For our gym, scheduled workouts have been a positive development during the pandemic.
Since the early days of the pandemic, Fay’s Fitness changed to a scheduled model of exercising to limit the number of people in the gym. Now, everyone that exercises here has timeslots for their workouts.
There have been big advantages to this:
- Accountability. When you have a specific time to workout, people are more apt to stick with it.
- No more drop-ins. Some people are uncomfortable working out with people they don’t know.
- Workout with your friends or people you like. We have families that workout together as well as friends.
- Men welcome! We have always been primarily a women’s gym, but with the change, women don’t have to worry about men exercising in their timeslot, unless they are comfortable with that. We have several married couples that workout together.
- Member retention! Since this change, there are fewer dropouts.
What we discovered with the scheduling model is that there is a much broader appeal to the gym. Where some people may prefer a more flexible model where they can workout whenever they want, many others prefer a more personal, controlled environment.
The scheduling model opens up all sorts of possibilities:
- One family purchases a time slot during the week and brings different members of the family each time.
- People can choose a time slot to run an exercise class. Barb and I both run classes, but anyone else could do the same!
- We have several groups of “workout buddies”. Currently, if there are 4 people in a timeslot, we will not schedule anyone else in. Then you can pretty much do what you want – play the music you like or even do a workout online with friends.
We understand that there are those that prefer flexibility and don’t really care who they exercise with. We ran Fay’s Fitness as an “open” model for 30 years. With this change, we have discovered a whole new market where people can feel comfortable in a personal setting.
There is some flexibility within this model. We understand there are times one can’t workout within their scheduled time and they can contact us for another available time.
Call or message us to see what we can work out for you!
Ron