Helping your members achieve their fitness goals can help build lifetime loyalty-and it’s easier than you might think.
Most of your members have a specific reason for joining your club. For many, it’s weight loss, but there are as many reasons for joining health clubs as there are people who join them-and the key to keeping your members happy and active is to help them meet the goals that brought them to your club in the first place. Believe it or not, doing that doesn’t have to be complicated.
Start with a realistic view of their existing fitness levels. Most people who join health clubs know that they need to be in better shape-what they may not understand is why it’s important for them to know exactly what kind of shape they’re in. Every member who joins your club should have a clear set of starting numbers, from body mass index measurements to weight and body measurements so that they can track their progress. Not all fitness success shows up as immediate weight loss, and for some members, seeing little difference in the numbers on their scale can really make them feel their fitness efforts are useless. If you can show them tightened muscles or reduced body fat, however, they may be inspired to keep on keeping on. You might also consider measuring other tangible factors that improve with regular exercise, such as blood pressure or blood cholesterol levels, so that members can see their commitment to exercise has more benefits beyond the physical.
Customize as much as possible. Not every club has the resources to devote personal trainers to every single member, and that’s OK. But be aware that the more specific someone’s fitness program is, the more successful he’s likely to be when it comes to maintaining it. That means the more you can help members put together their own unique workout plan, the more likely they are to reach their fitness goals. If you don’t have personal trainers available for all members, offer orientation classes or a variety of printed fitness plans at your club’s front desk. The key is to give your members the tools they need to put together a fitness plan that they can stick to and that will give them the results they want.
Offer some kind of accountability. Weight Watchers has had tremendous success helping people meet their weight loss goals not because its diet plan is anything unusual-it’s a mostly common sense approach to a healthy diet-but because it makes members accountable for their weight loss efforts. We’re not advocating weekly weigh-ins for your members-and we certainly don’t think you should push anyone to measure or weigh in if they don’t want to, but offering accountability measures can be a great way to keep your members on the right path. Offer weekly body fat measurements, or just be sure there are plenty of scales in your locker rooms. Post notices in reminding members how to check their heart rates so that they can see improvement over time. By making it easy for members to track their progress, you’re making it harder for them to slack off-and that’s the real secret to fitness success.
