As consumers seek more convenience than ever in their workouts, on-demand fitness classes continue to grow in popularity. With a wide variety of digital workouts for members to choose from, FitnessOnDemand™ is a major differentiator for any club.
Here, Mindy Clarke, the national director of group exercise at YouFit, sheds light on her club’s partnership with FitnessOnDemand and how its ease of use has translated well across multiple locations:
Why did you decide to partner with FitnessOnDemand over other brands?
MC: We were introduced via email. Our CEO had received some information about FitnessOnDemand and forwarded it to me, and then I started speaking with their team to find out more. We chose them because we thought they had the best variety of premium programming options compared to others out there.
What have been the main benefits to your business as a result of this partnership?
MC: We love that FitnessOnDemand has such accessibility, so members — when they can’t come in for our live classes at a gym location — can stop by the club any time during the day or night, when it’s convenient for them, and plug and play a class. They can do whatever class they want at whatever time they want.
You use FitnessOnDemand across multiple locations, correct? How easy is FitnessOnDemand to streamline across multiple locations?
MC: It’s been good so far — we have it at five of our locations right now. Our goal is to do test marketing at five of our locations and hopefully, if it continues to be successful, we’ll branch it out to other locations as well.
Originally, we did it at three locations, and we just added two more in South Florida. That way, I can be more hands-on with it and more familiar with everything the system has to offer. We’re still in the early stages of it, so we’re still figuring out additional features like the mobile app extension. This is something new we’re using and intend to implement it on a wider scale and push out to our members. We’re still in the early stages, as I said, but we’re making a lot of progress.
What do your members like about FitnessOnDemand?
MC: They love the ease of being able to just go in at any time and use it when it works for their schedule. We have a huge TV screen in the group exercise room to show content and classes. It’s positioned over the mirrors, so it’s not in the way for live classes.
When a member wants to use the TV, it is on a movable arm and can be pulled down closer, for instance, if they’re on the floor for a yoga class, or positioned at varying heights during a weight class, aerobics class or high intensity interval training (HIIT) class.
How would you describe FitnessOnDemand’s customer service?
MC: They’ve been great — that has been very helpful for us. We’ve held a couple of different conference calls with our marketing department, our group exercise department and then with the managers of the clubs themselves, and the FitnessOnDemand team has worked with us every step of the way.
Why should other club operators consider working with FitnessOnDemand?
MC: We don’t want them to, because those clubs might be our competition! It’s very user-friendly. A lot of our members might not be as fit, and some of them might not even feel comfortable enough to go into a group class, so FitnessOnDemand is a great way to get them started, for example, with yoga. They can learn the basic terms like “downward dog,” and those types of terms by taking a class on their own before they go into the large group fitness. That’s the way I like to push it with my members. So far, that’s going really well.
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Bobby is the former assistant editor of Club Solutions Magazine.
