Group X Blog

Should group fitness be free? Well, that’s a loaded question. So, I own clubs and I’m a group exercise freak. And, in fact, anywhere between 25 percent and 38 percent of our members use group fitness. That’s a fairly decent percentage, when you think about it. The majority of our members that use group fitness [...]

IF IT’S A TREND, YOU’LL KNOW IT As leaders in the fitness industry, people with new products and programs touting the notion that their idea is “all the rage” constantly approach us. I am sure each program’s creator feels strongly about their idea and believes in its potential popularity. However, until you see that idea [...]

Why Should You Go? The biggest benefit that fitness conventions offer to all of us in the industry is the opportunity to see new things. Essentially, if approached in the right way, a good fitness convention can be a great wake-up call for what we do every day. We might not be bored with the [...]

People are always asking me how we come up with such innovative and exciting group fitness programs. This isn’t always an easy question to answer; it’s a bit like going to a great restaurant and asking the chef to give you his recipe on the way out. That being said, with all the famous chefs [...]

The most important step in getting a group fitness program off the ground and sustaining it for years to come, is finding the right instructors. You can come up with a long list of amazing class concepts that no other gym has, but unless you have the right people teaching those classes, your members are [...]

Lately I have been getting a lot of inquiries regarding group fitness payroll and the standards that pertain to group fitness department operations. Here are some facts based on a study done over 82 clubs nationwide. 1.    Your group fitness payroll should fall in between 11-14 percent of your total payroll. (If you have multiple [...]

It seems as if we are always dealing with the “Drama of Group Fitness.” The thread of competition in our industry is great; who sells the most memberships, who is employee of the month, who has the most personal training clients, who sold the most PT, etc. But for some reason when it come to [...]

How often do you check in with your members? It is daunting what our attrition rates are across the board in our clubs. I just had the pleasure of listening to Jeffery Gitomer speak — you know, the guy that writes the books “The Little Red Book of Sales,” and ”The Little Red Book of Leadership,” [...]

When looking at the cost to run a group fitness program it is many times difficult to understand the value as it pertains to dollars in, versus dollars out. Personal training is much easier to measure, right? Little old-school theory, but I get it. We need to keep in mind that group fitness is a [...]

Now is the time! With all the small-box clubs opening up on every corner, if you have group fitness it is time to take the steps to highlight the power of classes and differentiate yourself from the competition. Have you really taken a look at what goes on in your group fitness rooms? Are you [...]