Article on Group Exercise Insights

1. 20 OnSite Fitness | GroupEx
Group exercise for
growth and strength
There’s a secret to growing stronger bonds with and among your members – and to
growing membership by an average of 500 people per facility.
By Phillip Mills
CEO of Les Mills International
W When you ask people what they want when they join a gym or
attend a recreation center, you commonly get answers like “to
lose weight,” to “to get in shape” or “to improve my health.”
In other words, they want results. But people know they can
Building bonds – making exercise social – is one of the most
powerful motivators. Anything you can do that gets people
working out with each other or with your staff builds strong
exercise adherence.
get results from almost any type of exercise – by walking Personal training, small-group training, clubs within your club
around the block or working out in their living room, for like sports training, hiking, even purely social activities like
example. So why do they come to us as exercise professionals? book clubs or wine clubs keep people coming back again and
again. We are social creatures.
The answer is motivation. People hope and expect that in the
environment of an exercise facility they’ll be inspired and We’ve tried everything along these over 40 years in my family’s
enabled to achieve more than they can on their own. gym chain in New Zealand. We have as many as 90 personal
and small-group trainers per facility. We have spent many
There are some simple tools for motivation. Providing thousands of dollars per facility on audiovisual systems to
an attractive, enjoyable facility is one. Education and create great workout environments. And we’ve created dozens
communication help, as they leave people feeling of internal groups where people do everything from learning
empowered and involved. healthy cooking to running triathlons to speed dating.
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2. GroupEx | www.onsite-fitness.com 21
In short, group-exercise members attend more often,
have higher retention, generate more referrals, are
prepared to pay more and won’t leave your facility for a
budget club down the road.
The same research shows that facilities with world-class
group exercise have 500 more members per club
than the global average. It’s so powerful that we’ve
trademarked a name for it: “The Group Effect™.”
Here are some of the things you can do to build a great
group-exercise program:
Among everything we’ve tried, the activity
that has worked best over all of those years
is group exercise. That’s the reason we
started our global group-exercise business
in the first place: it is the most effective
way to get the maximum number of people
exercising regularly.
For me, attendance is the most important
metric in any facility. A lot of people focus on
sales, but that yields only short-term success
unless you also have good retention. Many
of us measure retention, but often without
knowing how to do much about it.
Our research of many years shows that
attendance is the key measure that drives
retention. It’s as simple as it is obvious:
members who come often are much less
likely to cancel. In fact, attendance also drives
sales, via increased word-of-mouth referrals.
Even the most successful facilities drive
perhaps 10% of their attendance through
personal training and 3% to 4% through
small-group training. On the other hand,
facilities with even moderately successful
group exercise programs achieve 30% of total
visits for group exercise, and up to 50% and
more in some cases.
Just as important as these overall numbers,
excellent group exercise gets individuals
coming more often. Our independent
research commissioned from companies like
Nielsen consistently finds that people
attending Les Mills classes use their facility
more than three times per week, compared
with industry averages between one and two
times per week.
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3. 22 OnSite Fitness | GroupEx
• Recruit and develop great instructors. A single great
teacher will attract and retain hundreds of members
to a club over time.
• Support your teachers with a great training and
development plan.
• Work with your instuctors to set attendance goals
for each of their classes. Publish a scorecard of class
sizes with recognition and reward for the biggest
classes, fastest-growing classes and so on.
• Promote individual classes among members, and
spice this up by regularly offering new classes. The
latter can be popular branded classes like Zumba or
BODYPUMP®, or can be new classes your teachers
create in-house.
It’s always an important decision whether to develop
your classes in-house or to invite a third-party partner
to help. I am biased, of course! I encourage you to ask
yourself some questions.
Perhaps you already have a great group-exercise
offering. How do you know? Do you count your
weekly group attendances and benchmark them against
industry standards?
Do you design your timetable to maximize attendance
and minimize cost per head? Do your teachers use the
best choreography and the most popular music? Is the
music legally licensed in all respects?
Do you benchmark your instructors against the world’s
best and provide inspirational training and development
to grow their skills?
Do your members regularly refer their friends to classes
and do you have an integrated sales and marketing system
that promotes your group ex program for greater member-
ship sales and retention?
We encourage you to have a look at your group exercise
offering. If it’s not yet at world-class standard, an upgrade
might transform your facility and your community.
Les Mills is the preferred group fitness provider of the
Jewish Community Centers Association. Les Mills pro-
grams are offered in over 300 YMCAs across the US as
well as college gyms and community centers. Les Mills of-
fers ten different group-exercise programs, each of which
is renewed every three months with new choreography,
music and instructor notes. Its programs are licensed in
more than 14,000 facilities in 70 countries, and are taught
by 90,000 instructors to millions of people each week.
www.lesmills.com OSF
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4. GroupEx | www.onsite-fitness.com 23
try our other fitness offerings.”
In its first six months, BODYPUMP® almost tripled the number
Groupex builds of members participating in group fitness, while also increasing
the average number of times they attended each week.
Baltimore’s JCC Now the two JCCs offer four more LES MILLS® classes –
BODYFLOW® (mind-body), BODYSTEP® (step aerobics),
BODYATTACK® (high-energy fitness), and SH’BAM™ (simple
community dance fitness). LES MILLS® programming occupies 44% of all
slots on the groupex schedule at the two gyms.
Group exercise is drawing more and more people into exercise
at the JCC of Greater Baltimore – and encouraging them to
try other forms of exercise, too. “Group exercise has become
a touchpoint between members and our Centers,” says Amy
Schwartz, Fitness and Wellness Director.
Groupex participation exploded in late 2007 when the facility
introduced Les Mills’ barbell class BODYPUMP®, says Amy.
She runs fitness programming at two Centers – the religiously
conservative Weinberg Park Heights JCC in central Baltimore
and the suburban, eclectic Rosenbloom Owings Mills JCC.
“We have created an atmosphere that fills the classes,” she
says. “And we’ve found that the more often people come to
the Center, the more likely they are to remain members and to
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5. 24 OnSite Fitness | GroupEx
Group fitness also accounts for over 30% of all exercise visits and culture that has strengthened our instructor
to the two facilities – up from 15% in 2007. “The classes are team enormously.”
wonderful,” says Amy. “People love them.”
• “We designed our group fitness timetables (since we
The figures tell the story: of 1550 adult members who use the have two facilities) in response to the requests of our
Centers daily, 500 attend a group exercise class. members – not where instructors fit. The LES MILLS®
programming makes this easier: since more than one
Amy shares a number of keys to success: instructor is trained in each class, we have much more
• “We made Group Fitness classes free with JCC flexibility to meet members’ needs while also working
membership.” Previously, members had to pay extra to around the preferences of individual instructors.”
participate in groupex.” This was a matter of both
competion and efficiency: all other facilities in the area • “We’ve worked hard to accommodate the values of our
included group classes in their basic memberships, and different communities. For example, we have mostly
there were advantages in not having to police who had single-gender classes in our central-city facility where our
and hadn’t paid. members are a little more conservative, and coed classes
in the other.”
• “We brought in pre-choreographed formats with name
recognition: Les Mills BODYPUMP®, BODYSTEP®, Using choreographed programs from outside vendors has
BODYFLOW® and SH’BAM™; Powder Blue Productions’ freed up time to concentrate on members’ needs, Amy says.
TurboKICK, and some ZUMBA programs.” “I have more time to deal with our members, since top-quality
programming and new music arrives fresh every three months, my
• “We increased the number of classes we offer by instructors are trained and certified by world-class experts, and if
50% - and the classes are still packed. In one of our I need advice there’s an experienced team that can help.”
facilities, we have to give out numbers to manage the
places. Now we are looking for alternate spaces in our “It’s definitely a big step to decide to buy outside
facilities to offer classes. For example, we’re replacing the programming,” says Amy. “It was a big decision for us five
linoleum tiles in our auditorium with an appropriate fitness years ago.”
flooring so we can offer large classes there.”
“But we would never go back to trying to create everything
• “We hired well-qualified instructors who understand the in-house – that’s harder, and in the end doesn’t serve members
importance of being part of a team. In fact, the Les Mills as well.” OSF
training and certification creates a common language
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