How to distinguish your health club and retain members

How To Distinguish Your Health Club and Retain Members

The world is a much different place than it was fifty, even twenty-five years ago. One of the most noticeable differences is the area of physical fitness. Emerging technology has created so many conveniences that where a person once had to walk into the bank or pharmacy, cook dinner every night and get up off the couch to change the television channel, one can now “drive thru” just about any where, grab carry out food from the convenience of a car while universal and programmable remote controls take care of everything from the television to our lighting and appliances.

While in many ways these technological advances mean we are moving forward, in some ways we are going backwards as well. The majority of jobs fifty or a hundred years ago required physical labor for 10-14 hours a day. No wonder many of us recall our grandparents being able to eat large quantities of food while not gaining weight or suffering from heart disease, diabetes and some forms of cancer. Food was prepared fresh, usually from a garden and their own meat sources, without the use of boxes, cans and preservatives. After consuming such a meal, they would go out and work…hard…all day. They didn’t need a health club, treadmill or a Bowflex machine to make sure they were getting the American Heart Association’s recommended 30-60 minutes of moderate intensity activity each day.

THE ROLE OF HEALTH CLUBS IN THE TWENTY FIRST CENTURY

Given the fact that drive thru conveniences and remote controls do exist and most Americans spend their day behind a desk, the role of health clubs has grown to an all new level. People need to search for ways to be active now that the majority of daily life is sedentary. Yet, many people are more aware of their role in preventing certain diseases and illnesses, as well as the responsibility of maintaining their health in order to live a longer, higher quality life.

Since the role of health clubs has become so vital, it seems in some larger cities there is some type of health club, personal training facility or studio on every corner. As a health club owner or manager, how do you take advantage of the current trend of growth? How do you set yourself apart from other clubs to obtain members? And once you have the members, how do you retain them?

In order to stay in business and be profitable you have to work smart. You must do market research, stay on top of the trends and perhaps most importantly, know your competitors and what they are doing.

SETTING YOUR HEALTH CLUB APART FROM THE PACK

Here are some steps you can take to set yourself apart from the masses of health clubs out there.

1. Determine who your target membership audience is going to be. Market and cater to the needs of that specific group and forget about the rest.

2. Do not try to be all things to all people. Determine what type of club you are running and stick with that. If you are a yoga studio, don’t try to toss in a few low end weight machines hoping to gain a different crowd, it won’t work.

3. Keep your facility clean! News stories pop up constantly about the worst places to contract a cold or other virus and unfortunately for customers and health club managers alike, the gym is usually at the top of the list. With the large number of people passing through each day, it is of utmost importance to keep your equipment, classrooms and locker rooms clean. This is at the top of the list for many people looking to join a health club.

4. Provide enough space for the equipment/classes you offer. Don’t try to pack so much equipment into your space just to say you offer it, that your members are practically on top of one another trying to work out. Don’t overbook your classes either. Overcrowding of equipment or members is a sure fire way to keep someone from considering your club.

5. Don’t offer “free” services or gifts that really provide no value to your customers. How many times have you purchased something that you wanted and received a “free gift” that you had no use for at all? Don’t offer your customers a towel or water bottle with your logo. Chances are, they have a closet full of them at home and it isn’t going to entice them to choose your club. Keep this in mind with “free” health assessments too. Don’t fool your clients into thinking this will replace a physical with their doctor or use it as a way to up sell them into personal training.

RETAINING MEMBERSHIP

Once you have found your target audience and you have obtained a substantial membership, here are some tips to help you keep those members.

1. Offer fair, reasonable and competitive prices for the services you offer. With the market fully saturated, price becomes a place that customers compare. They may not necessarily be looking for the lowest price, but the best value for what you offer. Know what services your competitors are offering and what they are charging. Make sure your prices are in line and even offer discounts to folks renewing their membership.

2. Get to know your members. People love it when the staff knows them by name and they don’t just feel like a number (meaning dollars!) to you. Depending on the size of your club and your staff, try to take some time to get to know your members on a more personal level. If they feel comfortable in the environment they will be more likely to use the facility and remain loyal at renewal time.

3. Keep your equipment and classes up to date. This isn’t to say you need to rush out and buy the latest and greatest piece of equipment every time the current fitness magazines shows a new gadget. This just means keep the equipment you have in good shape and when a newer, truly better, technology is on the market, consider investing in it. And if Latin Dance classes are the rage, make sure you offer your customers what they are reading about or hearing their friends (who belong to other clubs) talk about over lunch.

4. Don’t charge extra for things that should be included. If you truly invest enough in equipment such as spinning bikes that you need to charge your customers extra for the class in order to be profitable, do it. But if you are offering standard classes that don’t cost you extra, don’t charge your customers for the class either.

5. Offer incentives. Discounts upon renewal, special prices on classes or features that cost extra, or a free hour or two of your spa services are just a few incentive ideas to offer members to entice them to stay with your club. Offer cash or gift cards for referrals. Most people will be happy to refer friends and family if they are getting a little something out of it as well.

Remember to know your competitors as well as your target market when planning ways to increase and retain membership. People like to feel valued and like you really WANT them to work out in your facility. If you and your staff offer encouragement and really care about the member’s success and indicate that you miss them when they skip a workout or two, it will make a difference!

Exercise: heart rate monitors

Exercise: Heart Rate Monitors

Heart rate monitors used to be exclusively operated by physicians and nurses alone but that was soon rectified with today’s multi-tasking generation. Every person seemed to want to know about everything that was related to them and that of course included monitoring their own heartbeats.

What is a Heart Monitor

Also known as a cardiac monitor, a heart monitor is a piece of electronic equipment that can be used to track or observe heart functions continuously. It allows people to place a numerical value on their healthiness based on their heart rate and have a target heart rate to work for. The more complex versions of the heart monitor allow physicians to see any signs of deterioration or improvement and make the necessary adjustments immediately.

Types of Heart Monitors

Today, heart monitors are produced by the millions and designed to cater specific types of individuals. Some heart monitors are primarily designed for weight loss programs while others are meant for the use of athletes or fitness programs. Some are wireless or come as a built-in feature of exercise equipment like a treadmill or an exercise bike. It can be strapped to your wrist or of considerable size. It may or may not emit any electromagnetic waves, depending on its purpose. A fetal heart monitor, for instance, must not produce any waves at all as this may affect the health of the baby.

Factors on Selecting the Best Heart Monitor for You

ECG-Accurate Monitors with Chest Straps – Heart monitors that come with chest straps are more often not the most accurate of heart monitors. The chest strap is strapped around your chest, a few centimeters below your breast. It contains a device that’s able to detect electrical activity of your heart and transmit it to the brain of the machine – just like an ECG. The results are shown on the display monitor, which most of the times is attached to your wrist like a watch. Others however prefer results to be transmitted through audio messages via earphones.

Upon choosing heart monitors with chest straps, you need to remember to keep the strap constantly connected to your body lest you want the heart monitor to produce inaccurate readings.

Lastly, the only alternative against buying heart monitors with chest straps are the ones that rely on pulses on your fingertips. These however do not provide readings as accurate as those with chest straps.

Heart Monitor Features – Basic and lower end models tend to display only your heart rate and maybe the elapsed exercise time as well. This of course does not provide sufficient information if you want to know exactly how much you need to improve before you can be qualified as a completely healthy individual. Higher end models will naturally offer a wider range of features – for a price. Examples of such features are – but not limited to – heart rate zone alarms, timers and number of calories burned. It may also allow users to set pre-programmed workouts along with a targeted heart rate.

Ease of Use – Lastly, you must purchase a heart rate monitor that you will have no problems of using. What good would a high end heart monitor do if it takes you an hour to operate it? Are the numbers and words appearing in the heart rate monitor readable? Can it be used in no-light situations? Are buttons well-labeled and ergonomically positioned?

To Buy or Not to Buy a Heart Monitor

Heart monitors can be especially costly, more so if you are intent on purchasing higher-end models. If you have a limited budget, you should ask yourself whether or not you truly need to buy a heart monitor. You can of course purchase one of the lower-end models but low quality heart monitors can lead to inaccurate results and that sort of defeats the purpose of buying one.

If you are intent on purchasing a heart monitor, you need to ask yourself another question: do you need to make a solo purchase or is it alright with you to use the heart monitor that comes as a built-in feature of a treadmill? Lastly, you should remember as well that you can always pay your doctor regular visits and have him monitor your heart rate for you.

Four necessary components for a successful home fitness program

Four Necessary Components For A Successful Home Fitness Program

When looking for a home fitness program, it can be hard to decide which one will work best for you especially with thousands of workout videos all claiming to help you achieve the same results. When it comes to choosing the right program, you need to look past the hard bodies and bright labels to see what types of fitness are included in the program. In order for a home workout program to improve your coordination, balance, and strength as well as your agility and speed, it needs to include four main components.

Strength Training

In order for a home fitness program to build up the amount of force each muscle can put out at any given time, it has to challenge each muscle constantly by including a variety of movements as well as an increase in resistance. A home workout program that utilizes the concept of muscle confusion is especially helpful. This method causes your body to adapt to different movements constantly eliminating the ‘plateau effect.’

Endurance Training

Instead of dealing with the amount of strength each muscle has, muscle endurance is how long a muscle can exert its force before it becomes tired and begins to weaken. For a home workout program to achieve this portion of your fitness goal, it has to contain a series of repetitive movements that will increase the amount of energy produced by your body. As a pleasant side effect, these movements are also responsible for improving the health of your cardiovascular system while getting rid of unwanted pounds.

Flexibility Training

Before starting to use workout videos or home fitness program, you should warm up in order to stretch the muscles and tendons in your body to allow them to move more easily and prevent injury. This means you are improving your flexibility, which is the extent of motion the joints in your body are able to demonstrate. In order to increase your level of flexibility, however, a home workout program needs to include specific stretches that challenge the joints and muscles to move more effectively.

Cardiovascular And Respiratory Endurance Training

Because your body uses oxygen and your blood to distribute the energy in your body, improving your cardiovascular and respiratory systems are vital to any home workout program. To improve these systems, the home fitness program will need to hold your heart rate at its target for at least thirty minutes each day. For the best results, be sure to include this component into your routine a minimum of three times each week.

An effective home workout program needs to improve the quality of your muscles, heart, lungs and flexibility in order to improve your body composition and make you physically fit. Taking an extra look at home fitness programs such as P90X will help to eliminate wasting time and becoming disappointed when it doesn’t work.

Fitness tips to help you stay in shape

Fitness Tips To Help You Stay In Shape

There are lots of tips to help you lose weight, but there is only one true way. You need to use more energy than you get by the food and drink that you eat. That is you need to create an energy deficit so that your body has to look to its own stores of energy to make up the difference. By its own stores of energy we usually mean fat.

There are two main ways we can do this; the first way is to eat less. The second way is to burn more energy. Most diet programs take the approach of combining the two, but whatever diet program you want to follow there are a number of tips that can help you.

Drink more water: Everyone needs to drink at least eight to 10 glasses of water every day, which is 64 ounces. Your body is approximately 70% water and you lose a lot of it every day. You lose it in the obvious method (going to the toilet), through sweating, and every time you exhale. There are also less obvious ways your body uses water, for example a lot of fluids need to be made by your body, and of course there’s the lubrication in your mouth and eyes.

Your kidneys need plenty of water in order to easily flush out waste, including the by-products of using your fat for energy. You also need plenty of water to enable processes to use your fat. If you drink ice-cold water then there is an added benefit in that your body needs to heat up the water, and so uses energy!

Work out with weights: You don’t need to go to an expensive gym; you can buy weights to use at home. You don’t need to use them obsessively and become muscle-bound. We have already said that you need to exercise to help lose weight, but if you exercise with weights then you are tackling weight loss on two fronts. Building up your muscles will mean that your body will naturally use more energy every day by increasing your metabolism whether you are exercising or not. Of course during the workouts will also cause you to use more energy actually doing the work out. You will also be gaining in fitness at the same time as you are losing weight.

Read your labels: Many food products today try and lure you into a false sense of security by proclaiming their health benefits. On the front of the packaging there may be a large sticker proclaiming that an item is fat-free, however, if you examine the nutritional information you may easily find that the fat has been swapped for sugar. Another product may proclaim low carb; however, looking at that packaging you’ll find that the project has a lot of fat. What all of this means is that you need to read the labels so that you can choose foods that aren’t either sugar or fat dense.

Keep a journal: Keeping a written down record of everything you eat, drink and the exercise that do each day can be valuable in a number of ways. The act of keeping a journal knowing that you’re going to have to write down everything you eat and drink will help you avoid bad choices. You can also analyze your journal at the end of every week, spot weaknesses, and plan to make improvements. If you are seeing a dietitian then your journal will also be useful for them to look at and make suggestions about.

Don’t be too hard on yourself: Everyone has lapses; indeed it may even be an idea to have an easy day once a week. The trick is not to punish yourself of these lapses, as this can often lead to feeling even worse about yourself and ending up binge eating to cheer yourself up!

If you have a bad day then just chalk it up to experience and begin again tomorrow. It took your wild to gain this weight, so it will take your while to lose it again. One bad day is not a disaster, letting one bad day affect the rest of your diet is.

Anaerobic training – for triathletes and triathlons

Anaerobic Training – For Triathletes And Triathlons

Building the aerobic base can produce good health, solid fitness and the capability to complete endurance events. However, if you want to go even faster, you need to add the top-end anaerobic training. Here are some basic guidelines to how to achieve this.
Why do anaerobic training?
High-intensity efforts (speed work or interval training) take you above the 80 per cent of maximum point to a place where effort begins to focus the mind. At this point, your body shifts over to exclusively using carbohydrate for fuel – you stop burning fat. The by-product lactate (lactic acid) makes movement awkward, breathing laboured and muscles burn. This potent training can, in small doses, add a few more per cent to your top speed. However, the bulk of your fitness still comes from the base you build. Intervals are not a get-quick route to higher fitness.
Speed work
Triathlon may be an endurance event but once you can complete the distance, i.e. you have the stamina, the next element to think about is speed. This high- intensity training is the icing on the aerobic base you build with your steady endurance sessions and technique work.
Examples of speed work are:
• Swim: 10 X 100m at 2 sec/100m faster than race pace with 60 sec recovery • Bike: 7 x 3 min at 90 per cent HR with a 1 min spin between • Run: 7 min at 83 per cent, 7 min at 85 per cent and 7 min at 89 per cent HR back-to-back.
In each case, the hard work only amounts to around 20 minutes, but it is very potent and does not need to be constantly added to. Less is more; if you follow these guidelines you will feel strong, come away from the session before you fatigue and get faster.
The warning label
The downside of anaerobic training is that it causes stress to the body and can, at times of high stress elsewhere in your life, just make you tired, not fitter. Only do it when your body is ready for it. For most beginners this means a total focus on base training for six to eight months before adding small amounts of speed work or racing. Don’t rush into speed work; concentrate on building good technique and a solid aerobic base first. Always have a good aerobic warm up of 10-20 minutes before high-intensity work.
Top Tip
Recovering from some high-intensity training requires days of lighter training, so focus on good nutrition and ensuring that you get a good night’s sleep for several nights. If the opportunity arises for snatching a catnap of 20-30 minutes in the middle of the day, take it; it will help all aspects of your life.