Everyone in the fitness industry knows about the dreaded slow season. The hot months of summer, June through August in the United States, are notorious for low client participation and a dearth of new memberships. How can you weather the heat and keep your gym running smoothly even during the slowest of summers? Plan Ahead For The Seasonal Dip The good news about the slow season is that it's widely known and accepted, so you can anticipate it. Don't let June's lack of client engagement take you by surprise. Plan your year ahead of time, from your annual budget to [...]
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Structure Your Offerings with Client Programming for Fitness Client programming is your menu of good things that you offer your market. In the fitness business, it's one of the fundamental dimensions that define a successful training practice. The big-box fitness brands can afford to stand back and cover all of the programming bases. As a small gym business owner, you are probably better served if you focus on one or a few. The irony, of course, is that the corporate brands would do better if they could do the same. However, in my experience, excellence doesn't scale all that well. [...]
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Building Your Dream by Starting Your Own Business in Fitness If you are the kind of person, like me, who enjoy fitness and being at the gym, the dream of starting your own business in fitness is the logical next step. Fitness is so wide-open because it's a people business. If you can gain a following of one person, you have a fitness business. That sounds crazy but, if you're in the right place at the right time, celebrities and the super-wealthy do sometimes hire trainers full-time. That may be a bit extreme and takes a lot of luck. However, [...]
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Survey of What Is On The Horizon for Special Populations in Fitness Specialty Fitness Fills Niches and Gyms Humans come in a delightful diversity of shapes, sizes, and physical needs. I think it is super-rewarding to see people achieve spectacular levels of fitness achievement. It is even more rewarding when you can help special populations take small steps to better health and enhanced mobility. Special Population Niche Opportunities The fitness profession offers opportunities to assist people at all stages of their fitness journeys, as well as their extended sojourns through life. Special populations present you with many unique niche opportunities [...]
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Summer 2019 Professional Fitness Equipment Like all of the other trends in the world, the fitness industry is splitting to extremes. On one end, it's all simple things that promote core strength and resistance training. On the other, it's the technology that pushes the envelope. Not to worry, Gym Insight is here to sort the trendy tools from yesterday's devices. Fitness is, after all, a niche in the consumer marketplace. It branches into segments and subdivisions based on demographics and income levels. So, Let's look at those trends or at least, point to authoritative sources about them. Opposing Trends in [...]
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Management Metrics and Where You Find Them Like fitness programming, gym business management is about setting goals and defining improvements. It's how you measure them that provides the framework to get the work done. You can't know what you've achieved until you've measured it. Whether it's measured in lean body mass, inches of muscle, or maximum deadlift weight, measurement tells you how much progress you've achieved relative to your workout goals. It's the same for business goals. If you want a leaner company, better sales performance, or higher rates of retention, you measure your actions to hit your targets. The [...]
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Insight was my solution for my own gym management headaches. As a computer science graduate and fitness club owner, I had some options. I didn't hesitate to dive in and write my own code when the business started to get complicated. Great idea, right? Well, it turned into a bigger project than I had expected, which is an understatement! Each solution seemed to reveal new problems, at least in the first version. I'm not going into too much detail because I've covered much of this over the years on the Gym Insight Blog. Multiple Gym Management Tool Sets There's a [...]
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Fitness clubs should always have new projects in development and owners should be continuously searching for the next big thing in gym business niches. Special populations represent many different niche specializations that have been boiling up for some time. Reaching out to special populations will benefit everybody involved. Your club can grow in a new direction, a part of the community that might otherwise be underserved gets a new resource, and your trainers can justify adding a new certification that will be a positive step in their careers. Special Populations Within The Community The need to support special populations is [...]
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Background for Success Starting a gym business is probably a dream for a significant fraction of the population. Whether you're in this country or around the world you may yearn to open a fitness club someday. If you think you have knowledge and finances, that dream may even turn into a plan. For those that do attempt it, the journey can be long, hard, and possibly heartbreaking. If you want to succeed in the fitness industry, there are a few things that are certain about your journey to get there. Can You Sacrifice And Struggle for The Cause? Even in [...]
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Wearables Have Hit The Big Time for 2019 According to Club Industry, one-in-six consumers now use a wearable digital device, such as a smartwatch or fitness tracker. In the valuable 18 to 34 demographic, the trend is even more pronounced, with one-in-three. It's starting to look like there's a critical mass of people out there, for which you can enhance your gym business with the data that they'll help you gather. You can add a new level of experience for your membership with gamification features. In return for the improved experience, you'll get a stream of insights into the workout [...]
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The Old School Of Martial Arts Fighting and martial arts account for a large portion of today's fitness industry. The old school boxing clubs are an inspiration and fine example of what club owners can achieve in tough neighborhoods, with not much more than leadership and space in a backstreet gym on the wrong side of the tracks. If you're looking to start a gym or find a new specialization for the one you have at present, then the appeal of martial arts and boxing has never been stronger. You might have a successful studio, a thriving membership, or be [...]
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You may be thinking, "OK, Gym Insight, what are you doing posting about esoteric mathematical concepts like Bayesian Priors?" First of all, it's 2018 and living in the future demands that we apply futuristic methods. Second, I promise not to start quoting mathematical equations. Finally, there is probably something that any fitness business owner can learn by using a little statistical discipline to their business model. What Is This Bayesian Thing? It is more than a method; it's a way of looking at the world. You have a position, a view that you formed for whatever reason. You can test [...]
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Just because you have happy fitness club members, it doesn't mean that you're going to be completely free of issues. Even the most smooth-running gym business is going to have occasional payment disputes. When it comes to questions about customer credit cards and payments, you have to get it right. In this case, satisfactory resolutions can mean the difference between customer retention and cancellations. Payments and the records that report them are some of the most problematic parts of consumer businesses, particularly in fitness. Misunderstandings in these areas can quickly turn happy customers into annoyed ones. Situational Responses And Maximum [...]
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Gym equipment is evolving rapidly, and we see some highly innovative designs coming down the line. New machines and systems match physical activity and data science to improve the workout experience. I think we can expect to see some amazing new gym equipment products emerging in the next few years. The company I'm writing about here, Tonal, might be one of them if it can be successful with its recently launched fitness system. As Described by This Week In Startups A recent posting by Jason Calacanis on his podcast, This Week in Startups is an interview with the founder of [...]
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In fitness, client programming is the key to operational success. There are several reasons for that. Let's explore them and look at why it is that gym business operators can't ignore this organizing principle. The best way to consolidate new gym membership sales is to draw your new members into a series of instructions to get them moving ahead and focused on fitness, not buyer's remorse. Of course, client programming is much more than that, it is the professional basis for any organized fitness activities. Gym Members Need Structure It's the people who need a structure the most who can [...]
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