orleans where we know how to party.” Her “party” includes a monthly potluck lunch where the class celebrates the month’s birthdays. Autin gives small, homemade gifts such as soap. She tracks birthdays with a class reservation app that shows members’ birthdays, so she doesn’t have to rely on memory or notes.

Tracie Hardin-Renschen, MS, a certified senior fitness instructor from Trenton, Illinois, has all her birthday participants perform one pushup for every year of the birthday person’s age. She confesses that for this tradition, “Everyone loves the 20-somethings and [fake groans about] the older people.” If your class does not lend itself to pushups, do something that makes sense for your attendees — preferably an exercise people love no matter the number of years and repetitions!

For example, Alexis Mc-Laughlin, MA, who teaches Pilates in Kettering, Ohio, acknowledges birthdays by leading the class in the celebrant’s age for the “Pilates hundreds.” “It’s a riot,” she claims, when the group does 53 “hundreds,” for a newly 53-year-old instead of one hundred, as everyone counts along.

Rachel McCulloch, a group fitness instructor in Wheaton, Illinois, offers a free 30-minute personal training session the week of a member’s birthday. Additionally, she sends out $5 coffee gift cards to her regulars on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

Maria Mobark, a fitness and belly dance instructor from Alexandria, Egypt, celebrates special occasions (birthdays, engagements, graduations and anniversaries) either with a specially created music playlist and accompanying choreography or a free dance in the celebrant’s honor. 

See also: How To Create a Workout Community

Incorporate Requests

Another way to add value and create community in fitness classes is to allow participants to be part of the planning process. Mobark, for example, asks participants to share their favorite songs, which she then uses to create choreography. “Getting members involved in the planning definitely [enhances our community] as they love belly dancing to their favorite music,” Mobark reports.

In my cycling classes, I set up a song request whiteboard, provide dry erase pens, and encourage people to write down any song or group they’d love in future playlists. When I use a playlist with a member-suggested song, I dedicate that day’s workout to them. Simple? Yes—and effective. It’s also free, as the board and pens are club-provided.

When you include participants in the planning process, they’re more invested in the workout, the instructor and the group. Incorporating requests is an easy, underused action. Think about how to do this. Is there an aspect of your class design that may be appropriate for non-fitness pros to define? A muscle group to focus on? A favorite exercise or pose? Granting requests and dedicating them to the requester is validating and costs nothing.

Share Spoken Words

The next category of teacher-led “extra” effort has to do with sharing the written word, such as quotations, fitness facts, statistics relevant to exercise, poem excerpts, etc. This can add an intellectual, motivational or spiritual aspect.

For instance, D’ana Baptiste, also known as “The Wandering Yogi,” who leads yoga and breathwork classes in both Salt Lake City and Mexico, ends her classes with an inspirational quote. “When I reach the end of a class, I read a quote from a book or a poem . . . or lyrics from a song that has significance in my life,” she says.

Baptiste started this habit before social media and memes became popular. Participants responded so positively that she started compiling the quotes and readings into a notebook and sometimes fashioned the class around the meaning of the words in ways that were relevant and organically connected to the poses. Baptiste’s daily quote brings the class to a positive end, and she’s also been told that one of her quotes profoundly changed a member’s life.

Kate Ouellette Finamore, MA, owner and director of Engage Fitness Collective, a live, online class provider based in Alexandria, Virginia, brings in “parables, stories, columns, quotes and humorous anecdotes” to end her Friday Flow class every week. “It’s like a bookend for that week, to enjoy the weekend and begin the next week with a fresh outlook,” she says.

Are these actions earth-shattering? Perhaps not, but they could possibly be life-changing, or at least unifying. The right words at the right time from a caring, dedicated instructor can make a big impact. The cost? Two minutes to find a quote, headline or workout-related statistic before class and another 2 minutes to read it in class.  

See also: Tips for Growing Your Fitness Classes

Give Out Printed Materials

In this digital-first world, don’t underestimate the power of the printed word, which can have just as meaningful an impact as spoken words. Participants understand that you’ve given the stamp of approval to any materials you offer. They get the benefit of your gift, and you reinforce your position as a credible source of fitness information, as well as a person who truly cares.

The National Institutes of Health is one free source of quality printed materials. You can order bulk quantities of booklets, brochures, one-sheets, posters and flyers. For example, I just ordered multiple copies of NIH’s book, “Get Fit for Life,” posters on “Myths of Aging” and “Tips to Stay Motivated,” and other booklets, both in Spanish and English (National Institute on Aging at nih.gov). I lay these resources across the teaching stage for people to take according to interest. Participants “shop” the options, and they appreciate the freebies.      

If you decide to spend money, consider handing out positive or motivational cards. Cindy Frary, a longtime group fitness manager and instructor in Syracuse, New York, uses empowerment cards as a simple and inexpensive way to acknowledge individual dedication and commitment. “Including an empowerment card in a note card along with a personalized message (makes) someone’s day a bit brighter,” shares Frary, and it takes only a minute or two to prepare. If this action resonates with you, but you want to retain your card deck, you could pass out cards for members to contemplate, and then return at the end of class.

Organize Your Fitness Classes Around a Theme

Who doesn’t like a good theme? This community-building approach helps you organize targeted information while you add value. For instance, Jen DeMarco, MS, a longtime fitness leader who teaches in the Exercise Science Department at Grossmont College in San Diego, incorporates daily themes from the eight limbs of yoga from Patanjali’s yoga sutras.

DeMarco focuses primarily on the first two limbs: the yamas and niyamas. “Yamas are a reflection of outwardly directed thoughts, words and actions—the things we think about others, say to or about others, and behaviors that affect others,” she says. “Niyamas are a reflection of innermost perspectives, attitudes and beliefs and how these affect us, as well as others around us.” 

By rotating through the eight limbs, DeMarco infuses a unique and reinvigorated twist to an otherwise repetitive workout, especially for regulars. She invites her college-aged students to consider how the targeted perspective might enhance or change their yoga practice that day. “Students consider how these teachings apply to them personally, both on and off the mat and in communication and relationship with other people,” DeMarco explains.

Craig Micheal Lonas, an instructor of various yoga and movement modalities in Bowling Green, Kentucky, also finds that themes enhance his class members’ experience. He bundles his themes with a curated playlist and quotations. “I taught a month-long yoga series based on an Indian proverb and inspiration for Rumer Godden’s autobiography, A House With Four Rooms (William Morrow & Co 1989),” says Lonas. “The belief is that, like a four-roomed house, we have the capacity for a mental, physical, spiritual and emotional space, yet spend much of our time focused on only one (at a time).” Lonas dedicated a smaller part of his class design to these four aspects of yoga and then used a longer flow toward the end that traveled through all four “rooms.”

“I tied it together with a playlist curated specifically for each section and gave them a takeaway of the quote with space to journal that I designed on Canva,” relates Lonas. “About 90% of the classes I teach are curated with a theme that ties together the movement, music, quotes and takeaways.”

Another theme Lonas presented was based on addressing fears; in this case, fear of spiders. “I designed a flow that used weaving-style movements that moved around the mat toward the center to create a ‘web,’” he says. “At the end of class, I took a grass string from person to person, creating a web, and then cut the string to allow each to have a piece to (keep) to remember the class and the power of connection in fighting their fears.”

It doesn’t matter what you bring, whether it be string, a notebook of quotes, requested songs, party hats or a card—you bring joy, value and added meaning to your fitness classes when you make a thoughtful effort.

See also: Fitness Class as Experience

Create a Mini Spa Experience

One of my favorite “bonuses” occurred when I took a yoga class from Ohm Sweet Ohm yoga studio owner and teacher, Tambra Prince of Liberty Hill, Texas. As we ended class in a relaxation pose, Prince offered each participant a mini neck massage with a choice of essential oils. Prince started this tradition to express gratitude for her students. She also offers scented eye pillows or warm, fragrant towels in winter and cool towels in summer to drape over participants’ eyes. As you can imagine, this deluxe attention works best in small fitness classes.

Imagine the difference you can make by investing just a bit of time, attention and creativity into building community and adding value. Your gifts create memories for a lifetime. Say “yes” to going above and beyond.