According to research by IHRSA, approximately 40% of new health club members have never joined a gym before.
It is important to remember this when we think about how to support and take care of new members.
As fitness professionals, we often take for granted knowledge that we have about the gym, how to do various exercises and general rules about training and fitness.
Therefore it is useful to, from time to time to put ourselves in the shoes of a new member and think about how they would feel when joining a gym for the first time.
A new gym user would likely feel nervous and uncertain about what to do. There would be so much to learn, from exercise names, to how to do those exercises to how to turn on the treadmill and put it on the correct settings. Learning all this can be overwhelming.
If a member becomes too overwhelmed this can really slow their progress and lead to drop out.
This is obviously why we induct new members. We want to help educate them about how the gym works, and how to do certain exercises that will help them reach their goals.
However, our induction processes can often fall short.
New member education is an ongoing job, it takes time, persistence and follows up.
There are, however, some simple ways you can make educating new members that little bit easier.
3 tips for educating your new members
- Pictures of exercises on workout programs
- In that past, workout programs written on paper cards would require the member to think hard to remember how to do a particular exercise. Having pictures of exercises on your workouts can help prompt a new members memory making it that bit easier in the early stages.
- Videos of exercises
- You can take this a step further by providing videos of exercises. If a member can watch a video on a touch screen or their smartphone of how to do an exercise, this helps members when they are struggling to remember how to do an exercise.
- Exercise descriptions
- Another way to educate new members about their workout plan is via exercise descriptions. Some people are more responsive and learn better by reading then watching. By having descriptions of how to do exercises, this can further help members educate themselves so they can maintain momentum in the early stages of their program.
By providing these extra resources you are providing that little bit of extra support to new members that can go a long way to helping them learn and become comfortable faster. The more new members that become comfortable and into a habit of regular exercise the better your member retention will be!
