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5 Tips to finding the GYM for you!

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Below we cover 5 tip that will help you pick the gym for you!

1. No Free Trials

One of the biggest limitations to finding a gym that suits you will be limiting yourself by looking for something free.

Many of the gyms and facilities that don’t need new members and potentially have better quality services may not offer anything for free. As there is no need for it but will either offer a casual or temporary pass.

Be open to this and happy to invest a little bit of money to get a better idea of what they can offer you and what their services are like.  

friendly gym
Group Training

2. Two Week Rule

When trialing a new gym give yourself 2 weeks to experience the services and meet the coaches/trainers.

First impressions whilst important can give the wrong impression or an inaccurate representation of what service quality and the overall environment may be like.

During the two weeks look to trial all services, this will include all classes and potentially even some personal training or nutrition coaching services. Having a broader experience will lead to a better and more accurate understanding of the value they can provide you and who knows you may also learn something.

3. Trial 3 Gyms (3 quote rule)

open gym no contract
Effort is a choice

Finding the right gym environment is essential to consistency and long-term results.

Have you ever heard of the 3 quote rule: get three quotes to have a look at the top end, low end, and the middle range pricing of gyms near you.

If the top end is really high relative to the middle they are targeting a specific demographic. For example corporate business. On the other end of the scale if the low is very low relative to the middle they are looking for what we call non-use members.

The goal is to charge just enough so that people will not cancel when they are not using the gym membership as canceling means they are accepting that they have failed, many will not cancel.

I’m sure you have heard it before (I will go next week or next month). This is the perfect client as they do not want to accept the failure and do not take up space on site whilst contributing to income. Often the middle will be the best value for money. If the middle gym membership is close to the top end normally within 5 to 10%, go with the top. If all are close, try all 3 for the 2 week period and make your decision after.

On that note if you have the patients and trials are offered, give each facility a 2-week trial and make your decision to commit to a gym membership for the best-suited facility after.

4. Hidden Costs in Gym Fees

Compare over a 12month period for all quotes: Whilst one may be more expensive per week the value may be more obvious when you consider all fees.

For Example:

$30 per week, no-joining, no cancelation fees, no debit charges, childcare included – (30 x 52 = $1560)

$15 per week, $150 joining, 3month cancelation, $2.10 per debit, $5 per child per week – (22.10 x 52 + 150 + 195 = $1495)

This is an example based on average for ease of explanation, but as you can see things can quickly add up over the year. This is marketing 101 only shows the lowest price when marketing and you normally never pay for what is only advertised. It is up to us to make an educated decision but requires us to do some homework. If we get ripped off that is on us, do some homework.

5. Be Open Minded

functional training with friends
Environment is everything

We all have natural biases and tend to gravitate towards what’s comfortable and what we know, this can be one of our biggest limitations.

What we are going to the gym for will often require us to be challenged in many ways, we need to look at some form of discomfort as a good thing. Be open to trying new forms of training and mixing with different types of people. We will adapt to our training stimulus, and all eventually hit a maintenance phase. Often too much of the same can not be of great value for our time and effort.

For example, cycling – you start with 3 rides per week and around 20km so let say 40-60min. 2months later your now at 5days per week and now need to increase your distance to increase the challenge, but you don’t have the spare time, so you give up altogether.

Where if you mixed in some strength training some swimming for conditioning and recovery or mobility. You could dial back the riding ramp up one of the other areas and become sensitive to the riding stimulus again and develop in other areas. What we need to do for progress is often a lot higher than what we need for maintenance, we can use this to our advantage and help build and develop other key areas whilst maintaining in current.

Conclusion

There are many training modalities and diets out there that make big claims and promises but at the end of the day, the biggest drivers for change are consistency & variety/change which are driven by behaviors and habits.

I hope that what we have discussed can help you find a facility and environment that will create consistent behaviors and habits. It is about becoming the person who can have and achieve the things that you want.

Disclaimer

We are a functional fitness facility and understand we have biases like everyone else, we have attempted to be as objective as possible when creating this guide. Understand that what is value to one person may not necessarily be valuable to another. Thought and planned out choices always lead to better decisions.

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