Now there’s a blog post title I didn’t expect to be writing! When you open a group fitness and personal training facility there are some essentials that you need to sort out. You need a space to work-out in. It doesn’t need to be large. We’ve certainly proven that! You can get pretty creative with CrossFit workouts with minimal space to move around in.
You need equipment. Same rule applies. I’ve read about affiliates that started with nothing but a couple of barbells and an assortment of kettle-bells and dumbbells. Again, it’s the passion you have for designing fun and challenging workouts that gets you through. We knew that too when planning our facility. But we decided to have more equipment to begin with. I really just wanted everyone in our sessions to have a great experience every time they train – and part of that experience is the fact that they don’t need to share equipment when doing the WOD. Sharing is caring, I know, I know! But it’s a drag when you’re busting a gut during an AMRAP and there’s a traffic jam because there’s a queue to use a rower or an assault bike!
A few things definitely need to be lined up in order to open for business. You don’t need to have everything 100% ready though. We weren’t in that position at all when we opened our doors last month. No sir! Luckily, CrossFitters generally don’t care much about cosmetics for instance. But there is a bare minimum. One of those minimum requirements that you are entitled to assume is that your members are actually going to be able to make it to your gym. We never really think about it. It’s just assumed I guess.
Sadly, it seems like we won’t be able to rely on this assumption for much longer. Or at least not for the foreseeable future. We’re living day to day as the situation with this pandemic develops. Right now, we’re business as usual. As a small micro-gym we don’t have a lot of work to do in order to keep our facility clean and free from unwanted viral visitors! We had pretty thorough cleaning procedures in place anyway right from day 1. So this isn’t really an onerous development on that front. But that isn’t going to be much help when all fitness facilities are forced to shut up shop for an indeterminate period of time. It’s going to happen. We don’t know when. Probably soon. Best be prepared!
And that is what we’ve done. But before I get to that story, lets focus for a short time on the need for leadership at this juncture. Leadership comes in many varied shapes and forms. But the common element is that good leaders provide direction. They keep the compass trained on the right coordinates so that everyone following knows where they’re going, when they’re likely to arrive and why they’re going there.
In our gym we’ve got a compass of sorts. We’re ready to take our members along an alternate route that will keep them working out no-matter the situation. Lock-down or otherwise. We’re ready to move all of our members to online, remote coaching and training for the duration of the emergency. It took some time but we’re set up for this now. In short, our members will receive individualized and/or group programming to complete whilst in isolation. Wherever that might be. We’ll be using some awesome software platforms that will help us to deliver additional services like nutritional coaching to our members who sign up to the program.
Our community will continue to thrive as an online version of what we usually experience in the gym every day. In the gym we have access to awesome new equipment. We want our members to continue to experience these benefits and so we’ll also bring in an equipment booking service. If we supply our members with some gear, then there is absolutely no reason for anyone to take a break from their training. Unless of course they find themselves in hospital with dose of the Frankenstein virus currently making the rounds!
So … if you workout with any regularity, have you asked your gym manager or your personal trainer what they’re doing to keep you training through this crisis?