The baby boomers have arrived. They’re the original healthy lifestyle advocates. They have more disposable income than any generation in history. And chances are good they don’t represent a significant percentage of your membership. Here are 7 reasons why-and the tools you need to change your club to a senior friendly facility (without losing its core workout group).
Senior fitness has been an industry buzzword for several years now, but for the most part, the industry’s focus doesn’t match its vocabulary. Though senior fitness is the hot topic of conversation at trade shows and in industry publications, most clubs haven’t done much to try to grow their senior memberships-largely because they just don’t know how.
“People think about senior fitness, and they think that means Silver Sneakers,” says Tammy Petersen, author of SrFit, the industry standard text for educating trainers about senior fitness. “But Silver Sneakers is designed for people who are over 65, and that leaves out a whole chunk of people between 45 and 65 who aren’t getting what they need from traditional clubs.”
That’s a shame, because the senior market has the potential to be amazingly lucrative. Boomers represent the largest, wealthiest, most health- and appearance-conscious generation that the United States has ever produced. They’re the generation who created the health club. With money to spend, time to spare and a working knowledge of the benefits of exercise, today’s card-carrying AARP members seem like the perfect health club members. But few of them belong to clubs, and even fewer stick around for very long.
“Clubs are saying we welcome boomers, we want boomers, but no one has really done anything special for them or catered to them,” says Ed Trainor, vice president of fitness services and development for Town Sports International. “No one is pulling the trigger.”
Trainor’s clubs offer the Silver Sneakers program, but Trainor says that’s not enough-not for Town Sports International and not for any club that hopes to draw in the boomer population. “As an industry we have been slow to pull the trigger,” he says.
The truth is, seniors aren’t a hard target. Once won over, they are fiercely loyal, making them the perfect health club members. And the secret to winning them over might not be as complicated as you probably think it is. Changing the 11 behaviors outlined in this story can make your club more attractive to seniors.
1 | Your team’s collective knowledge doesn’t impress them.
Baby boomers want expertise-and if your club doesn’t have it, they’ll head elsewhere. It makes sense: Boomers represent the most educated group in American history-many were the first in their families to attend college-and they place a high value on expert knowledge.
“This category of client wants a true professional,” says Peterson, who says that boomers have high expectations that many clubs simply don’t live up to.
Peterson believes the most important thing clubs can do is to have well-trained staff who can answer and anticipate questions. It’s not enough to be able to prescribe an effective workout to improve cardiopulmonary strength. You’ve also got to be able to take your boomer member through the physiological stages of her exercise and be informed enough to make adjustments if, say, your member’s beta blocker slows her heart rate so that you have to come up with a different way to measure her fitness. (Peterson suggests perceived exertion as a possible alternative.)
The point is, boomers are looking for trainers who know what they’re doing, not necessarily trainers who are plugged into the latest Hollywood workouts. Knowledge matters. So does education and training.
Certification is important, Peterson says, but it’s just a starting point. Trainers need continuing education, in-house and outside it. Start by hiring good people, treat them right so they stick around and offer incentives to promote education. The truth is, as much as clubs often feel at a loss when it comes to building senior memberships, there are a lot of resources out there that can help them do just that.
Healthtrax is one of the few mainstream health clubs that’s had real success growing its senior business, and COO and Club Solutions Advisory Board member Doug Werner says that success has been very much by design. “Aging baby boomers are our primary market, and Healthtrax is the leading provider of medically integrated wellness programs in each of our markets,” Werner says. He cites Healthtrax’s strategic partnerships with hospitals and health care providers as an important element in their success.
“These partnerships mean that we can provide our boomers with monthly wellness education seminars and workshops, diagnostic services, professionally staffed health fairs, health risk management programs, physician referral programs, post med care programs and physical therapy patient wellness integration,” says Werner.
2 | Your Trainers don’t know how to work with older exercisers.
Many club trainers hit a wall when it comes time to design a program for older adults, says Peterson. “Either they say, oh, you’re too old, and give them a workout that doesn’t do anything, or they work them so hard that the pressure and physical discomfort keep them from coming back to the club,” she says.
Carol Mendelsohn, the national director of marketing for Spectrum Athletic Clubs, says that the best workout for her club’s senior members depends on their pre-senior activity level.
“Boomers who have exercised for most of their lives want a workout that’s intense and gives them results but that doesn’t put them at risk for injury,” Mendelsohn says. “Seniors who are coming to exercise later in life tend to embrace less intense, slower-paced programming like beginning yoga, Pilates and aqua aerobics.”
“A lot of younger people want to work their clients 110% because that’s what they think their clients want,” says Peterson. “But seniors tend to have very specific health goals, and to find out about them, all a trainer has to do is ask. Too often, that doesn’t happen.”
Ultimately, Peterson says, seniors aren’t looking for a lifetime commitment from a trainer-they want to get the tools they need and move on. But too many trainers are afraid to graduate clients, so instead of educating and liberating them, they keep them dependent. For boomers, this behavior won’t stand, and it may account for the notable minority of seniors who participate in non-medical physical training sessions.
And that’s a shame, because a good personal trainer can have a powerful impact on a senior’s life. One 63-year-old Healthtrax member ended up at the club after back surgery, cancer and a triple bypass left him weak and battered. He was down to 135 pounds, pre-diabetic and in almost constant pain. But after just a year of working with his personal trainer (who helped him come up with an effective nutrition guide, as well as an exercise plan), the client had gained 35 pounds of muscle and claimed to have never felt better. Still active, the senior has a new lease on life-thanks to a trainer who really knew how to help him.
3 | They Don’t Feel welcome in your club.
If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. Even with the faltering economy, health club memberships have seen a fairly slow and steady increase over the past decade-until this year, when an IHRSA study showed that club memberships have fallen off in 2007 to 41.5 million (from 42.7 million memberships in 2006). Still, the numbers remain reassuringly steady, and for many club owners, it doesn’t make sense to target older members when they’ve found targeting the 21- to 45-year-old market is working just fine.
“Everyone is thinking about seniors, but the numbers still show that marketing to the 21 to 45 age group is where most of the money is coming from,” Trainor says. “That’s where most of the marketing dollars are being spent.”
Which can leave seniors feeling like health clubs aren’t for them, since many of the classes, programs and general amenities that make a club attractive to a 30-year-old single professional make it an uncomfortable place for a senior to work out.
Wellbridge clubs, which say about 35% of their membership falls into the 55-plus age range, say that their clubs try to use senior experiences to make the club environment more comfortable to all members. Since Wellbridge leadership has noticed that senior members are quicker to react to changes in temperature and music, they look to these members to catch potential problems early on.
One interesting Canadian study found that the 20-something demographic most clubs target can actually be turned off by a large senior presence in health clubs, and while most of the clubs we talked to for this story say that they haven’t seen that to be the case, the environment in most clubs is more likely to be comfortable for a 25-year-old than it is for a 55-year-old. Things like a lack of privacy in the changing room can be enough to keep boomers from becoming members at your club.
“We actually depend on that fact,” says Werner, who says Healthtrax will continue to grow its efforts marketing toward boomers as their numbers increase. “Many older members prefer to be around their peers and can be easily intimidated by younger and fitter members or bothered by the presence of too many children in a family-oriented setting. We also know there’s a segment of the younger population who feel the same way seniors do about the traditional club environment, and we’re seeing them turn to our clubs, too.”
4 | Your classes are at the wrong time.
Obviously it’s a mistake to say that all seniors want one thing (see number 5, below, for more details), but one thing seems to hold true for most 45-plus club members: They avoid high-traffic times.
“Most of our older members tend to avoid rush hour usage,” says Werner, referring to the 5 to 9 p.m. after-work period that’s popular with the 21 to 40 set.
“Our senior members tend to find alternative times to show up at the gym,” says Trainor. “The 21- to 40-year-olds show up at the most popular time, between 5 and 8 p.m., because they are looking for social interaction and entertainment along with their fitness. But our boomers tend to avoid that time. Most of them come in the morning.”
In fact, all the clubs we talked to agreed that most senior members aren’t likely to be at the club later in the day. Mornings were the most popular times for boomers to work out-which means clubs that don’t schedule classes for that time can be unwittingly alienating their boomer membership.
At Wellbridge clubs, the social component of fitness is one of the things seniors gravitate toward most, so much so that Wellbridge has made a point of putting together classes specifically for seniors. Many, like Introduction to Yoga and FreeMotion Circuit, are designed specifically to engage senior members in activities that they might not normally consider-and it seems to work, since boomers clamor for the popular classes.
“We’ve found that seniors prefer to participate in classes where a majority of people in the class are a similar age,” says Werner, who says older members are especially likely to participate in classes without aggressive choreography and intensity. Most clubs agree, citing water exercise, yoga and recumbent bike classes as the most popular for their senior members.
“We don’t tend to see many senior members participating in spinning classes in general or in high intensity classes,” says Trainor.
By scheduling senior friendly classes at high senior traffic times instead of saving them for your club’s most popular period, you’re likely to create an environment that feels more welcoming to boomers-one that they want to be a part of.
5 | They want a commitment your club isn’t ready to make.
By now, most seniors know the scoop: If there’s a magic pill to slow down aging, it’s a healthy lifestyle. And statistics show that more and more seniors are embracing the fact that exercise improves longevity. Each year, more seniors say that they’re making an effort to get in the minimum daily exercise recommended by their doctors. But many of them don’t pursue their fitness at traditional health clubs.
For clubs, that represents a real missed opportunity. “Senior members tend to be more loyal and have more usage than other members,” says Werner.
The problem? Seniors are looking for a club that will grow with them, which means that a 50-something who could hang with 20-somethings on the cardio floor today is looking at where he’ll want to be working out in 5 to 10 years-and in most cases, he can’t see that happening at your club.
Boomers are more likely to be loyal-once you’ve won them over, you’ve got a customer for life unless you screw things up. They have money to spend, and they’re more than willing to spend it on aging gracefully-after all, this is the generation who is defining what old age means. Health clubs can give them what they’re looking for, but too often, they don’t.
“Seniors aren’t going to be lured by fancy equipment,” says Peterson. “They want programs. They want education. They want a club that they can stick with. And until clubs start losing members because they don’t offer these things, they’re not likely to make changes.”
A club that’s clearly senior friendly has advantages, says Mendelsohn. “Members like knowing that they have a club they can be at when they are seniors. Members like knowing they can bring their parents. Younger members appreciate that we offer a club that caters to older people.”
In other words, they’re looking to make a long-term commitment to a club, but the existing formats at most clubs rarely inspire them to do that.
6 | You treat every person over 45 the same way.
When clubs talk about their senior programming, almost all of them mention Silver Sneakers-a great fitness program designed for people over 65-but few consider the gap between 40 and 65.
“We often lump everybody over a certain age together, but what an active 60-something needs is different from what an active 50-something needs, and that’s different from what a sedentary 45-year-old needs,” says Peterson.
Bodies change with age, which means that your 40-something members should probably be transitioning their workouts now-but is your club helping them do that? Most clubs don’t spend a lot of time transitioning members to late-life workouts, but doing so can be a way to keep members around-not only because they’ll stay committed to your club but also because the right workout minimizes their risk of debilitating injury.
Most clubs also don’t require additional medical screening for seniors joining their club because they don’t want to offend, which might be well-intentioned but which can actually prevent clubs from building a positive member experience. Boomer members are looking for a sophisticated and specialized knowledge from your club’s trainers, and it’s impossible for you to deliver that without specific information about your members’ health history and lifestyle.
Seniors are a diverse group, and trying to encapsulate their needs into a couple of classes is a recipe for failure.
7 | You get off on the wrong foot.
The minute a senior walks in the door of your club, she makes a decision about it-and if the blaring music, lackluster reception and crowded cardio floor in her direct path turn her off, it doesn’t matter how great the class you’ve got at the other end of the gym is-she’s already made up her mind that this isn’t the place for her.
“Health clubs are an intimidating place even for people who have been going to them for years,” says Peterson.
The solution may be as simple as turning down the daytime music at your club, but don’t ignore customer service, which boomers take very seriously.
At Wellbridge, team members make an effort to follow up with boomer members via old-fashioned letters instead of email, which some boomers view as insincere and sloppy. And every club we talked to said seniors have the highest expectation when it comes to club staff.
“YMCAs are doing much better than traditional clubs when it comes to attracting seniors because they are good at relationship building,” says Peterson. “If the folks at the front desk are too busy to look up when they walk in the door, they’ll take their business-and their money-elsewhere.”
