Tag: Business Advice

nutritional facts

Working Together to Fight Obesity

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Really? We’re getting fatter? Sigh. It’s so disheartening, especially when the news seems full of reports about this health trend or that one, about the rise of wearable fitness technology and how data-tracking has revolutionized individual exercise plans, about the extraordinary progress a person can make by exercising intensely for small periods of time, about ever-increasing awareness of nutritional realities. Nevertheless, this is what the most recent report from the United Health Foundation, the American Public Health Association, and the Partnership from Prevention tells us: We’re getting fatter.

Issued annually for the past 25 years, the report, called America’s Health Rankings, tracks state-by-state health and fitness data. The most recently released report shows that in 2014 the nation’s obesity rate rose nearly 2 percent, from 27.6 percent last year to 29.4 percent this year. That 2 percent figure may sound small, but it represents an extremely large number of individuals. Moreover, at the time surveys for the report were completed, nearly a quarter of respondents said that they had had no physical activity or exercise for 30 days. That number increased from 22.9 percent in 2013 to 23.5 percent this year. And the even more grim news? In the 25 years that America’s Health Rankings have been published, obesity in the United States has more than doubled.

The question for us becomes: How can we, all of us who are leaders in the fitness industry, do more? How can we attract the people who are not inclined to exercise, and how can we help reverse the trend?

The key, I believe, is partnerships. One gym or health club or sports facility or fitness center can do only so much, and whatever we each can do, we have to do while keeping the bottom line always in mind (or else we won’t be around to do anything at all!). But a whole network of gyms and health clubs and sports facilities and fitness centers can do a lot. Make it part of your facility’s mission to work with other facilities to help improve America’s overall health. Join programs that allow members to work out at partner facilities at a discount. Combine resources to offer free or heavily discounted training and exercise programs to individuals who can’t afford normal gym rates. Get other facilities in your area to help host a day of city- or town-wide exercise fun.

But don’t stop at other facilities. The fact is, exercise is only one part of the overall health picture. Obesity numbers won’t drop until the food industry finds a better way of providing affordable, healthy food to the population at large; until health insurance companies start seeing health club memberships as reimbursable sickness-prevention tools; until schools bring back physical education and more effectively educate children about health and exercise science. If you’re going to be a part of the force chipping away at our rising obesity rates, you’ve got to consider ways of working with a whole network of organizations and industries that have an impact on individuals’ health and fitness. We can reverse the crisis. But we can only do it together.

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.

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.

BehindTheCurtain.jpg

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

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!

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.

Working Out Around the Season of Insanity

Working Out Around the Season of Insanity

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It’s that time again, the time I like to refer to as the Season of Insanity. Every year around this time, things become outrageously chaotic. At work, everyone is scrambling to finish projects before the end of the year, which inevitably, all end up on my desk at the same time. At school, there’re a sudden slew of no-school holidays, plus professional development and parent-teacher conference days off, while the kids are all tired from a couple months of steady homework, and coming off of Halloween-candy sugar highs. Meanwhile, in the span of three weeks, I’m invited to more events than I’ve been all year. Then there’s the holiday shopping, cooking, planning, and wrapping to contemplate…
What this means for fitness centers and sports facilities is that client visits slow down. Fewer client visits equal less revenue. This can either be in the short term, where you’re missing out on class payments or members aren’t spending on personal trainer sessions, massages, and other extras; or in the long run, where a client becomes less likely to renew her membership when she goes for a month or two without making it to the gym. What can you do to help your already busy clients squeeze in visits to the gym when their schedules become even more packed?
First, remind them that the most important time to maintain gym-going habits is now, when stress increases and tempting, sugary foods are abound. When you’re in the thick of too much to do, it’s easy to forget that making time to work out actually increases productivity. Hang up posters reminding members that this is the case, and reach out via email with similar messaging. A great social media campaign would be one that features brief videos of clients who come regularly despite their hectic schedules—hearing them explain how gym-time makes work-time easier could help motivate members who feel stuck in the grind.
Consider extending your hours for the season. Then, if you’re able to do so, widely and proudly advertise your extended hours.
If possible, have your instructors or trainers develop abbreviated workouts. Give these a snappy name, something like Twenty-Minutes-In-and-Out. Again, advertise heavily: Let everyone know that you’ve got a new program created specifically to address the trouble we are all having right now, in making time to exercise. High-intensity interval training workouts are a relevant thing to plug right now: They’re still receiving attention for their dramatic results and the health benefits they produce, and they’re perfectly suited to short workouts.
Finally, craft a message specifically for members whose records indicate they haven’t made it in for a while. If you have a fitness concierge, have him or her send the message personally, with an invitation to call and discuss any scheduling difficulties clients might be facing. Offer to help devise a plan. You won’t hear from everyone, and there may well be a client or two who disappears and never renews. Chances are though, you’ll reach at least a handful who will feel grateful for you reaching out, and who will re-apply themselves with new vigor. Now get to work.

Healthier Planet, Healthier You

Healthier Planet, Healthier You

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I’ve talked about the Green Sports Resource Directory in this space before. Created by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, it’s a collection of online resources designed to help sports facilities, leagues, and college and university teams reduce their carbon footprints. With inspiring success stories and links to organizations devoted to helping sports-oriented businesses make environmentally sound decisions, the website illustrates the benefits of greening sports. It also links to tools that can help facilities and teams track and control their energy consumption, like EPA’s Energy Star Portfolio manager, and to lists of products that perform well and are cost efficient—while also being safer for the environment.
Bottom line: It’s a great resource, it can save you money, and it helps make a better planet. Already, sports outfits across the country are making a commitment to protect the health of employees and clients and to improve the environment. The Seattle Mariners have used energy efficiency techniques to reduce their electricity consumption by over 90 percent—and to reduce energy costs by $50,000 per year. Brooklyn’s Barclay’s Center earned a LEED Silver certification by the U.S. Green Building council last year, and it has challenged fans to “be green” by using public transit, recycling, and reducing paper waste associated with tickets. In West Columbia, South Carolina, a former dump and landfill site was transformed into a recreational area, with a mini-golf course, a driving range, a practice golf course, a ball park, and—I love this detail—a recycling center.
Chances are your facility, league, or team already has taken some steps toward becoming greener. You reuse, reduce, and recycle; you advise your employees not to print out emails unnecessarily, and you communicate with your clientele virtually more than on paper; you choose machines that use energy efficiently. But probably you can take your efforts further. Can you invest in solar energy? (I know a horseback-riding training center in upstate New York with state-of-the-art stables, a vast indoor arena, 34 acres of beautiful land, and a big, old-fashioned farmhouse, where, because of solar panels on the roof, the electricity bill comes to $19 per month.) Can you use products that conserve energy? Can you clean without harmful chemicals? Can you boost efforts to get everyone in your facility—managers, employees, fans, members, and clients alike—wasting less and conserving more?
Moreover, can you effectively advertise your efforts? Because in addition to saving money and making the world safer, operating a greener business can attract the attention and loyalty of consumers whose concern about climate change and environmental health lead them to make decisions based on green practices. Want new members, customers, or clients? Reduce your energy consumption and let everyone know you’ve done so.

Back to School: Lessons About Looking Forward

Back to School: Lessons About Looking Forward

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Fast Company recently ran an article entitled “A Look Inside the Most Insane College Gyms.” By “insane,” the editors presumably meant equipped with perhaps unnecessary but totally envy-inducing features, such as Louisiana State University’s lazy river in the shape of the letters L, S, and U, for students to float on; Auburn University’s 45-person paw-print shaped hot tub and 20-foot poolside climbing wall; both institutions’ 1/3-mile running tracks, the longest college rec center tracks in the nation (Auburn’s is corkscrew-shaped and winds throughout the rec center building, pictured above; LSU’s is tiger-striped and loops around a rock-climbing wall).
Other features at recently constructed college gyms include ropes and ledges for ascending to the second floor, a skateboard-friendly plaza design (a compromise at Utah State University, after skateboard-friendly walls were deemed impractical), rooftop gardens, and the inclusion of functional training equipment. Under discussion at some universities but not yet incorporated are hot yoga rooms and indoor/outdoor tracks, on which a student could run an indoor loop, head outdoors for fresh air or a nice view, and then follow the track back into the building. Such a structure would include a thermal lock to prevent cold air/hot air exchange.
Now, I’m not saying you should spend millions of dollars refurbishing your facility to incorporate similar features, but I am suggesting that it’s worthwhile to consider the principles behind some colleges’ new “insane” designs, and perhaps to apply some of those principles.
For example, a big catalyst for the over-the-top designs is competition: LSU openly tried to outdo Auburn, its Southeastern Conference rival, when it designed its rec center. Schools try to better each other in the gym department because students often make enrollment choices based on the perceived quality of gym offerings. One recent Purdue University graduate told Fast Company that he chose Purdue partly because he liked that its gym had more options and better hours than the gyms at other universities he considered. The lesson? How your facility compares with others matters.
Another catalyst is envisioning the future. Colleges and universities know that any major rec center renovation or construction plans they dream up now won’t be used until kids currently in eighth grade make their way to higher ed. They need to be forerunners in design trends, and they need to build something flexible enough that it can remain appealing for decades. The lesson? Think not in terms of the now, but in terms of the future. What will customers and members want five, ten, fifteen years down the road? What can you build now that can morph into the next big thing?
A third catalyst is motivating exercisers to push harder. Gyms used to be dark, dank, box-shaped structures with Nautilus equipment and not much else. You couldn’t exactly call their environments inviting. Colleges and universities are looking for ways to make their spaces inviting, to make students want to go to the gym and stay there, to see if they can inspire gym-goers to work out for fifteen minutes longer. With soaring ceilings, light-filled spaces, yoga decks, climbing walls, novelty features (like that “LSU”-shaped floating pool), and other attributes that convey a sense of fun and freedom, institutions are having more and more luck drawing members of their communities to the gym and keeping them there — one recent study found that only 15 percent of students finish their first year of college without ever using the rec center, while roughly 50 percent never use career planning, financial advising, or academic tutoring services. The lesson? The space you offer can invite new members in and encourage retention.
The biggest take-away from all of this? Pay attention to what colleges and universities are doing in their rec centers. Look at photos for inspiration, and keep tabs on new developments. Higher education institutions are at the forefront of gym design — and in a few years their students are going to be young professionals seeking gyms in the real world, and their standards are going to be high.

Healthcare

New Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Commission Seeks Collaborators

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By now, you’ve probably heard of the report recently released by the Vitality Institute, a New York-based organization made up of leaders in both the public and private sectors. Their main focus is to strengthen the evidence base of what works and what doesn’t in health promotion and disease prevention. The report, Investing in Prevention: A National Imperative, offers recommendations on these topics. A particular recommendation that has people talking is one that some may find controversial: Companies should report their employee health metrics just as they report their financial earnings.
Eighty percent of non-communicable diseases could be prevented, the report states. Preventing these diseases by 2023 could save the United States between $217 billion and $303 billion per year—about five percent to seven percent of annual healthcare spending. How do you prevent the diseases? By collecting data on individuals’ health profiles, identifying who might be at risk, and presumably then encouraging healthy habits.
Any time an individual’s private data is collected, it’s controversial. But the report seems to argue that health-related data isn’t merely private—the information that it contains could reveal ways to help strengthen society at some of its most fundamental levels. “The consequences of non-communicable diseases have short- and long-term effects by forcing individuals to exit the workforce prematurely due to their own poor health, or to care for ill relatives,” the report states. “Lower productivity and higher absenteeism, combined with soaring costs of treatment, impede innovation and crowd out productive investment in education and research and development.” In light of that, the Vitality Institute argues, it’s imperative that we know the state of health of America’s employees.
Why should you care about all this? The commission that put together the Vitality Institute’s report represents high-powered public- and private-sector organizations, such as Microsoft Corp., IBM, AARP, Humana, Johns Hopkins University, Qualcomm, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. These organizations have promised to carry out four initiatives meant to revolutionize the prevention of diseases and the promotion of health in the United States. To launch these initiatives, the commission is seeking collaborators — and what businesses are better positioned to collaborate than gyms, health clubs, fitness centers, and sports centers, which already work toward disease prevention and health promotion? Now is the time to get involved.
In addition to building a Corporate Health Leaders Program comprising evidence-based workplace health promotion training courses for small, medium, and large employers, the commission also plans to “convene a workshop on ethical, legal, and social issues with respect to the use of data collected by personal prevention technologies.” Another initiative aims to strengthen leadership and advocacy through networks. All in all, these are sweeping ideas that could have a huge impact on the future of fitness in this country. That’s where you come in. And here’s an interesting idea for you: What if your company were one of the first to voluntarily begin reporting employees’ health metrics? You’d sure get noticed.

Energy saving

You'll be Green with Savings & Sustainability

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Ah, summer. I love winter’s snow, I’m a sucker for the gardens of spring, and fall contains what will always be my favorite holiday (Halloween, of course), but for me summer is hands-down the best season of all. I love the salad-eating, outdoor-exercising, blazing hot energy of it all—the swimming, the relaxation, the air-conditioning.
I know that last item is problematic, and it’s part of a much larger issue. Air-conditioning creates a huge carbon footprint, and if employed without regard to sustainability and energy conservation, it can contribute devastatingly to environmental destruction. However, from a fitness or sports facility perspective, it’s indispensable. Yet, it’s not just summertime air-conditioning that creates challenges. Lighting, energy consumption, heating, material waste—all of these issues affect how you run your facility year-round, how much money you save or spend, and your impact on the environment.
One way to tackle all of these issues at once is to push your facility to achieve LEED certification. Being LEED—or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design—certified means meeting certain standards in energy savings, water efficiency, indoor environmental quality, and CO2 emissions reduction. The cost of designing and constructing a building that meets such standards is high, as is the cost of improving existing buildings. Maintaining LEED-certified facilities also carries costs. But in the end, the savings associated with LEED-certification, financial and otherwise, make it more than worthwhile. So how do you go about achieving it?
First, adopt a “going green” mindset. Demonstrate your facility’s commitment to creating an environmentally sound space by getting all employees on-board with the notion. It’s crucial that your management team understands the specific goals and considers LEED-related issues in all decision-making processes; if you have a stated company mission and can make LEED-compliance part of it, all the better. Equally important is that your sales team recognizes the power of LEED as a lever for selling your brand. Potential members and customers will appreciate the knowledge that joining your club or attending your practice facility or venue helps minimize environmental impact, and in a competitive market, such a factor can be a crucial selling-point.
Next, to cover the considerable costs of building a new LEED building or bringing an existing one up to speed, consider gaining sponsorship or embarking on a partnership. Local waste companies looking to promote their recycling programs, cleaning companies that market green products, municipal agencies launching new fitness agendas, and businesses with specific, health-related objectives—these are just a few categories from which to seek out sponsors or partners. To find one that’s right for you, you’ll need to do some research, identify the needs and wants of potential partners, and design proposals that meet those needs and wants. Any proposal you come up with should detail how the image, mission, values, and/or green initiatives of the sponsor or partner align with those of your organization and highlight the value of the alignment.
Finally, think both big and small. Reconfiguring your facility to meet LEED standards is thinking big, and it’s a crucial step that involves a good deal of research, commitment, and investment. You also want to make simple changes that might be tiny in and of themselves, yet, add up to a big change, contributing to an environmentally sound approach to running your facility. Install recycling containers next to trash cans. Replace old drinking fountains with newer ones that allow for bottle refills. Consider ways you might be able to buy locally, stocking your juice bar with fruit from nearby farms and getting supplies from companies in your city or neighborhood. Offer discounts at your café for customers who bring their own drinking containers. Tie messages about personal health into ones about the health of the planet. Every little effort makes a difference, and will help make your facility a leader—year-round—in the sustainability movement.

The Right Hire For Your Gym

The Right Hire For Your Gym

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If you’re a fan of reality television, or even if you’re not, you have probably heard about the recent episode of Inside Job that featured New York’s David Barton Gym. Inside Job’s premise is that a company seeking to fill a position agrees to let the show’s producers select three candidates. Those candidates live together for a week and undertake challenges that supposedly reveal their worthiness for the job. A fourth person also lives in the house, someone already employed by the company who presents himself or herself as another candidate for the position. That person is the insider, reporting back to the CEO about the candidates and choosing one of them to recommend.
Well, that’s one way to hire an employee. For those of us who don’t have the opportunity to get to know job candidates quite so intimately before we hire them, we need other approaches. Since so many staff positions at a fitness center or sports facility involve direct interaction with members and clients, it’s crucial to hire carefully. Moreover, hiring is an expensive process; you want to get a good return on your investment.
What can you do to ensure you’re hiring well? To begin with, craft an excellent, clear, and precise job description. The more specific your description, and the more explicitly you define what you’re looking for, the better your chances of finding appropriate candidates. If you need a marketing person with social media experience, don’t just put, “Five years marketing experience”. It’s better to write, “Experienced marketing professional with social media expertise.” Also, be sure to stick in a few words that convey the sort of work ethic you’re looking for. If you want to scare off potential loafers, then change that wording to “Dedicated, experienced marketing professional with social media experience, a can-do attitude, and the willingness to stick it out when things get tough.”
Once you’ve collected your applications and narrowed the pool down to a handful of candidates, line up your interviews. Let me stress on the word “handful”: At this point, you don’t want to bring in too many people. Start with your top three or four choices; if you can’t find what you’re looking for among them, you can always call in others.
No doubt you’ve conducted interviews before, so you know the drill. Still, there’s one thing that’s easy to forget: Interviews are not effective if you’re focusing only on the science behind them — the questions you should and shouldn’t ask, how you read a résumé, what answers a candidate gives to your questions. More effective is to focus on the art of interviewing. This means paying attention to how a candidate answers your questions more than what they say. Did you get an answer — but not to the question you asked? Were there inconsistencies in the candidate’s replies? What was the candidate’s body language saying, what were the unconscious reactions and gestures? These will help you better understand who the person is (rather than just what he or she has done).
Once you make an offer, be prepared to negotiate. Any candidate worth hiring is probably going to come to you with a counter-offer. Remain open to the offer. Often, it reflects what the potential employee truly thinks he or she is worth. You might not be able to meet the counter-offer, but you might gain some clues about what alternative offers the candidate might be willing to accept. If you really want the person, you’ll have to find a way to make him or her happy.
Which brings me to my final point: Keep your employees happy. The gym and sports industries by nature face high turnover (how about a reality TV show that addresses that fact?). When you’ve invested the time, money, and energy to hire the right candidate, you want to do everything you can to make sure he or she stays. Create an open, warm workplace that makes relationship-building a priority. Recognize and reward good work. Consider perks such as tuition reimbursement, free lunches, and employee-of-the-month programs. The investment in human capital is worth it.

Fill Positions And Keep Them Filled

Fill Positions And Keep Them Filled

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There’s a particular kind of frustration that all business owners have experienced: You spend time and money searching for the perfect employee. You make a promising hire, invest valuable resources in training, and finally breathe a sigh of relief — and then your employee moves on. So how do you fill positions and keep them filled?

At fitness centers and sports facilities, certain positions are especially hard to keep staffed. Over on the IHRSA blog, three fitness/sports center owners recently answered questions about the positions they’ve repeatedly had difficulty filling. For Telos Fitness Center in Dallas, Texas, the trickiest position is the front desk. “By nature, [it’s] entry-level and offers competitive, but minimal, hourly pay and ‘front line’ responsibilities,” says Brent Darden, the center’s owner/general manager. At Riverside Health Club in Mount Vernon, Washington, owner Karen Westra has found the facilities manager position most challenging to fill. Joe Cabibbo, owner and general manager of Odyssey Athletic Center in Waldwick, New Jersey, struggles with personal trainers leaving because they lack skills to market their services.

Whatever position you struggle to keep properly staffed at your own facility, there are some general steps you can take to improve the situation. First, take the time to analyze all of the tasks that the position in question is responsible for. You might find that you’re consistently hiring people with the wrong experience, or that the tasks can be split between two positions, making it easier to keep the troublesome one filled. That’s what Westra discovered when she sat down and listed out everything a facilities manager would have to do in order to keep up with preventative maintenance demands at her club. The solution? Hire a facilities assistant, and consult regularly with the facilities manager about which tasks can be delegated.

Next, rather than investing resources in a particular individual, invest in systems and training. This approach works for Darden with the font desk job. “We have found the best solution is to invest heavily in the systems and training of front desk staff in order to maintain consistent service, despite frequent turnover,” he says. In other words, even if you have to make a new hire for the front desk position, or any position, every six or nine months, having seamless systems in place and a rigorous training program will ensure that members’ day-to-day experience doesn’t change much.

Finally, for personal trainer positions or similar ones that require self-promotion, make sure your hires are equipped to engage in self-promotion. As Cabibbo puts it, “Regardless of the extent of their certification, personal trainers seem to have difficulty applying their knowledge in a marketing/sales aspect.” Where certification programs fail, you might have to be prepared to teach. Keep your coaches, personal trainers, and perhaps other employees up-to-speed on the best ways to attract and keep clients. You’re the one who will benefit in the end, because you won’t have to worry about replacing the employees who aren’t keeping themselves busy enough.

Data Security

Protect Your Customers’ Data

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The recent and ongoing Target credit card debacle shouts out a loud and clear warning to anyone who operates a business that involves credit card transactions: Protect your customers’ data! When 40 million or so Target shoppers had their credit and debit card data stolen because of problems with the store’s security procedures, the company was sued in multiple lawsuits, its shares fell precipitously, and it was left struggling to placate customers with apologies and discounts. The legal and financial threads will take months — or longer — to untangle, and the store will have to fight to win back its reputation.

For health clubs, sports facilities, and fitness centers, protecting data is especially crucial, because business depends so heavily on relationships with customers. The key to successful protection is the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard, which provides an actionable framework for developing a strong security process — including prevention, detection, and appropriate reaction to breaches.

Here’s what you need to do to become compliant with PCI Data Security Standards:

  • Use a firewall to build and maintain a secure network. Also, consider changing all system default passwords to create unique employee user IDs.
  • Encrypt all credit card numbers. This one is a no-brainer.
  • Install industry-standard antivirus and malware security programs. These will perform scans and provide feedback, confirming that your systems are protected and letting you know when a concern arises.
  • Restrict employee access — on the network and physically — to cardholder data. You want to make sure only specific employees have permission to access it.
  • PCI compliance audits are your friends. Participate in them regularly in order to monitor and test systems that process and store cardholder data.
  • You have an information security policy, right? If not, what are you waiting for. Establish — and maintain — one immediately.

When data is compromised, so much is lost. The last thing you need is to have customers lose faith in your club or facility, to feel insecure about your ability to protect them. If a security breach occurs, they will wonder if their faith is misplaced. A store like Target probably can survive such a blow — it’s big enough, and offers enough conveniences, that customers will begin to trust it again eventually. But with a fitness center or sports facility, the stakes are higher because of the personal and emotional investments your customers make when they trust you to help them shape healthier selves, to provide a refuge from the more stressful parts of their lives. If your systems are breached they’re going to feel the pain more keenly than customers in other industries.

So take the necessary steps — and then let your clientele know you’ve done so. If you communicate with them about the security measures you’ve taken, they’ll be reassured, and a reassured customer is likely a retained one.

Risk Management

Don’t Forget Risk Management

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My son calls me a scaredy-cat because I’m constantly throwing warnings out at him: “Don’t run on the ice, you could fall and hurt yourself!” “Be careful on those rocks; they look slippery.” “Please don’t climb any higher up that fence; if you fall and crack your head open, you’ll be sorry!” I’m not a scaredy-cat, I tell him; I just have to give the warning because if something actually happens, I’ll feel even worse about it if I failed to alert him to the danger beforehand. The better tactic, I know, would be to remove the ice, the rocks, and the fence before he can even test them, but out in the world that’s just not possible.  In the gym – it is!

Because of the nature of the fitness business, the level of risk is much higher than with other businesses. In order to make sure you’re protecting your clients — and yourselves, should any unfortunate accidents occur — it’s good practice to run frequent risk management checks. At least once a quarter, do a walk-through of your facility. Identify potential risks, ensure that you have adequate warning signs posted (you can probably leave out the part about cracking your head open), and evaluate whether you’re doing everything you can to reduce (or, better yet, eliminate) the risk.

What are the highest-risk areas? Well, the free weights and the machines carry risk of injury, of course. Your cardio court and other workout rooms should be carefully supervised at all times, with appropriate signage offering instructions, warnings, and advice about what to do if an injury occurs. You already know this, of course, and you know about the other danger spots too, but until something actually happens, it’s easy to become complacent about what could go wrong. So let’s review:

  • The Pool: There’s always the danger of slipping on a wet surface. Strictly enforce a “no running in the pool area” rule: Your lifeguards and pool attendants should aggressively monitor running and blow the whistle whenever they see it. Make sure many signs with big lettering announcing the rule — and other pool safety rules — are visible. Also make sure there’s nothing adding to the already risky fact of just having a pool — no algae or mats that could cause slipping, no hoses or cleaning equipment that could cause tripping.
  • Shower Facilities: As with the pool, showers are dangerous because of water. Your members sign a waiver when they join, but it’s your responsibility to make sure water-related dangers aren’t exacerbated by soap, oils, or other potentially hazardous shower-area materials. Train your locker room staff to keep a sharp eye out for anything on the floor that could cause harm.

All this is just for starters. Think through your own facility and the unique risks it might present. Do everything you can to prevent an accident from happening, and constantly check to make sure your safety measures are in place. Trust me on this one. If your mother were writing this blog, she’d tell you the same thing – don’t forget risk management.

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The CEO Pledge

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Have you heard about the CEO Pledge? It’s a campaign promoted by the National Coalition for Promoting Physical Activity (NCPPA) to encourage CEOs to recognize physical activity as an important driver of employee health and business performance. In other words, it’s a great opportunity for health clubs to connect with corporate clients.
The idea is that company leaders promise to make their employees’ health and wellness — and their own health and wellness — a priority by providing opportunities and resources for physical activity before, during, or after the workday. They agree to implement at least six strategies from a list of suggested strategies to create a workplace culture of physical activity. The list of strategies is broken into three categories — behavioral, educational, and environmental/policy — and participants are encouraged to choose strategies from each category. Some of the suggested strategies include “organize onsite fitness classes,” “reimburse employees for purchases of fitness equipment or physical activity-related programs,” and “create an onsite fitness area or reimburse/subsidize the cost of an offsite fitness center membership.”

This is good news for fitness facilities, particularly because the campaign is pretty ambitious — its goal is to get every CEO in the United States to take the pledge. Why not make it easier for them to do so? Now would be a great time to reach out to companies in your area, asking if they’ve heard about the pledge and are willing to take it, informing them about it if they don’t already know, and offering special deals to organizations whose CEOs sign up.
While you’re at it, it might be a good time to review your corporate outreach program in general. Do you have one? Have you considered how corporate sales could positively impact your facility, and whether you have the infrastructure to support such sales? If you already have a corporate outreach program in place, is it robust enough? Have you kept up to date on the latest workplace fitness programs, read the studies about physical activity in the workplace, understood the issues, and come up with strong sales pitches?

With the CEO Pledge campaign under way, there’s an opportunity in front of you. Polish up your connections to corporate clients and knock on the doors of those CEOs getting ready to sign the pledge.

Continue reading “The CEO Pledge” →

How Do You Let Employees Know They Are Valued?

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“The quality of any club’s performance is directly related to how the employees are treated every day.” That’s Bill Brackman, Sports Manager of the Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, NY, responding to a question posed recently on the International Health, Racquet and Sports Club Association’s (IHRSA) blog. The question? How do you let employees know they are valued?

It’s a crucial issue. If it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes one to make a health club successful — you can’t do every job that needs to be done yourself, after all. But it doesn’t take just any village; it takes one that’s dedicated, caring, loyal, energetic, driven, self-motivated, and content (for starters). How do you ensure that your staff is all of those things? Small, fun rewards help. At Brackman’s club, employees and their guests were invited to an open-bar dinner party at the clubhouse when Golf World Magazine named theirs the “Best Private Club in the U.S.” Also, the club provides a couple annual staff appreciation events — a poolside barbeque, a holiday party.
But be careful. You have to already have thriving employees before you start offering such rewards; otherwise, you might end up with a disgruntled crew feeling like you’re trying to buy their happiness without paying attention to their real needs. Are your employees fairly compensated? Do you offer them the best benefits you can? Do you appreciate their lives outside of work, and let them know it? Do you praise their accomplishments publicly (both the work-related and the personal ones)? Perhaps most importantly, do your employees voice to you their concerns? (If they don’t, don’t fool yourself into believing it’s because they don’t have any; it’s impossible to be an employee without having them. But if you’re not hearing about them, that may be a sign that the staff doesn’t feel free to come to you with them.)

Darren Kanwisher, owner of the Fifth Avenue Club in Alberta, Canada, takes a pretty radical approach to ensuring employee satisfaction: “Our members don’t come first—our employees do,” he explains on the IHRSA blog. “…[E]mployees know—even before they’re hired—that they’re our priority in terms of time, attention, and care.” Putting staff before customers, and boldly declaring that you do so, might seem like a risk, but think about the trickle-down effect: If your employees know how important they are to management, they have a model for understanding how to let customers know how important they are to your employees. At Kanwischer’s club, the importance of staff members’ personal lives is placed above the importance of the business — there is a sense that they are humans before they are workers. This must work wonders for morale, and the day-to-day positive effects of a high morale cannot be underestimated.

In general, giving positive feedback, emphasizing the importance of each employee, letting staff know they can approach you at any time with any concern, making sure their basic needs are taken care of, and giving them small extras all go a long way toward creating an upbeat, fulfilling place to work — and that goes a long way toward creating a successful business.

Turning Your Racquetball Court Into a Yoga Studio

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I love my gym. I do not, however, love my gym’s yoga offerings. The first time I went to one of its (few) yoga classes, I left with a longing for the studio I used to live near, where I’d gotten into the habit of attending daily classes. It was a struggle to fit the classes in to my busy schedule, but I loved the instructors, who had studied and taught nothing but yoga for years and who could even make me chant without feeling phony or self-conscious. I loved the wide, airy room, with candles and overgrown plants on the windowsills and a giant Buddha statue near the entryway. I loved the long, green, silky curtains that billowed out when a breeze came in through the open windows — it was the perfect space, with the perfect people, for a practice dedicated to awareness of the spirit/body connection.

At my gym, yoga, zumba, and something called Belly Boot Camp are all held in the same small space. There are no windows. There are no decorations. It smells of sweat. The fluorescent lights in the ceiling remind me of my high school homeroom. The instructors, while well-meaning and good class leaders, sound more like drill sergeants than dharma students. So, although I revel in my gym’s cardio court, run around its elevated track whenever I can, and have a great time with my son in the pool on the weekends, I go elsewhere for my yoga fix.

What if I didn’t have to? What if my yoga studio were inside my gym? According to a recent article in Club Industry, some health club facilities are beginning to create spaces solely for the practice of yoga, Pilates, or some other boutique-type exercise. Many clubs are reluctant to do this; the commitment required to create a dedicated space, find high-caliber instructors, and pull together a devoted marketing team seems too daunting. But, the article argues, the clubs that have taken the leap have reaped economic benefits and increased member retention rates.

In general, the article states, yoga and Pilates studios were among the top 10 fastest-growing industries in the United States in 2012 — despite the recession. Health clubs that have opened studios of their own have found members willing to pay extra for workouts that address both their body and spirit. Carol Tricoche, vice president of education sales for Toronto-based Merrithew Health and Fitness, told Club Industry about her experience as director of group exercise for Pilates and yoga programs at the Claremont Club in Claremont, California. While there, Tricoche helped convert existing racquetball courts into a Pilates studio. “[Members] embraced it as a Pilates studio, and they paid for it,” she said. “Pricing was very comparable to the Pilates studios in the area. They still had their showers, the day care, things they could not get at the studio down the street.”

That’s what I want — my studio, where there’s the kind of yoga I want to practice, inside my gym, where there’s a steam room and a sauna and a locker full of my things. Like the clients at the Claremont Club and at other clubs featured in the article, I’d be willing to pay extra to have that. And my gym would benefit — an added revenue stream, plus the ability to hold on to members like me, who sometimes wonder whether the membership fees are worth it when we spend most of our workout time at the yoga studio. Maybe it’s time to look into how your facility and clients might benefit from turning your racquetball court into a yoga studio. If you are thinking about transforming your racquetball court, checkout out our yoga studio software to make class check-in a breeze.