Where were you on March 14, 2020?
I’ll never forget where I was. It was my birthday and, unbeknownst to me, I had taught my final group exercise class. After thousands of hours on the bike, leading running groups, HIIT challenges, and even Step classes, my days working with individuals as a personal trainer and fitness instructor were over.
Everyone in the fitness industry can remember exactly where they were when clubs were shut-down in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. I had to reimagine my role as a club operator and Membership Director overnight.
What do you know now that you wish you would have known then? How could the potential (and in some cases real) dissolution of your club membership have been prevented? Was moving to video class enough to keep your membership connected? Was virtual training enough to keep your trainers and fitness team busy?
What perceptions within your membership were correct? What assumptions that you held about your members were correct?
When Covid-19 first appeared on the scene, the largely held belief was that gyms were a perfect storm for contracting the virus. Members feared getting sick from weight benches, barbells, and treadmill fans. Even the idea of sweat in the air made the fitness club ground zero in the minds of gym users. Was this true? No, but it doesn’t actually matter. What matters is what our members thought, and still think today. The general public thinks that gyms are a hotbed of viruses.
As I write this, we are in the beginning days of the MonkeyPox virus; and, the conversations feel all too familiar. “I think I’m safe, but the gym seems pretty risky.” “For now, I’ll be working out at home.” “Thank goodness it’s nice outside. Hopefully, this will pass before it starts snowing.”
Can your business sustain another potential disruption? How patient will your members be with another shift in service?
What if you could introduce a fitness solution that was tied to your facility and your fitness team, BUT was also designed to be used outside of it? What if members could follow this program on their own schedule?
The key to engaging members in an uncertain environment is to provide fitness solutions that maintain a connection with your brand and with the community that they know and appreciate. In other words, you must transition your club from facility to solution, and do it NOW…before you need it.
Having been a provider in the fitness industry for over 20 years, a club operator, and a lifetime gym fanatic, the solution I’ve created, myVitFit, is built on a love of the industry. The driving force behind myVitFit is to make fitness clubs more successful in their physical space and beyond it.
The myVitFit platform provides customized solutions for every single one of your members, whether they work with a personal trainer or not. For those members who do not, the myVitFit platform introduces them to your training team with specific fitness solutions designed just for them under the care and guidance of your professionals.
For your fitness team, we do all of the work. They get all of the credit and all of the data they need to build their book of clients and provide value to your membership. Trainers can do less and positively affect more lives.
If you knew then what you know now, what would you have done? We have some ideas. Let us help you and your team thrive through any condition. That’s what we were built to do. myVitFit is about YOU.