Tag: Facility Maintenance

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Ensuring Treadmill Safety

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The fitness industry joins with so many others in mourning Dave Goldberg, the CEO of SurveyMonkey, whose recent tragic death once again brings to light the potential dangers of treadmill use. Goldberg was exercising on a treadmill at a gym when he reportedly lost his grip on the railings, fell backward, and fatally hit his head.

Sadly, Goldberg’s accident was not a one-off thing. According to the government’s Consumer Products Safety Commission (CPSC), 24,400 people in the United States were injured so badly in treadmill accidents in 2014 that they wound up in a hospital emergency room. All in all, emergency room visits for injuries from exercise equipment totaled 62,700 in 2014, and, according to the CPSC, patients cited treadmills as the cause more than any other kind of equipment. Injuries included broken bones, amputated fingers, and concussions. Between 2003 and 2012 (the last year for which data is available), thirty treadmill-related deaths were reported. One high-profile tragedy in 2009 was the death of former boxer Mike Tyson’s four-year-old daughter, who was strangled by a cord hanging from a treadmill.

In light of the hazards, what can gyms and fitness facilities do to help ensure that members and clients are using treadmills in the safest way possible? Here are some measures you can adopt:

1) Establish treadmill rules, communicate them, and stick to them. Treadmill users should always — always — use the safety key. They should never jump off the treadmill while it’s still in motion. They should avoid using it if they feel at all faint, dizzy, or not at their best. Look forward, don’t run barefoot, and begin workout sessions by straddling the belt. Include such rules — along with ones customized to your facility — on a prominently displayed poster near your treadmill area or on a small placard on each treadmill. If your trainers or other employees see members breaking the rules, they should ask them to vacate the treadmill immediately.

2) Require treadmill users to sign a document that explains the potential hazards and warns them against unsafe practices. Asking members to sign something makes it much more likely that they’ll actually take the time to read about the risks. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and prevention is possible only through education and awareness. It’s crucial that your members know what the risks are.

3) Review your treadmill placement. Make sure the backs of the machines are far enough away from walls and other obstructions that if a fall happened no one would be thrown into anything.

4) Teach your members how to fall — that’s right, how to fall. No matter how careful a treadmill user is, accidents can still happen. How prepared will your members be if one does? Will they know to try to keep their hands away from the belt, so that skin doesn’t get scraped or burned and fingers don’t get stuck between the frame and the belt? Will they know to try to tuck or cover their heads? Have your trainers review safe ways to fall with each new member who joins your facility, and offer occasional safety brush-up classes (not just for treadmills, but for all exercise equipment).

Without a doubt, the treadmill is a great machine. Exercisers can reap fantastic benefits from regular treadmill use, easily meeting their goals for fitness and weight loss. According to government statistics, nearly 50 million people use treadmills each year. Given that giant number, the number of related injuries is relatively small, and the number of deaths even smaller. But the goal, of course, should be zero injuries, zero deaths. Do your part to help reduce the number of treadmill-related tragedies each year.

Keeping Your Facility Germ-Free-- And Your Members Happy

Keeping Your Facility Germ-Free—and Your Members Happy

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In 2008, IHRSA published the Guide to Health Cleanliness, which highlighted the startling results of a survey: More than 90 percent of survey participants said they were more apt to renew their membership with a health club facility if the facility was clean. That might not be so surprising, but here’s the shocking part: Only slightly more than half said they would renew if the facility was not clean.

Keep in mind that this was six years ago, before the Ebola scare, before enterovirus D68, before super-strong strains of the flu were floating around. With these threats around us, and with media hype that frequently blows such threats out of proportion, it’s little wonder that health club and sports facility users are even more cautious than they used to be. Add to that the fact that we’re smack in the middle of cold season, and you’ve got potentially a lot of skittish members on your hands who want assurance that their health is protected when they’re using your facility.

What can you do to reassure them? First of all, make sure you’ve got a plan for keeping your place as clean as possible. Review your cleanliness policies and procedures. Are they up to date? Do they follow best practices? Are they generally in keeping with standards set by the Centers for Disease Controls (for example, wash hands with soap and water for 20 seconds or rub an alcohol-based sanitizer on hands for 15 seconds before and after workouts; shower after workouts; avoid walking barefoot across exercise floors and locker rooms)?

After you’ve polished up your policies, start thinking about your staff. Do they know the policies? Do they know what to do if they’re sick (best practices say they should stay home)? Do they know what tasks they should take responsibility for in order to help maintain the highest standard of cleanliness possible? Organize a mandatory staff meeting solely around these issues and make sure everyone is on board. Do frequent walkthroughs with a cleanliness checklist to make sure rules are being adhered to.

Finally, communicate directly and explicitly with your members about cleanliness in your facility. Send out an email explaining your concerns during the season, highlighting the steps your club is taking to stay as germ-free as possible, and asking members to remain aware of ways in which they can help contribute to a cleaner club environment. List specific tips, like the Centers for Disease Control standards shown above. A post on IHRSA’s blog describes an email Newtown Athletic Club recently sent to its members. Linda Mitchell, Newtown Athletic’s director of PR and Marketing, devised a letter with the subject line “Healthy Facilities Initiative.” She and her team carefully worded the letter, avoiding making any promises but being sure to explain procedures. They assured members that maintaining a clean facility is a top priority. Then they described new procedures being implemented and outlined member responsibilities. Mitchell told IHRSA that the email had an unheard-of 35 percent open rate—to her a clear indication that members were hungry for information about facility cleanliness.

Ultimately, you want to make your members feel secure, and you want them to know you welcome their questions and can answer them satisfactorily. Over and above that, you want to keep your facility as germ-free as possible — for your members’ sake, but also for your own and your staff’s. Provide a safe environment, clearly communicate the details about how you’ve done so, and keep everyone feeling strong and healthy all winter long.

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.

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.

Planning for Wear and Tear

Planning for Wear and Tear

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It’s a sad fact of life—any highly trafficked building, sports clubs, gyms, health clubs, and fitness centers undergo a great deal of wear and tear in a short period of time. Cracks and chips in the tiles, dings and scratches on countertop edges, tears in the mats, streaks on the floors, and marks on the finish of doors are inevitable, and they happen much sooner after construction or renovation than you would expect or like. But there are some steps you can take to prevent damage and keep your facility looking, well, maybe not brand new, but at least younger than it really is.
1) Expect and plan for deterioration. Certain features of your facility will age faster than others, like the tiles, countertop edges, mats, and other things listed above. Toilet seats, showerheads, the pads on workout benches and machines, handgrips—these and other frequently used things are items you can expect to show wear and tear. And if you can expect it, then you can make plans to guard against it. Take efforts to predict which areas will suffer the worst by identifying high-impact spaces and observing changes in those spaces over time. Note how long it takes for items to begin showing damage and document the timeframe—along with repair and replacement costs—so that down the road you’ll know when you need to take action and begin purchasing new items.
2) Design your operating and capital budget to accommodate refurbishing on a regular schedule. Your annual operating budget should include room for small improvements and repairs, and you can use your budget to step up into larger capital remodeling projects. Like dining venues that use a 7- to 10-year agenda for overhauling their spaces, fitness and sports facilities should plan for regularly scheduled updates within relatively small timeframes. They should also consider renovations that will need to occur in longer timeframes, and plans for such renovations should be updated annually. The goal is to ensure that the look and function of your spaces will still be relevant in 15 years, 20 years, and beyond.
3) One thing you probably already can’t do without (and if you are doing without it, you should stop everything and get one set up immediately) is a personal service reference guide. This is a notated list of professionals who installed elements of your facility and designed its features. The myriad small details that go into putting a space together can get lost over time, and if you begin refurbishing a space, you might find information about those details crucial to your project. You’ll need to have at your fingertips the names of the engineers, subcontractors, carpenters, and electricians whose work went into creating the original space. When little things start to go wrong—breakers begin to trip, remote controls no longer work—this reference guide will be priceless. Include everything you can think of, down to the names of the carpet and tile suppliers. You’ll be really glad you did.
4) Another key strategy is developing a vigorous cleaning routine. Imagine your mother there everyday, asking whether you’ve cleared your dishes and put your things away, and then multiply that by a thousand. In any building, and especially a high-use facility, it’s the accumulated grime and grit that can lead to premature aging. Don’t rely only on standard custodial care; in a health club or sports facility, you need specialized housekeeping of particular areas. And you need it daily. Also consider the cleaning that can be outsourced to specialists: power-washing entryways, keeping windows sparkly, scrubbing tile and grout.
If you’re still in the planning stages, waiting for your facility to be built or renovated, there are other steps you can take too: choose materials made for high-impact use, select finishes that will be easy to clean, note warranties and product limitations. The main point is this: From the very beginning, you want to imagine how your facility should look thirty years from now; then work to make sure that it looks that way. And if there’s some wear and tear that’s unavoidable, consider that a sign that your facility is well-used and well-loved, and be glad.

Your ice rink, stadium, or Sports Facility Needs LED Lighting Right Now

Your Sports Facility Needs LED Lighting Right Now

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You run an ice rink, a stadium, or some other kind of sports arena, and you’re still using metal halide light fixtures? You have no idea what you have been missing.
Athletic Business, a print and online resource for thousands of sports industry professionals, recently ran an impressive story about the War Memorial Arena, a rink in Syracuse, New York. It is the home of the American Hockey League’s Syracuse Crunch. In 2012, the arena switched its metal halide light fixtures, which had been in place since the facility’s inception in 1951, for LED lights specifically designed for sports applications. The effects were immediate and astounding. First of all, the amount of light hitting the ice during games improved from an average of 105 foot-candles to 217 foot-candles. Simply put, spectators could see the game better. What’s more, the new LED lights have many more functions than the old lights: They can be programmed for effects during pregame introductions. The goalie can be isolated in light. Lights can be made to zoom around the facility. And, just for fun, the lights can turn the ice the exact same shade of blue as the team’s jerseys. As Howard Dolgon, Syracuse Crunch owner told Athletic Business, “The lights give us the ability to do things we couldn’t do before. They’ve become a promotional tool for us.”
But get ready for the best part: The lights save a ton of energy and money. The old metal halide fixtures consumed 263,000 kilowatts of power annually. The new LED ones? During the 2012-2013 season, the power draw was reduced by 87 percent to 32,000 kilowatts. The savings is huge.
Sure, you’ll put a decent-sized capital investment down in order to get an LED lighting system in place, but the savings you’ll reap makes such an investment well worth it. At Weber State University’s Dee Events Center basketball arena in Ogden, Utah, the conversion of metal halide lighting to LED lighting cost about $200,000 (minus $156,000 thanks to utility company incentives). But the arena’s energy consumption has been cut by 70 percent, saving the university $25,000 a year. In addition, because each LED light’s estimated lifespan is 150,000 to 160,000 hours, annual lamp replacement has been eliminated—for the Dee Events Center, that means a good 30 years of usage for each bulb. Jake Cain, the energy and sustainability manager at the university explained it this way to Athletic Business: “I did some different analyses on how this project panned out. If I did purely just the energy savings, it was about an eight-year ROI. If I threw in energy and maintenance, it was like five. If I threw in the utility incentive, now I’m down to about a one- to two-year range for it to pay for itself.”
Within the American Hockey League, LED lighting is gradually becoming the standards. Teams in several cities in addition to Syracuse have made the switch. The same thing is happening at arenas designed for other types of sports as well. There are just so many benefits accruing from LED lighting, that everyone is eager to get in on the great investment. If you haven’t started investigating options for your sports facility, now is the time to begin. Light up your business in a whole new way.

Five Steps to Safeguard Your Sports Facility Against Liability

5 Steps to Safeguard Your Sports Facility Against Liability

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Ever had an athlete twist an ankle on your field, or worse: break a leg, dislocate a shoulder, or sustain a head injury? Ever had someone run into a brick wall? I’m serious here — at one football field, a brick wall was placed just beyond the end zone, and a player ran full speed into it. Be glad you weren’t the owner of that field when the question of liability arose — because, when you run a sports facility with a field, the question of liability always arises. You have to be vigilant about it, and take constant measures to both protect players from injury and yourself from litigation. What can you do?

  1. Start with common sense. There are no published industrywide standards for all aspects of sports fields, but there are generally accepted expectations. Is your playing field level? Is it free of debris, holes, depressions, and other potential safety hazards, such as loose seams and worn patches? Is there a risk of rocks rising to the surface, and is the field playable when wet? Your field maintenance efforts should focus first on safety, while your common sense should guide you in terms of what is safe and what isn’t.
  2. Next, take a look at your field as if you’ve never seen it before. If there are liability issues, you’ve probably become so accustomed to seeing them that you don’t really notice them anymore. Take the brick wall, for instance: Any field manager who has stopped to think about it would have realized the danger. However, it’s easy to not think about things when you’ve got a routine and a checklist of tasks to accomplish. Step onto your field and look around. Are there poorly placed walls? Are there ridges or lips on the field?

    If it’s an expanded field, such as a soccer field, is there sufficient space for athletes to slide without hitting fences? Is there room to comply with American Disability Act requirements? See everything as if it is for the first time and make assessments. If you’re too busy to consider all of the potential problems, or are just too familiar with your field to be able to see it with a fresh eye, don’t hesitate to have an outside firm audit safety issues. If you don’t have the budget for an outside inspection, consider asking a fellow sports field manager to inspect your facility in exchange for you to inspect theirs.
  3. Do your paperwork. Make sure you have contracts, insurance documents, and anything else you might need in place, in order to manage any financial and legal liability. If anything unfortunate ever does occur, you’ll need to have the paperwork ready on hand.
  4. Don’t delay. When you identify a potential problem, fix it right away. No, scratch that: First document it by noting the problem, how and when it was discovered, and what the strategy for resolution is. Then go ahead and fix it.
  5. Finally, after an issue has been discovered, documented, and dealt with, schedule regular re-inspection times (document your re-inspections!). Then take the time to analyze: Why did the problem occur in the first place? Could it lead to other problems? Are there ways to avoid such problems in the future? Remember, the best way to reduce risk is through prevention. This way, any time and resources you invest into large-scale improvements now will pay off for you down the road.

Reviewing the Basics of Gym Management

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I was talking the other day with a friend of mine who manages a gym in New York City. He had recently attended an informal networking meeting for gym managers, and he said they got reviewing the basics of gym management — the fundamental tasks that gym managers should undertake each day to make sure they’re doing what needs to be done. I got him to share his notes with me, and now I’m sharing some of them with you. Nothing here is earth-shattering, but even my friend, who’s been in the field for at least a dozen years, found it useful to have a refresher in the basics. Here’s what the group covered:

  1. The Importance of Walking Around: Every day, gym managers should stroll around their facility, looking at all areas of the gym and consciously seeing the spaces in the way clients and members might. Ask yourself: What problems need fixing here? Does everything look orderly? Is the equipment working properly? Are gym systems functioning as expected? What about the HVAC system? Lighting? Be as detailed in your observations as possible.
  2. The Necessity of the Notepad: With scores of details to keep track of each day, a good gym manager will never be seen without a notepad. During your daily rounds, note down anything that doesn’t meet your usual standards, any ideas you have for improvement, any significant comments you overhear from members, anything at all you think you might want to return to later.
  3. The Usefulness of Checklists: Make sure your notepad contains a checklist that tracks specific items to pay attention to each day. All the equipment working properly? Check. Safety standards being met? Check. Locker rooms and public areas up to cleanliness standards? Check. Let your checklist be a living thing, something that can change and grow each day. Never had “Water fountains functioning properly?” on your checklist before? Time to add it.
  4. The Primacy of the Immediate Problem: As you do your daily walk, some days you will encounter some problems that can’t just be noted down and attended to later – They need immediate attention. For example, if there’s a health or safety issue that could affect a client, it will be necessary to resolve it before moving on to anything else. Be prepared to make the fix yourself or to call on a staff member with the skills and training to do so.
  5. The Beauty of the To-Do List: The best thing about to-do lists is that they remind you of what needs to be done — later (but not too much later). Unlike immediate fixes, to-do items should be gathered in a list in the notepad, and that day or the next day the manager should assign the task to a staff member, give him or her a deadline for accomplishing the task, and follow up on the deadline or the next day to make sure the task has been completed.

Green Your Facility

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When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled its Green Sports Resource Directory in August, I remembered the horse farm my son and I visited earlier this year. A sprawling establishment, with state-of-the-art stables, a vast indoor arena, 34 acres of beautiful land, and a big, old-fashioned farmhouse – the place must have cost a fortune to maintain. Or so I thought, until I noticed the solar panels blanketing one side of the barn roof. I asked the owner if using solar energy cut down on his costs. “My electricity bill is about $19 a month,” he said proudly. “No,” I said, “I don’t mean for the stables; I mean for the whole farm.” “Yep,” he said. “Nineteen dollars a month.”

Like the farm I visited, fitness facilities can save money by making “greener” choices — that is, by relying on sustainable energy sources. And not only can they save money; also, they can conserve valuable resources, reduce pollution, create safer environments for workers and clients, and use their investment in environmental protection to attract new clients and retain current ones.

The EPA’s Green Sports Resource Directory can help. A collection of online resources designed to help sports facilities, teams, colleges and universities clean up their acts, the website explains the benefits of green sports, offers inspiring success stories, and provides links to organizations devoted to helping sports-oriented businesses make environmentally sound decisions. It also links to tools that can help you track and control your facility’s energy consumption. These include EPA’s Energy Star Portfolio Manager and lists of products that perform well and are cost efficient — while also being safer for the environment.

Chances are your business already has taken some steps toward becoming greener. You reuse, reduce, and recycle; you advise your employees not to print out e-mails unnecessarily, you communicate with your clientele virtually more than on paper; and you choose machines that use energy efficiently. But you probably can take your efforts further. Gyms and other fitness facilities require a ton of energy to power equipment, keep pools functioning, provide heat for showers and saunas, wash towels, and run general day-to-day operations. Can you invest in solar energy like the horse farm does? Can you find products that conserve energy and/or products that clean without harmful chemicals? Can you boost efforts to get everyone in your facility — managers, employees, and members alike — wasting less and conserving more?

Once you green your facility, you can effectively advertise your accomplishments – because like that farm-owner, you should be proud. Your efforts will benefit you and your community in untold ways, beyond the foreseeable future. If you are looking to make your business more efficient checkout our sports facility management software.