Tag: Programming Strategies

Solution

Become the Solution

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Become the Solution You struggle with retaining members and signing up new clients. How could you not? With the proliferation of low-cost health clubs, wearable technology, home video exercise plans, and YouTube workout videos that go viral within hours, traditional fitness facilities face enormous challenges these days — and experts tell us we’re only at the beginning of what will be a sea change in the way the fitness industry operates. In this blog space there’s been a lot of talk about facing the challenges by building communities; investing in trainers, staff, and other human resources; and incorporating technology. Here’s another approach to consider: becoming the solution.
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Help Your Clients Make It to the Gym

Help Your Clients Make It to the Gym

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Help Your Clients Make It to the Gym Every year around this time of year, it feels like someone has turned the dial up a couple notches. Whereas earlier in the fall everything was just busy, suddenly now everything is insanely chaotic. Veteran’s Day and Thanksgiving break mean quite a few no-school days, and there always seem to be a couple professional development and parent-teacher conference half-days around the same time. At work, everyone is scrambling to finish projects before the end of the year, and all of those projects seem to land up on your desk at the same time. Meanwhile, you find yourself invited, in the span of three weeks, to more parties than you’ve been invited to all year. And then there’s the holiday shopping, cooking, planning, and wrapping to do (don’t even ask me about season’s-greetings cards — I gave up on those years ago).
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Take Advantage of Special Events

Take Advantage of Special Events

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Take Advantage of Special Events Wandering around among witches, dragons, princesses, and Harry Potters this Halloween, I watched my own little ninja’s jack-o-lantern fill up with various forms of sugar, and I despaired — not at the thought of all the junk food he’d be consuming, because I knew that after a few days the novelty would wear off and he’d forget about it, but at the thought of all the tempting treats that would be sitting in my cabinet over the next couple months. While I’m pretty good at defeating sugar cravings day to day, Halloween candy undoes me. There’s so much of it, it’s all so accessible (when my son’s not looking), and it ignites so many nostalgic childhood pleasures.
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Childhood Obesity Awareness Month

Childhood Obesity Awareness Month

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Childhood Obesity Awareness Month It’s back-to-school month — and Childhood Obesity Awareness month. Even if your fitness facility caters mostly (or exclusively) to adults, you can contribute to the effort to draw attention to childhood obesity and its devastating consequences.
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HIIT It at the Gym

HIIT the Gym

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HIIT It at the Gym I (and millions of other people) have a new obsession: high-intensity interval training (HIIT). Seemingly everyday there’s a new study showing how effective it is as a method for keeping the heart in shape, burning fat, increasing muscle, and generally just feeling great. But what I love most about it, and I know I’m not alone in this, is how quickly it’s over. True, for the seven, twelve, twenty, or however many relatively brief minutes you’re doing it, you think you’re killing yourself — but then you’re done (done except for the fact that, as an added bonus, you raise your metabolism and continue burning calories at rest).
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The Best Approach To Providing Recovery Services

The Best Approach To Providing Recovery Services

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The Best Approach To Providing Recovery ServicesThis week, the IHRSA blog asks an interesting question: What is the industry standard when it comes to recovery services for members? How much is too much (or is there even, in this case, such a thing as “too much”)? What kinds of services should clubs offer, and how are they best implemented?
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Functional-Fitness

Adapting to Functional-Fitness Trends

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Functional-FitnessLast week, the New York Times ran an article about the functional-fitness trend. “Vintage exercise machines have recently become the padded shoulders of the workout world,” the article states, “swept aside for a fresher look.” In other words, out with the leg presses, biceps curlers, and seated torso rotations, and in with the kettle bells, medicine balls, and weighted sleds. Anything that gets you working out in ways devised to help you perform daily activities, like lifting, bending, and climbing stairs, constitutes the latest trend, the article says.
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The Early Bird Catches the Great Deal

The Early Bird Catches the Great Deal

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The Early Bird Catches the Great DealI’ve always wondered how it feels to get in a good workout at 3 a.m. I don’t belong to a 24-hour gym, though, so there isn’t much of an opportunity for me to try. But this winter I came close. My gym launched a “sunrise special”: For $29 extra a month, members could access the facility starting at 5 a.m. on weekdays and 7 a.m. on weekends.
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Reality Television and You

Reality Television and You

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Reality Television and YouWe live in interesting times. The convergence of reality television with the national obesity crisis and a new level of health obsession has created opportunities for the fitness industry that never existed before. Last month, CBS’s Undercover Boss featured the CEO and founder of New-Jersey based Retro Fitness; last year, the CEO of Modell’s sporting goods shop appeared on the show. Now, a new season of Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition is starting up on ABC, and exercise technology company NuStep has a product in the limelight.
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fitness incentives

Kid and Me Classes

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fitness incentivesMy son’s in first grade, and it’s his spring break. I don’t love traveling during spring break, given how crowded attractions can get and how miserable airports can be. I prefer to save the travel for off months and arrange fun things for us to do near home instead. Because it’s just him and me, and because I want to take advantage of the fact that he’s not yet embarrassed to be seen with me in public (I have another four or five years, right?), we’re pretty much attached at the hip during times like these. It’s all well and good, but what happens when I need a workout? He knows how to run me around in the park, that’s for sure, but sometimes it’s just not enough (…)
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