Sabarras George told a story about riding on the track and field team’s bus at his alma mater, Western Michigan University, during his senior year. He said the bus was rowdy with excited college kids, accompanied by music blaring from a stereo in the back. As a senior studying athletic training, this seemed like the best possible scenario. However, George had a moment where he thought to himself, “do I really want to be doing this when I turn 50?”
George, 49, found himself managing a friend’s start-up gym immediately following graduation from WMU. He said that he could see himself in that type of environment for the long haul.
He eventually left the club for another start-up facility in Avon, Ohio. EMH Health and Fitness was one of the first medical-fitness facilities in the U.S. It was George’s first insight into the future of the fitness industry. He realized in his 10 years at EMH that medical-fitness gave for-profit clubs the opportunity to provide members with an advantage that no other club could offer.
George said that he envisioned his career ending with EMH. He never thought in a million years that he’d make another move. However, when the Michigan Athletic Club (MAC), a 276,000-square-foot facility, came calling as a for-profit, but not profitable, athletic facility in East Lansing, Mich., right on the campus of Michigan State University, he knew he had an opportunity to challenge himself and make a difference.
By taking what he had learned from the medical-fitness facility of EMH, he could quickly see what would make a difference at the MAC. Like many clubs around the country, the partnership between medical and fitness has been a link to prosperity, and sets a certain dynamic for future growth that hasn’t been witnessed in the industry’s history.
At the MAC, its partnership with Sparrow — the region’s largest health system with two Lansing, Mich. locations, and an affiliate, Carson City Hospital, and dozens of satellite centers — has allowed it to harness relationships between medical professionals and develop a bond to bring in a new demographic of memberships. That bridge was the key factor for George in making the MAC a profitable fitness facility.
When George arrived, he said the MAC was attacking prospects like many fitness facilities around the country — simply attempting to regain the trust of former members and those that didn’t have a desire for a fitness membership. The partnership with Sparrow allowed the MAC to differentiate itself from other clubs. Not only would they have top-of-the-line equipment and amenities, but also its tie to local hospitals grew its appeal to more potential members in need of fitness training and education.
“Depending on how large your demographics are, you’re competing with smaller clubs, sub-specialty clubs that have special niches, and if you’re competing against them and you’ve been in business a little while, you’re advertising to your same customer that left you for another gym, or they left you for another reason,” said George. “They are getting those same advertisements. You’re going after the same healthy person. On the medical side, you have physicians you can partner with, and those physicians help recruit your members for you. You’re also helping improve the health and wellness of the community by partnering with doctors and getting them to refer some of their patients that definitely need health and wellness.”
In coordination with the wellness aspect, the MAC has strived for a non-intimidating factor where people could feel comfortable coming to exercise and seek out wellness. “Staff with the right education — you have to have some type of medical entity inside your club,” said George. “Nowadays I just don’t see how you can compete without that. When I got here five years ago it was commercial — there were no medical entities at all. I hurried up and recognized that they weren’t going to survive unless we tapped into the medical market.”
That’s when the MAC decided to change to a medical-based club. Now the club is thriving again and has become one of the more profitable facilities in the U.S. “If you’ve been in business long enough, your members are going to get sick, break their leg, hurt their knee, hurt their back; get cancer,” said George. “If you’re not equipped to keep them in your club, you’re more apt to lose them to the sub-specialty clubs around.”
According to George, wellness isn’t necessarily the ability to provide members with physical therapy, or doctors on staff — the MAC has left that up to the medical side at Sparrow. However, he sees it as the MAC’s duty to supply the club, and those patients that are sent by the hospital, with quality trainers and personnel. “If you have a fitness staff on the exercise floor that is able to take blood pressures, and able to understand that when people are on blood pressure medicine — how their heart rate and blood pressure are, may not coincide with how they look or feel — you have to have some people that can do that. You should definitely have some people that know medications as well. For example, if a client is on certain medications, staff members need to know what their behaviors are and the effects from exercise.”
George also suggested that clubs looking to be more medically based, have wellness and health coaches on staff. “The difference: Wellness Coach is a lifestyle person that interviews with the member on their lifestyle; and the Health Coach actually knows the medication — usually a nurse, or a nurse practitioner.”
The medical side, often a corresponding hospital, could also supply those individuals to be used when needed by the fitness facility. “That’s the minimal that you need,” said George. “Our populations are aging and the members are much older. We know we are going to get old, but we don’t want to feel it. If you have those personnel in your club, that’s the basic blocking and tackling you need to have in order to thrive in the business.”
For George, wellness and partnering with medical facilities was an obligation to the community that the fitness facility served. “Our trainers are top-notch,” said George. “Our trainers are college degree individuals and definitely certified. They know medications, but we don’t play doctor by any means. If we have questions we will get on the phone with their physician. Every single employee here is trained to respond to a medical emergency. Clubs should have AEDs. It’s going to happen in your club — someone’s going to die in a club. It’s just one of those things. Everyone here is trained to use the AED, and trainers and lifeguards are elite on that.”
Originally, the MAC believed in allowing trainers to be certified by several different certification agencies, but is starting to look at a change. “When you’re having meetings and your able to discuss your differences, that’s better than just one pool of thought,” said George. “However, in 2013, we are going to start narrowing some of the certifications down. There aren’t any particular ones that we like or dislike, because once you get here you still have to go through the system of how we train. I know when I interview trainers, I don’t just look at the certification; I look at if this person has a skill.”
The MAC has a three-tiered system that separates trainers on certain levels of experience, education and certifications. “When you come in with certifications and a college degree, it’s going to automatically excel you to the higher tier of compensation,” said George. “It’s definitely encouraged, but the problem with requiring a degree — you have to drill it down to which degree.” The MAC takes into account applicable degrees that deal with health, fitness and wellness, but George explained that accounting degrees don’t necessarily assist in the development of the MAC’s training staff. “That degree has to coincide with something physical fitness, exercise physiology, biomechanics, kinesiology and many others. We look for that in order to bring the person in at a higher tier.”
The MAC has strived for a mark of credibility from the community. That credibility has been garnered through its commitment to an exceptional staff, but also its partnership with Sparrow. “For the fitness facility, partnering with the medical facility, gives you credibility,” said George. “It gives you a stamp of approval that someone, a governing body, usually a medical director, is putting that stamp of approval saying ‘we’ve looked at it and we agree with it.’ Even your surfaces, our track, we were looking at whether we need banking tracks, do we need a flat track, do we need to run it both directions — medically we look at that stuff. Our medical director looks at it and says ‘medical research says X, and this is what we should change to.’ It’s a stamp of credibility and a lot of times we are able to fast-track people into physician appointments, because our physicians use the facility too.
“On the other side, for the medical center to have a fitness center involved with it, if the club does it right, it provides credibility back to the medical center. It really adds another offering in the suitcase of services that the hospital has. Now, the hospital will appear to be on the track of wellness. Now their physicians can say, ‘we own a club here, let me make a call and see if we can get a reduction on your aerobic fees.’ We are both linked up on the front and backside. It’s more of a competitive edge for a hospital to have a health club — competitively because you’re looking at the full spectrum of the continuum of health. You have the preventative health side, which is the health club, all the way down to the acute side that is the intervention, surgery and recovery.”
At the MAC, members are provided with a full life-maintenance package. They experience the greatness of one of the top health clubs in the region, as well as the ability to receive top medical care from physicians that can also witness the full recovery and progress of a patient. The partnership that George forged has given way to a whole new genre of health clubs. It has allowed them to have credibility in different demographics, and provide a community of medical patients the ability to, not only recover from surgery and ailments, but also improve their health and overall lifestyle.
George’s ability to understand the dynamic of the medical fitness facility has transformed Michigan Athletic Club from an unprofitable, for-profit facility, to one of the more profitable athletic clubs in the U.S. George said that the future is all on the clubs that decide to make the same partnership. To him, it’s evident how health care will change and how insurance companies will lean on those clubs that have harbored good relationships with the medical community. For the MAC, because of George, they are well on their way to being on the front-line of a new fitness era.
By Tyler Montgomery
