Filling a club’s fitness center with the proper equipment requires a thoughtful balance between member wants and facility needs.
Second in a Five-Part Series
Once the foundation of a fitness center is laid, the second step is to fill the space with safe, effective equipment that members will want to use. However, with an entire industry dedicated to producing high-end exercise equipment, the prospect of narrowing down decisions (distributor vs. manufacturer, trendy vs. practical, bells and whistles vs. standard) can be daunting.
Fortunately, trade organizations like the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association (IHRSA) provide practical materials that can help break down the quandary into useful decision-making data. IHRSA’s annual “Health Club Equipment Benchmarking Report” is based on surveys completed by fitness club operators, and offers insights into spending trends, equipment floor life, and how to choose a vendor. (All of IHRSA’s reports are available for free for members and at cost for non-members at www.IHRSA.org.)
In 2014, Club & Resort Business is presenting a special, five-part series to detail how properties can create and maintain attractive fitness centers that will appeal to the most fitness-minded of members, as well as those who might need a little push.This second installment, on Equipment Purchasing, details the basic exercise equipment needed to build a fitness center that matches membership demographics to facility needs.Part One (“Blueprints for Wellness,” February 2014) focused on Fitness Center Layout, outlining the organizational and design elements that can be key to member engagement and distinguishing the club as a preferred destination, vs. a “big-box gym.” Part Three (August 2014), Staffing, will focus on in-house vs. managed operations, full-time vs. part-time and contract employees, and making the right matches between instructors and the overall membership. Part Four (October 2014), Operations, will consider appropriate fitness center hours, pricing, access during staffed and unstaffed periods, maintenance, and extra services. Part Five (December 2014), Programming, will parse through fitness program options, from individual instruction to group classes. The final installment will also consider member involvement, coordinating with other departments, and adjusting to trends. |
Further, good advice on making the right equipment choices can come from peers who have already been there.
Doing Your Homework
Before purchasing equipment, suggests Karen Sullivan, Fitness & Wellness Director of The Kansas City Country Club (KCCC) in Mission Hills, Kan., a good first step is to visit other private-club fitness centers, to get staff and member insights into what works, what’s popular, and what may not have been a great investment.
If visiting clubs is not a viable option, browsing fitness industry trade shows not only allows your club’s fitness expert to test out the newest equipment in exhibition rooms, but often offers educational opportunities and face time with manufacturers and distributors.
While browsing the industry’s offerings, Sullivan advises that an a la carte approach to selecting manufacturers can be the best option.
“While we would like everything to look nice and match, you don’t have to feel stuck with just one manufacturer,” Sullivan says. “You can probably get most equipment from one vendor, but there are certain things that some people do the best, so stay open-minded.”
Brent Darden, who serves as a chairperson of IHRSA and is co-owner of Telos Fitness Center in Dallas, does note, however, that it’s important for end users to work with the same interface.
“Almost all of the big suppliers offer an array of quality cardio equipment, so you could conceivably get a few pieces from each based on what you like the most. But I firmly believe the end user doesn’t know the difference or care,” Darden explains.
“What does impact the user is the computer interface and figuring that out. At a private club, you want the interface to be the same from equipment to equipment, so members can figure out how to program, how to get it started, and change the level with ease.”
Beyond preliminary research, Sullivan recommends meeting with multiple representatives from vendors, if possible, and inviting them to your club to determine what they can offer, how they can help map out the space using specialized software, and to offer a bid.
Both Sullivan and Darden advise that when selecting a vendor, sticking with big brand names is best.
“Go with the major, recognized brands, as opposed to an off-brand you haven’t heard of,” Darden says. “The cost savings are not much, and you want to make sure the equipment comes with a good warranty, which is usually three years. You want someone who can service their equipment as well.
“Even if you have engineers on staff to maintain your facility, they typically aren’t knowledgeable about servicing fitness equipment,” Darden adds.
Keeping It Sparkling
At the beginning of March, KCCC’s fitness center closed its doors for re-painting and decided to use the time for “spring cleaning,” which also included equipment maintenance. The company that provided KCCC with its fitness equipment has a working relationship with a specific repair/maintenance team that also installed the equipment, making the installation and maintenance process go hand in hand.
BYOE – Bring Your Own EquipmentWhile club fitness centers are often decked out with high-tech, high-end equipment, some members are opting to bring in their own personalized gadgets to enhance their fitness experience and work toward specific goals.
Simple pedometers that count daily steps are being enhanced with a slew of benefits and options while worn on a user’s wrist. Popular brands of digital health and fitness trackers include Fitbit, Basis, Nike+FuelBand, Jawbone, and Polar USA, with built-in capabilities to monitor heart rate, perspiration, temperature, calories consumed, weight, and even sleep cycles, depending on make and model. Workouts can be customized as well with associated apps or on-screen data, and USB ports and Bluetooth-syncing capabilities keep the gadgets connected to users’ laptops, phones, tablets, and computers. Some properties, like The Kansas City Country Club (KCCC), are incorporating the trend into their programming, says Karen Sullivan, Director of Fitness and Wellness. An assistant in KCCC’s fitness center is now orchestrating a Fitbit challenge for members interested in digital tracking, Sullivan reports. “Everyone tracks themselves and then we compare results—most users track steps, miles, calories burned, calories taken in, and how well you sleep,” says Sullivan. “It’s kind of like a wakeup call—like ‘Wow, I need to go walk the dog or hit the gym.’ They’re great tools, and for some pro shops and retail operations in fitness centers, it would be a great thing to sell.” |
The club currently has preventative maintenance contracts in place, so equipment technicians show up quarterly rather than just on an as-needed basis. This helps them catch things before they break down, Sullivan says.
“Make sure you have a repair company that has experience and has parts readily available for the equipment you’re purchasing, so they can arrive on site when you call them,” she adds. “The worst thing is to put an ‘out of order’ sign on something in a brand-new facility.”
Respondents to IHRSA’s benchmarking report stated that after-sales service and on-time installation were the two most important attributes when dealing with equipment suppliers—with both ranking higher than having the right range of equipment options. “You have to keep your equipment from getting tired—whether that means upgrading from time to time or just keeping it working properly,” Sullivan says.
The longest-lasting fitness equipment, findings from the IHRSA report indicate, has proved to be multi-station strength machines, with only 16% being replaced within five years. Cardio machines take the hardest beating, the report found, with 73% of ellipticals, 67% of exercise bikes and 71% of equipment classified as “other cardio” requiring replacement within five years.
The report also indicates that 73% of personal TVs that are connected directly to equipment will need to be replaced within five years—and that, in turn, could make the elliptical, treadmill, or bike the TV is attached to less desirable or unusable until the TV itself is fixed. KCCC’s solution to that issue is to avoid equipment with TVs attached and instead use TV stands next to each machine, so if one or the other requires maintenance, both are not removed from circulation.
“A lot of the cardio equipment with circuit boards and electronics are going to break down more quickly than selectorized equipment,” Sullivan says. “You can hook up your iPhone, watch DVDs—some of those things are really great, but when you have so many things that are difficult to figure out, it can be more confusing than beneficial, and your staff become more IT people than trainers. The more things that are on [the equipment], the more things that can go wrong. Some people just want to hit the green button on the treadmill and go.”
Darden agrees, noting that most members have little interest in creating a “program” on cardio equipment. But features that allow iPhone connectivity and Internet accessibility can be beneficial, he adds.
Pleasing Everybody
Before weighing the pros and cons of exploring fitness trends, club fitness centers have to establish a baseline of offerings. Basic, foundational fitness can be divided into three categories, Darden says: cardio (bikes, ellipticals and treadmills get the most use), strength (including selectorized weight machines and free weights), and stretching and flexibility.
By popularity, Darden ranks treadmills at the top, followed by ellipticals, stairclimbers, upright bikes, recumbent bikes and rowing machines.
Balancing what trainers want to provide and what members want can be tricky. Many trainers, Sullivan says, prefer more functional, true-to-life routines, rather than stiff exercises that offer minimal range of motion.
“Personal trainers typically do not use selectorized equipment—we use balls, bands and free weights, and we’ll have you do lunges to mimic picking your baby up off the floor or getting clothes out of the dryer,” she says.
“However, I do not want my 70-year-old client doing lunges when I’m not there,” she adds. “So selectorized equipment is useful for unassisted, unguided workouts.”
Case Study In mid-April, Panther Creek Country Club in Springfield, Ill., will break ground on a brand-new fitness facility to add amenities for the club’s members, whose average age is 52. Rather than survey members on what type of equipment they would like to fill the space, the club relied on a renovation committee made up of members and noted the club’s demographics to make decisions. “Most of our members are not weight training, so 70-80% of the facility will be cardio-related,” says Matt Ruehling, PGA, General Manager/Director of Golf. “There will be no free weights—instead, we’ll have individual or dual-use weight-training machines.” The club’s foundational pieces will include treadmills, bikes, adaptive motion trainers, and circuit machines. Panther Creek is still deciding whether to make its purchases through a distributor or directly from a manufacturer. “Fitness is a very important lifestyle decision, and we want to be the place where [our members] come to work out,” Ruehling says. |
A clear benefit of smaller equipment—such as mats, kettlebells, and free weights—is its mobility. Club fitness centers are typically not the only part of the property associated with physical activity, with golf, tennis, swimming, and other recreational options also available. At Columbia Country Club in Chevy Chase, Md., Fitness Director Angela Jackson notes that other departments use smaller equipment as needed, getting double use out of purchases.
“We do a tennis conditioning class every Wednesday on the tennis courts,” Jackson says. “Our trainer takes all the equipment: Bosu balls, TRXs, weights, cones, etc., to the tennis courts and works the ladies out, using the lines on the courts to focus on improving their speed, balance, agility and strength.”
Some clubs incorporate highly specialized equipment into their fitness centers. Pam Thrailkill, Director of Fitness at West Lake Country Club in Augusta, Ga., convinced her Board and General Manager to purchase a TRUEStretch stretching station in 2012. The cage-like structure is used by golfers to enhance flexibility on the course, and Thrailkill says it’s become one of the fitness center’s most popular pieces of equipment.
“Personally, I want to train to support my lifestyle,” Thrailkill says. “So my goal for everyone here is to improve their ‘game of life,’ as well as their golf or tennis games, so they keep coming back into the fitness center.”
When surveying members on what equipment they’d like to see fill the space, Darden suggests asking members to rank options by priority, to provide a better indication of what the majority of respondents really want.
“People might check boxes next to every piece of equipment, just in case they might want to use it in the future,” Darden says. “But if they rank in order of preference, I’ve got some information on a broad basis, to be able to say 90% of respondents ranked treadmills number one.”
When it comes to fitness trends, some come and go quicker than others, and it’s worth weighing the costs of a trendy program to keep members engaged in what the fitness center has to offer.
“We started a ballet barre class and barres are expensive, so we wanted to wait to make sure it’s not just a fad,” Sullivan says. “But you have to go along with fads to a certain degree. Tae Bo has come and gone, but to not have had it wouldn’t have been smart. Barre will probably come and go, too, but you have to just be wise and not spend too much.”
Of course, some fads can appear, disappear, and reappear again. Kettlebells and medicine balls, Sullivan notes, were fads in the 1930s, but are now mainstays in many fitness facilities. Further, trendy pieces benefit from modern knowledge of how the body exercises best.
“We’re never going to get away from big pieces of equipment, but trendier things move with you for more functional training,” Sullivan says.
It can be difficult, though, to get rid of equipment that members adore, and considering the trendy pieces members would like to see goes along with providing service to them. Sullivan recalls a member who wanted a particularly gimmicky piece of ab equipment that was prominently featured in infomercials.
“As trainers, we might roll our eyes at it, because there are so many ways to work your abs that you don’t need something like that,” she says. “So we try to educate them that maybe this isn’t the best choice. Still, sometimes you kind of have to placate them, as long as it’s not injurious.
“Everybody’s looking for the magic pill—and anything on TV is ‘magic’ because they promise so much,” she notes.
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