Typical Gyms lose roughly HALF their membership every year. Why do people stop coming to the gym? According to a study done by Les Mills, the top 4 reasons are:
- They hate exercise
- The aren’t connected
- They start badly
- Underutilization of the membership
We Love Chuze because we are in the business of changing lives, not the business of collecting membership fees. We can’t change lives without getting them in the door day after day so we can treat them like GOLD, engage them in fitness and make them feel like family.
Q: Once a member joins, how do we best ensure a positive and effective influence on their health?
A: With Social / Assisted Fitness (aka Group EX and Team Training)
Assisted exercise (GX and TT) is different from working out by yourself on the gym floor, and helps combat the typical reasons members quit. Things that make assisted fitness different:
- It’s fun: music, choreography, engagement, camaraderie.
- Accountability: it is at set times. The members and instructor notices if you aren’t there. It is something you schedule vs something you could put off till later.
- Progress/ Results: Programs have been engineered to have results, and you have accountability to hitting desired intensity and duration that you do not have alone on the gym floor.
- Community/ social aspect: Many people attend just as much for the social aspect as they do for the fitness. They may not WANT to workout, but have plans with Mary from class to grab coffee after, and so they go! That class or session may literally be the only social event in that member’s day. This makes it important to them.
- A Solid Start: With the support of an instructor or coach, you have supervision, safety, modifications and recommendations to assure your first experience isn’t a bad one.
This explains why members who participate in assisted fitness attend the gym roughly twice as often as those who don’t, and they stay members roughly twice as long! Let that sink in! They attend more which leads to improved health. Those members stay members longer which leads to improved health for more years! This statistic impacts our members lives and the viability of our business.
Our fitness services aren’t a side note, they are the golden ticket to having the impact we desire on our member’s lives.
Now that we understand WHY participating in Group Fitness and Team Training is so important to the well-being of our members, let’s look at how our teams can engage members in our fitness services and remove common obstacles to participation:
- Know your menu of services. This needs to be twofold. You need to know how to describe them (you can’t be saying Barre is a dance class or that Power Yoga is just a relaxing stretch). And you need to be able to speak from experience. It is near impossible to recommend something you have never tried. Turn to your neighbor and try to talk them into something you have never done yourself. It is impossible to be genuine and convincing!
- Ask questions and make your conversation personal! What is your goal? Why is that goal important to you? What activities do you enjoy? Based off these answers, assess what programs this member might most enjoy.
- Remove fears and obstacles. If they have never worked out before, explain WHY GX or TT is the BEST place to start! A #1 misconception we must help them to overcome, is that they need to “get fit enough” to participate in our classes or sessions. We need to help them understand why attending a class or session will help get them the fitness they desire, and that our classes are made for all fitness levels! In a classroom setting they have instructions, modifications, supervision for safety, encouragement and a program with proven results!
- Give permission to dip their toe in and try something out. Tell them it is okay to do the first 20 minutes of class and progress from there. We want them to leave feeling good not discouraged! If we make sure they leave their first day feeling good, they are more likely to come back.
- Introduce them to someone! If there is an instructor in the building, or the time of your tour lines up with beginning or end of class, make an introduction. If no instructor is available, introduce them to a member you know who participates regularly. Connections are HUGE! If no “regular” GX member or instructor is there, tell the member that when they come to try a class, to come find a staff member and someone would be happy to introduce them to the instructor. If you are hosting a class, ask while everyone is waiting in line if it is anyone’s first time and make some connections!
Being the new kid is hard if you are 5 or 50! Remember what that is like? Being invited to something can make all the difference in the world. Please invite our members to enjoy these amazing services we offer!
Our fitness services aren’t a side note, they are the golden ticket to having the impact we desire on our member’s lives.