One of the biggest changes I have seen in the fitness industry over the last 20-30 is the size of gyms. They went from a small little community gym to the massive operations that are owned by the huge companies.
A lot of people joined the biggest gyms, and they made a lot of money.
The problem was that the big gyms didn’t realise that their memberships were not going to stay faithful for as long as they had hoped.
As has been previously discussed on here, due to a lack of attention and usually experience, the staff were not able to cope with the massive numbers joining these “super gyms”, and because profit was the main driver for these gyms, they always employed the minimum wage staff who were usually not very experienced.
The customer soon got fed up of not seeing results and constant turnover of staff, and biggest of all, the draconian contracts they had to sign, sometimes for 1-3 years in some cases as Watchdog has shown!
Then in America, then trend started to turn dramatically around 4-5 years ago. Despite offering cheaper memberships just to get people through the door, retention rates dropped to 3-5% which is devastating on any business.
When you add in the fact that the overhead for these businesses was £300 thousand a month, you had a business model that was about to crash and burn!
If you take a look at the business pages of any paper these days, you will see many casualties who can’t pay their rates and rent on their gyms, and often losses of millions of pounds.
The fact that they have 20 treadmills and bikes in one room doesn’t impress so many people anymore, but it does cost a SERIOUS amount of money and that’s whats hurting them.
A recent study done in America confirms this trend. 8 out of the top 10 gyms are much smaller, independently run gyms offering much more specialist training and advice. Results are always the number one offering from these places, instead of a competition of how many treadmills and bikes they can offer.
Its no coincidence that these smaller gyms are actually making a much bigger profit too! Its great that results matter again these days, and that training on endless machines is dying a slow death!!!
Training only on machines is not very efficient for the body, and can hamper your results, get back to free weight and freedom of natural movement, you will spend less time training and have double or treble the results!!!
