2009 Goals update

How are your personal targets for 2009 looking? Completed, not started, or a quarter of the way there? It’s the start of April, spring has sprung, and it’s a good time for a review.
If you don’t have any, get some, and write them down now! Mine are here.

And here’s how they’re going…

Fitness

• One 10k done, 3 lined up for April, May & June in aid of the BHF, so will be past halfway in Q2
• Knees feeling the pressure of snowboarding & running, but warming up properly for both!

Business

• Life coaching starting to have effect on staff in gyms & clubs, but at least 6-9 months needed demonstrable results on motivation and member retention

Personal

• Guitar going well, helped by new guitar for birthday!
• Charity events – join me here

Next update June, or sooner…

Gym 2.0 - Motivating Sedentary Users

Ann has been going to various gyms on-and-off for a number of years now. Her favourite equipment is the exercise bike; she finds it easier to read Grazia magazine. She doesn’t really like classes, and avoids the instructors because they’re quite toned and much thinner than she is, so tends to sit on the bike and read her magazine.

She likes going to the gym, but she never seems to get any results, which is why it’s been an on-and-off relationship. Until now…

This January, she was attracted to the New Year New You offer at a new local club. Deb, the (toned, thin) instructor showed her round all the cardio equipment and explained a new system for recording her exercise. Instead of giving her a program card (which Ann had previously ignored), Deb said she could use any of the cardio equipment for as long as she wanted, and get a printout or e-mail of how many calories she burned.

Ann goes straight for her comfort zone, spending 30 minutes on the exercise bike with her magazine. As she leaves, she gets a printout showing that she’s burned 120 Calories. This doesn’t mean much to Ann until she goes to buy her sandwich on the way back to the office, and finds that her normal post gym Tuna Mayo Baguette has 535 calories in it! She opts for a Chicken Fajita Wrap instead at 263 calories.

On her next visit, she spends 15 minutes on the stepper, and pedals a little faster on the exercise bike for a further 15 minutes. Her printout shows 140 cals on the stepper & 110 on the bike, and 250 cals total burned, which feels like a better balance for her lunchtime fajita wrap.

Now it’s March, she only spends 5 minutes on the bike at the beginning & end of her 40 minute workout, with 10 minutes each on the stepper, rowing machine and elliptical trainer. She regularly burns over 400 calories, and never has mayo in her sandwich. Next she wants to try the treadmill, or perhaps even a group class, as Deb says they count even more towards results, and towards the monthly graph that she receives by e-mail.

a follow up from Harbinger Scenario - Gym 2.0

Disclaimer – it is not the intention of this blog entry to balance “calories out” with “calories in”, but rather to raise awareness of possible applications of technology and motivation of the more sedentary gym user.

Battersea Park 10k - Action Duchenne

Took part in the Action Duchenne Valentine’s fun run in Battersea Park on Saturday. There was a great turnout early on a cold February morning, an electronic timing chip for your shoe, and a nice yellow t-shirt to run in.
I was pleased to get round 4 laps of the park in just under 50 minutes, (49:52) according to the text I received from the (very clever!) chip, which also told me that I came in position 299!
Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy is a severe and progressive muscle wasting disease. Young boys will face much of their life confined to a wheelchair and without treatment will die in their late teens early twenties. Find out more here. It’s time to stop wasting.

Gyms - 10 ways to beat the crunch

1. Incentivise your staff on member retention
2. Offer existing members a new benefit for free in order to make them feel at least as important as the new members
3. Invite recent cancellations back for free session or two, & a coffee & chat
4. Contact the customers about to cancel. You know who they are
5. If someone asks to cancel, offer to reduce their payments for 3 months
6. Show fitness improvements or offer refunds
7. Entice recent redundancies into the gym during the day (for less?)
8. Set an attrition target. You don’t have to reduce drop-out, your target could be to keep it the same for now
9. Demonstrate value to all members, all the time
10. Incentivise your management on staff retention

…or you could spend more money trying to get new members through the door with “no joining fee” offers, give them a free rucksack, and keep repeating the mantra – “the fitness industry is not affected by the recession”

Some of these ideas may seem controversial, in which case, terms & conditions would of course apply, but please feel free to comment on any of the points.

Jog Blog - Feb 09

I hate treadmills. Not only are they boring but I also find it harder to run 5k on a treadmill than outside in the real world.

Last week there wasn’t a lot of choice though, unless I was going to dig out the old football boots and slide round the park in the snow, and I really didn’t fancy that. So I added in a treadmill run to my regular gym workout and did a couple more 5k treadmill runs at a couple of the clubs where I was working. Not fun, although on Friday, I had a good view of the gym’s fish-tank, and the fish looked even more bored than me!

The snow’s almost gone in North London today, so I went for a beasting around Ali Pali again, and while it was far from easy, the treadmill runs have certainly helped my fitness levels, which is good ahead of the Valentine’s Love Run in Battersea Park this Saturday. It’s in aid of Action Duchenne, a muscular dystrophy charity. Come and join us!

Gyms using technology – for new members

Some of my local gyms are starting to embrace technology in the quest for new members. Phone calls, e-mails and even a few text messages have been coming over the networks trying to persuade me to join up for 2009.

Most impressive is David Lloyd, who on top of a couple of nice personal phone calls and e-mails, have texted me about once a week since I filled in an online form back in December for a 12 day free pass. Unfortunately, the free pass was not forthcoming (the offer had already expired, and seems to change daily), so I’ll probably be texting STOP DLL soon.

LA Fitness (was Dragons) has called and e-mailed a couple of times, again in response to an online form, but when I did visit, I was shocked by how incredibly rude the staff were, confirming what I’d heard from friends and neighbours.

Also texting and calling is Movers & Shapers, a brand new powerplate/fitbug concept gym, who have been trying to persuade my wife to join since she had a trial session in December.

Although I’ve not visited since at least September, the Laboratory have finally done something with my e-mail address, and sent me an e-mail detailing their New Year offers.

At the end of the day, although they've not contacted me once lately, I’m happy going to Park Road Pools, and will be even happier when they start to e-mail or text the results of my workout post visit or at the end of each month. They have the technology, but don’t know how to use it… yet.

Facebook as a business tool

Facebook is banned in several organisations I know. However, facebook can be a great tool for improving your focus at work and being more productive.

A few (very few) of my friends aren’t on facebook, mainly because they say they don’t have time. There were 22 million people on facebook in the UK at the end of 2008, and 54% of them are over 35 years old. The way I use facebook means that I fear some of those friends may soon start to lose out. Here’s how to use facebook to be more productive…

The key is to manage your notification settings. Only set notifications for things that are really important to you. This is where you find it:



Most of the personal e-mails I get each day are created by me. No, I don’t e-mail myself, what I mean is that I e-mail different groups of friends about meeting up for a beer, dinner, game of golf, holiday, party, etc, and then they reply. When I initiate the message through facebook, they reply through facebook.
When I want to see who has replied, I open facebook. I no longer get e-mails every time someone pokes me, tags me, sends me a beer, or bites my zombie.

There is no doubt that facebook can eat up hours of time (as the internet in general can) and if that is a problem, then you probably need help defining what’s important in your life (or at work). LinkedIn is seen as being more of a business tool, and is therefore more accepted in work, but it can also fill up your inbox if you don’t manage the settings correctly.

Facebook is a great tool, particularly when is it used as a tool, rather than it using you like one.

Toby Beresford explains this in a different way

New Year's Revolutions

Lots of people set New Year resolutions, but it seems to me they are in decline. There are a couple of problems with resolutions – firstly, they are often resolutions rather than goals (I will give up/I will do less), and normally set out verbally over a glass or two of something fizzy during the celebrations.

So make your resolutions into goals and write them down. Only 3 percent of adults have clear, written goals, and these people achieve 5-10 times as much as people of equal or better education and ability who have not written down what they want.

Just because you’re reading this in February, or September, don’t let that be an excuse – write down a few positive things that you want to achieve by a certain date. Better still, share them with someone you know, or don’t know!
Here are some of my goals for 2009, in three groups of three (3 being the magic number)

Fitness

• I will run in six 10k events such as charity runs, fun runs, etc
• I will take more effort (including asking for advice) in order to prevent those silly little injuries that could scupper my fitness goals
• I will get an independent healthcheck to ensure that I am really fit and healthy

Business

• GG Fit will improve member retention in gyms and health clubs through life coaching, especially with respect to motivation of staff and management
• GG Fit will increase the return on investment that clubs get from Exercise Management Systems by enhancing reporting and understanding of the exercise data
• GG Fit will be an ethical, environmentally friendly business

Other

• I will take more time over, and put more effort into things I enjoy – reading, learning the guitar, and most importantly, spending time with friends
• I will campaign to raise more money for charity – not necessarily to donate more, but to persuade others to part with their cash for the causes I support
• I will buy a new car (conditions apply)

How to survive the crunch – focus less on sales

I was pleased to see the article on the credit crunch in December’s Health Club Management magazine, but disappointed to read so much about sales and so little about retention. I think it is a dull reflection of the industry that so many operators are focusing on new sales offers during the financial crisis.

While new joining offers will encourage more people into the gym and move towards Fred Turok’s vision of 1 million more people exercising, I think these credit crunch deals are really trying to win over members from other clubs, and the more this happens, the more the industry will suffer. When times are tight, it’s much easier (and cost effective) to cut back on gym membership than utility bills, so we must demonstrate value for money and really good service.

The only chain in the December article mentioning a strategy for existing members or soon to be ex-members is énergie. Hooray for them for thinking about existing members during the crunch.

Focus on your existing customers becomes as important as new sales in times like these (if not more so). Your clients should always be your best sales channel, and you should do everything you can to retain them. All staff must be involved in your retention policy, empowered to make decisions, and measured on results. This could easily lead to better job satisfaction or even better pay for fitness instructors, another big concern of mine.

2009 is going to be an evolutionary year in the fitness industry. Many of us will be watching the development of the budget club closely, and I think that membership trends could look very different. I look forward to the HCM retention features in April and July 09, and I believe that the successful clubs in 2009 will be those who channel as much into retention as they do into sales.

Letter to Health Club Management magazine 22/12/2008

Cold Winter Runnings

Boy, was it cold out there today! Max motivation needed, more than ever, I thought before I set off…

So first I mapped out a new route on googlemaps; a change is as good as a rest. No double loop around Highgate Woods today, but a new run along the disused railway track and up to Ali Pali park for some wonderful views of London. The distance looked like just over 5k, so next I needed a 30 minute playlist.

Here’s a very easy, and really motivating playlist for 30 mins. Muse – Black Holes & Revelations, but take out tracks 5, 6, 8 and 10. You’ll be left with an incredibly uplifting, shouty soundtrack which will keep you going uphill as long as you need, particularly at the end with Knights of Cydonia. Come on!

Howies NBL base layer on to keep me warm, chin up, and off I went. Felt great all the way round, grinning at passers by, particularly other runners, and soon had the sleeves rolled up. Started to struggle on the way back up towards Muswell Hill, but Bellamy’s guitar kept me going.

The combination of a new route and a 30 min playlist was a really good one… Best speed since August, and a new route to share next time I’m out with friends. Time for a hot bath now.