As the owner of a fitness center, it's your job to keep your club members motivated and encourage them to improve their body composition. An excellent way to do so is through fitness challenges, which hold members accountable and give them a sense of community. According to research data, the social experience is the highest motivating factor for joining and going to the gym.
This article will consider five of the best body composition fitness challenges to host at your gym. We will also look at how these plans can benefit your fitness business.
How Fitness Challenges Benefit Your Fitness Club
Fitness challenges are versatile and can be used to benefit your health-related business in several ways. The following are some examples of how you can use these challenges to grow your fitness club.
Produce New Leads
These days, people are wary of giving out their contact information, especially as their inboxes fill up with spam. However, potential members are likely to give out their contact information to join a free fitness challenge.
If you want to use your next fitness challenge as an opportunity to generate new leads, make sure that you open access up to everyone, not just current members.
Then, provide opportunities for participants to see what your gym has to offer. If they have access to the gym during the challenge, instruct staff to pay extra attention to them.
Lastly, be sure to establish a relationship with potential members. By the end of the challenge, you should see substantial growth due to your hard work.
Motivate Current Members
Although it is essential to generate new leads, it will do little good if you have a high turnover rate in members. It would be beneficial if you focused on keeping your current members satisfied and motivated. Doing so will keep them coming back to your fitness club.
Encourage Referrals
Members participating in your fitness challenge will likely mention it to their colleagues, friends, or family members. They, too, may wish to join in on the excitement. Thus, these types of events are great opportunities to get referrals.
Increase Sales
In addition to the above benefits, fitness challenges present the opportunity to boost sales. You can offer participants the opportunity to purchase a pack of products to help them make the most of the challenge, such as equipment or supplements. If you are interested to learn more about increasing sales, our 7 Fitness Center Marketing Tips to Increase Sales talks more about this in-depth.
Instruct Participants
By instructing members, you provide extra value to their membership and increase their satisfaction. Before the challenge begins, you can set them up with all the information they need to succeed by hosting a seminar.
Maximize Member Loyalty
When current customers participate in fitness challenges, they put forth more effort and are likely to see results. The bond they form with other members during these events will also encourage them to stay at your fitness center rather than chase a cheaper membership rate. Listening to your customers can also pay off very well, you can get their ideas on improving your services through surveys.
Types of Challenges
There is an infinite number of challenges that you can try out at your gym or fitness club. It is an excellent idea to make the challenge accessible for all fitness levels and ages rather than focusing on a specific audience. By doing so, you will enable all to participate despite limitations.
The first thing you might want to do before creating a fitness challenge is to consider fitness trends in 2021. Home workouts, wellness, and therapeutic fitness are trending at the moment, so you may consider incorporating these aspects into your challenges.
We will now consider five of the best challenges for fitness centers and clubs in 2021.
1. Running, Cycling, or Rowing Challenge
If you want to center your challenge on a specific exercise form, you should choose cardio exercises that members can perform at the fitness club. Here are some excellent options.
Running
Most gym-goers want to burn fat, and the calories burned running are significant. In this type of challenge, every participant can set a mileage goal for the month. They have the flexibility of running at the gym or outside, making it an excellent challenge for non-member participants or socially-distant workouts.
Several apps track running distance, including fitness devices and smartwatches. Thus, it is accessible to most individuals, no matter their fitness level.
Cycling
If you prefer to go a different route, you can set up a cycling challenge. This running alternative works exceptionally well for gym members who cannot run due to bad knees or joint issues. Members can cycle at the gym or on their bikes, tracking their mileage with exercise tracking apps.
Rowing
Another attractive alternative is a challenge centered around rowing.
Since rowing machines offer intense aerobic exercise, it can suit even the most advanced participant. You can use the digital dashboards on the rowing machines to track your participants' progress.
2. Most Calories Burned
This type of challenge focuses on results rather than methods, giving your members a lot more freedom. They can do the exercises that they enjoy and are comfortable with, such as running, swimming, rowing, walking, or anything else.
Participants can use apps to count their calorie burn or use a fitness tracker or watch. These challenges are great motivators to get people moving throughout the day, even when they are not exercising. Getting extra steps or taking the stairs will contribute to total calorie burn, making it a safe option for beginners or older individuals.
3. Most Club Visits Challenge
This challenge is a great way to incentivize your members and encourage them to come to the gym more often. You can reward members for visiting the fitness center as often as possible, even if it is just for a 20-minute workout session.
You will need to make sure that everyone signs in or swipes their key pass when entering the gym. Moreover, staff members should closely monitor access points so no one can cheat by logging in multiple times.
4. Healthy Eating Challenge
Instead of focusing on a body challenge and exercise alone, you may wish to create a healthy eating challenge that concentrates on nutrition. You can make a list of healthy recipes for your gym members to cook and eat at home. They can take pictures of these meals and share them on social media.
This challenge is a great way to make sure that your members are crushing it at the gym and in the kitchen. You can also have your members use a nutrition app to track their calories, macros, and water intake.
5. Most Body Fat Percentage Lost
In the past, weight loss challenges were all the rage. Nowadays, people realize that the scale doesn't tell us everything. Measurements and body fat percentage are better indicators of shaping your body, as they can tell us whether we have gained muscle mass.
To host this type of challenge, you will need to have the proper equipment that can accurately measure your participants' before and after body composition. While some scales claim to have these capabilities, they often provide inaccurate results.
Your members would surely be disappointed if they were not able to track their progress correctly. Therefore, you should look into 3D body scanning tools for these types of challenges. They are an accurate way to measure participants' advancement throughout the challenge and don't require much time to complete.
Reward Your Participants
No matter which challenge you decide to implement in your fitness club, you should be sure to reward the members for participating. The following are some ideas for winners or participants in challenges:
- discounts on memberships or services
- free personal training session
- exercise apparel
- fitness equipment and gear
- gift cards or cash
Although all participants will be rewarded with their progress, free merchandise or discounts will certainly sweeten the deal. A little competition may even encourage more members to sign up.
Recording Participants' Body Composition and Progress
One of the greatest incentives you can give your participants is the satisfaction of seeing their bodies change through their hard work and effort. Therefore, before getting started with any fitness challenge, it is essential to have a system to help your members track their progress. Your tracking system should include factors other than weight and body measurements.
Ideally, you should track participants' body composition and give them comprehensive 3D body scans. These will help them understand their body's changes and motivate them to continue working hard at your fitness club.
If you are unfamiliar with 3D body scanning, this video can explain how it records body composition and exact measurements, as well as other insights.
Take Your Body Composition Challenges to the Next Level
By generating challenges that motivate your members, you will create an extra push for your members and help them reach their goals. Also, fitness challenges will help you increase your membership sign-ups, maintain your current members, and add value to your business.
In order to take your fitness challenges to the next level, you need cutting edge technology that tracks your members' progress, such as Styku! If you would like more information about how Styku tracks body composition, contact us today!
