Group X is a powerful builder of retention, allowing members to feel as if they are a part of a small community within your club.
“Anytime [a member] gets involved in group exercise, they’re going to stay with the club,” said Sheila Gardner, the group exercise manager at Gainesville Health and Fitness (GHF) in Gainesville, Florida. “If you get involved in group exercise, you tend to stay with the club because you find social connections within the class.”
When hiring group fitness instructors at GHF, Gardner takes this fact into consideration. And she believes you can’t teach a person to have the personality of a good group fitness instructor.
“You can train a person to do a lot of things. You can bring in a cycle instructor and teach them how to use the cycle equipment and how to choose good music, but you cannot teach a person personality,” said Gardner. “It’s a personality thing. You can’t teach somebody to be a really nice, great person. They are or they are not. They come to us like that. But we do train them in other aspects.”
GHF has 80 instructors, and Gardner meets with each one once a week to “check in” with how their classes are going. However, they do not offer in-house instructor training. Gardner said she is happy to help them get additional certifications for classes they could potentially teach.
But because group fitness has the reputation of becoming personal between members and instructors, Gardner said there’s a lot of traits she looks for in a person before hiring them, including being non-intimidating, a good listener, and having humility and empathy.
“We know that if members come to their class, they’re going to feel comfortable. They’re not going to feel intimidated or like they’re in the wrong place,” said Gardner. “Another thing is someone who’s experienced enough so that they can teach a multi-level type of class. So when an inexperienced person comes in, they feel successful, as well as the athlete that comes in and is in great shape and knows everything about working out — both ends of the spectrum are comfortable in the class.”
To ensure a potential fitness instructor meets all of those requirements, Gardner advised having multiple interviews with the individual — both one-on-one and in a team setting. Having team interviews, she said, allows other members of her team to see a trait or quality she may have missed in the personal interview.
Most importantly, Gardner said the potential instructor must fit in with the culture of the club. “And that fit may just be a gut feeling,” she said.
By cultivating a powerhouse Group X team and program, your retention rates may be positively impacted.
