Creating the perfect gym programme for your members

When running a gym or health club, often you’ll need to think of new ways to entice new members to your gym and also add value for existing members.

Creating gym programmes for your members can be an awesome way to add that much needed value that just reinforces a positive member or lead experience. Positive experiences often lead to retention so it’s crucial to strike the right balance.

So what do you need to consider when creating a gym programme?

Decide on your approach to gym programmes

Depending on your resources, you may not be able to create an individualised gym programme for each and every member – regardless of whether you decided to offer it to new sign ups, existing members, or both.

Depending on the staff you have available, you may only be able to create a handful of generalised gym programmes for members to follow. So make sure to figure out early on who will be tasked with creating the gym programmes.

Creating personalised gym programmes

If you decide you have the resources to create personalised gym programmes for any of your members that decide to opt-in for them, then great! The next step will be to set up an appointment time with these members to chat through their goals, fitness history, and fitness knowledge to gauge an idea on what might be the most appropriate plan for them.

For example, you might have someone who’s looking to increase their endurance and lean down – so constructing a gym programme that contains high intensity interval training or functional circuits might be the best fit for them.

On the other hand, you might have someone who’s looking to improve their physique and gain muscle. So creating a gym programme that focusses on an array of exercises that target the major muscles groups will do wonders for your clients.

The trick is to create a plan you know your members will stick to. If they’re set up for success then they’re going to have the best chance at seeing the results they desire and ultimately having a positive experience with your gym. Make sure to include a warm up, cool down and stretching plan in all of your gym programmes to help prevent them from injury!

Mix up the programme structure

If you want to give your members the best chance at success, keep in mind that for some of them, a gym programme completely relying on them to turn up to gym everyday and execute a plan by themselves may not be the best route. They may have never set foot in a gym before, and feel intimidated, lost, and may not push themselves as much as they’re capable of in their workouts.

For members like this, it might be best to create a gym programme that contains a variety of exercise formats. These could be small group training sessions with people with similar fitness levels, personal training sessions, group classes for everyone, and workouts on their own in the gym. Variety might just be the key to success for your members!

Upsell with your personal trainers

The best part about creating an effective gym programme for your members, is it presents a great opportunity for your personal trainers to meet and gain potential new clients.

Your personal trainers (depending on their qualifications) could be the resources you allocate at the very start of the process to create the gym programmes for your members. Or they could come in at a later stage to help some of your less knowledgeable members implement their plans so the get the best results and prevent injury.

Either way, creating gym programmes for your members is a great way to get your personal trainers involved and generates revenue for them – and your health club!