Exercise Management Systems - the bees' knees

At GG Fit, we think that Exercise Management Systems are the bees’ knees. Systems like Technogym’s Wellness, Pulse Smart Centre and FitLinxx help to improve the gym experience in many ways, and any serious health club or gym should be using a system to help track member workouts and trainer interactions. Here are a few reasons why:


Members:

• More personalised service
• Easy to follow workout
• Enjoy coming to club to record, achieve & review goals

Trainer:

• Better member knowledge & contact
  
• Easy to ensure member programs are up-to-date
  
• Track new members visits & performance

Club:

• Know what your members are doing, not just when they arrive
  
• Set and measure staff performance
  
• Provide a better member experience

Of course, any Exercise Management System needs to be used properly, with the relevant components understood by the relevant staff, which starts with good implementation and training.

If you have any positive or negative experiences of Exercise Management Systems as a member, trainer or club, please let us know in the comments below.

Win a Caribbean holiday!

Really pleased to see the British Heart Foundation and Fitness First getting together to encourage the nation to run and cycle one million miles during May & June. This is a great example of a two companies with common interest in wellness getting together and setting goals to make people fitter and reward them.




Next they could use some technology, an exercise management system, shoe chip, or similar, and this would make it even easier and more interesting than log cards and online forms.

When will it get better?

I was with a coaching client (manager at a gym) recently, and she asked me before our appointment “When will it get better?” I asked her what she meant, and she said “I’ve got more responsibility, less resource, and more is expected of me each week… when will it stop?”

The short answer that she came to herself after a few minutes discussion was, “It won’t stop”. This was not very motivating, but knowing the answer to the (second) question was a start, and we moved back to making it “get better”.

Any number of time management courses or productivity techniques might help, but the first point we came to was to accept that you’re not going to get everything done. This lifts a weight from your shoulders, removes the worry of the never-ending task list, and frees you to get on with the most important task(s).

Mentoring over, we went back to coaching, and found (through some challenging questions) that there were quite a few areas that could be delegated, as well as some tasks that weren’t as critical as first thought.

We all seem to have more and more to do, and seemingly less and less time. There will never be enough time to do everything you have to do. Just don’t let this get you down. If you know what the most important things to do today are, there will always be enough time to do them.

Canary Wharf 10k – British Heart Foundation

Knees hurting. A lot. Running on roads & pavements bad for joints.

The 2008 Canary Wharf Jog was my fastest, but in 2009 it was my slowest. Without my GPS buddy, I’m not certain, but the fact that it was 11 laps of the Canary office blocks tells me that it really was 10k this time around. My time was a paltry 57 mins 12 secs, so there’s plenty of room for improvement at the next 10k!

As usual, registration closed a few weeks before the race, which left a few people disappointed on the sidelines, but 1,000 eager runners (10% apparently from Barclays) set-off at 6:30pm after a good warm-up.

Running on the roads and pavements rather than in nice grassy parks (or moats) really did take its toll on my knees this year around the wharf. I’m not one for stopping in a 10k race anymore, but had to take a couple of pauses to ease the pain – goodness knows how marathon runners do it!

Sponsorship total stands at £946, hopefully one more nudge to my contact list will tip it over the thousand pound mark. Any suggestions for more 10k runs over the remainder of the year would be welcome, please leave a comment!

“If you do not measure it, you can not improve it”

…as Lord Kelvin (Sir William Thompson) once said.

Is this why so many health clubs struggle to improve their member (and staff) retention and are so focused on sales?

Sales are very easy to measure in any industry, hence the focus, I guess. However retention seems to be much more difficult, particularly in the relatively young fitness industry. There are many different ways of working out member retention figures, and countless experts to tell you how to do it. A relatively straightforward formula is explained very clearly here.

Most retention definitions look at a 12 month membership percentage retention, which is a good measure, but this can be difficult to affect in the short term. Improving your 12 month retention from 60% to 70% will not happen overnight, but is a good target for 6-12 months time.

Member attrition is a more fluid metric, and more straightforward to calculate. (Attrition rate – The [average] number of members per thousand who cancel every month)
Attrition is easier to affect each month, and it's also easy to set individual or club targets. If you improve (reduce) your attrition rate, you will increase retention.

Ultimately, as Lord Kelvin told us, if you want to improve something, you need to measure it. Work out how you’re going to do this to start with, then set your targets, and you’ll soon be making a difference.

Tower of London 10k - British Heart Foundation

This week marked the third of my six 10k runs, and the second leg of the British Heart Foundation London trilogy, this time 10 laps around the moat of the Tower of London. The GG Fit team consisted of Kate & Emily from CEC, and Brent & Richie, with Bill taking photos. The sun was shining, and there was a great turnout noted to be around the 2,000 mark by the BHF officials.

The boys stretched their legs halfway around the first lap, but the girls didn’t let us get too far ahead. Brent stopped for a quick pause on the seventh lap to let Richie catch him up, but all this helped keep my pace and spirits high, and I finished in 45mins & 45 secs. Rich then Brent came in on a sprint finish about a minute behind, with Emily & Kate a minute behind them.

Immediately after the run, as we were stretching, there was some debate about the distance, with the girls surprised at their time, and Richie’s GPS phone/mainframe claiming that the run was slightly less than 10km. I put this down to the hooky software he was running, and he wasn’t able to confirm the accuracy of the app, so we’ll just call it 10 laps. We were all very happy to have finished, and no-one considered running around again.

Mr Steve Niker, my original inspiration for the Tower Jog, had very kindly provided for us all at the Abbey (part of the Santander Group) refreshment tent as usual, and we left a couple of hours later feeling very refreshed.

We are now up to £891 in sponsorship, and looking forward to the final jog at Canary Wharf on 3rd June.

How can a personal trainer make more money while their clients pay less?

It sounds like a conundrum, however it is possible for personal trainers to take less money from their clients, and yet increase their own revenue. Do you know how? A simple answer is to work longer hours, but there is a way of doing the same amount of work, charging each client less, and making more money.

Let’s say as a PT you see 5 clients per day, 5 days per week for £50 per 1 hour session (to keep the maths simple). That’s 25 sessions per week, making £1,250 each week.

Here’s how to make up to another £500 each week. Firstly, you need to find out more about the systems in the gym and work out how to monitor your members performance, and how to e-mail or text them from those systems.
The secret is to see each client less often, but contact them more regularly with feedback on their workouts, and charge them a little more.
Starting with 5 weekly clients, explain that you’ll see them every two weeks instead of every week. However, in between PT sessions, you’ll monitor their workouts and send them a motivational mail, tips, and inspiration. Charge £70 per session with the value added feedback included. Each client is now paying £70 every 2 weeks, instead of £100.
Now you can gradually double your client base, and increase the value of your PT, while clients pay less. Eventually, you could have 50 clients every 2 weeks, charging £70 per session, making £1,750 each week!

Note that the feedback is the most important part and something that you should set time aside for (probably at the start of the day). You might spend 10-15 mins each morning looking at a client report and adding a personal note to your template, but making sure that the client gets the text or e-mail from you via the system is crucial.

The better the system you work with, the more feedback you can give, and the more you can charge. This could range from “You’ve worked out 4 times this week, well done” to “You’ve improved your Perfomance Index on cardio by 5%, and lifted an extra 1,500kgs with your legs today, keep up the good work!”

BHF Hyde Park jog - warm up

So the warm-up for the BHF Hyde Park Jog was a strange affair led by Fitness First.

For those not in the know, the warm-up normally consists of 5-10 minutes of organised stretching, bending, and making friends, led by a couple of people from a local gym with a microphone, PA and some loud music. It’s good fun and hopefully reduces the pulled muscles and general aches and pains after the run.

So in Hyde Park on 15 April, a couple of girls from Fitness First got up into the bandstand as the crowd of 2,000 or so people all gathered around, and they launched into a Boxercise class! A few people joined in by following the moves, punching and kicking, but fortunately for the gathered masses, most just did their own stretches and I didn’t see any injuries.

I think that Fitness First missed a great marketing opportunity this year at the Hyde Park Jog. Promoting the local gym and brand in general is easily done with a good warm-up, and then by actively participating in the jog, if possible with a few members and trainers.
I doubt very much that they sold any Boxercise classes, and I’m pretty sure that the girls didn’t take part in the 5 or 10k run themselves (based on their boxing shoes & tape around their hands)

Let’s hope that the BHF invite a more pro-active gym to do the warm-up at the Tower of London on 6 May and Canary Wharf on 3 June.

Hyde Park 10k - British Heart Foundation

I ran in the second of my six 10k runs on 15 April, this time in aid of the British Heart Foundation, in Hyde Park as part of the BHF London trilogy. I was joined by my colleague Nigel who travelled up to London from Hastings to support me for the first half of the run, as it turned out. There was a great turnout of around 2,000 people mostly kitted out in red BHF t-shirts.

After a questionable warm up from Fitness First, we set-off and I decided to keep to Nigel’s pace to begin with, particularly as he had travelled up specially. We were slightly below my normal speed but the conversation and spirit was good, up until about the 4k marker, when both the banter and Nigel started to flag.

A two lap 10k run is always tricky at the halfway point, and even I wasn’t able to motivate Nigel to start the second 5k, so he called it a day and collected his medal. I plugged the music into my ears and stepped up the pace, managing a 24 minute time on the second 5k, after running 30 mins on the first 5. I’m reasonably happy with 54 minutes, which is the same time as I did last year around Hyde Park, and I think I may have struggled more had I started faster.

Sponsorship is now just past the £650 mark, so roll on the next jog at the Tower of London where I’ll be joined by a few more GG Fit team members.

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…