Monday 14 September 2015

Forget Exercise Plateau, make Programming Achievable

How often should you be trying to review your member’s programmes? The “industry standard” of every 6-8 weeks is often unachievable, unless you are running a small, bespoke service gym where everyone gets a PT session once a month (in which case, you almost certainly have great member retention!)

In reality, for clubs with over 1,000 members, you are setting yourself up to fail if you review programmes every 6-8 weeks. Check out the maths below:

If you’ve got 3 full time staff working 7 days a week on programme reviews, then the 6-8 week review is achievable. But if your staff want to do anything else in their day (welcome new members, interact more generally with members, set and manage challenges, etc.), then you’re setting them up to fail and letting your members down too.

As previously discussed on this blog, we suggest that the best time to review an exercise programme is when the member wants to. Getting the member to set the review date means they buy into the process, and work towards the review date. It could be based on time elapsed or number of workouts since the last review.

Now some members won’t know when is appropriate, and defer to the instructors recommendation. For a busy club, we use the below calculation to get to an achievable default. But the member who can’t make up their own mind is always offered the default, and can accept, extend or shorten the time suggested. This way they still buy into the process.
By setting an achievable target, you’ll get more reviews done, as you won’t be chasing members and getting turned down every day. And your members will welcome the exercise programme review, be more motivated, and stick around for longer.

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