Avoid Gym Crowding

Today is the first day of the year.

Here comes the gym crowd…

LOOK I’M NOT TO BLAME. i may have wrote an email about how to join a gym but… i tell my guys to not workout on wednesday 🙄 

You can blame me tomorrow.

Well maybe not, see I’ve never even seen this “new years rush”.

That being said I’ll go over a few things here. How to counter this in a few different ways, and also my little tangent on what I think causes crowding. This is where I bring out my marketing genius (used to be a very famous professional marketing expert 😳)

Okay this is a post finished email warning. I realised my “little tangent” was not little. Originally I started with the tangent, now I’ll start with the approach.

Before entering any sort of changes you can make to avoid this, let’s go over how you can work with this.

Gym etiquette.

I’m going to make this super simple so no one messes this up.

The gym is a place where you are supposed to share things.

People should let you work in with them. You should let them do the same. Everyone pays the same amount.

I’m going to teach you a social interaction to have.

When you see someone on a machine/using equipment you need say this.

1. “Sorry, how many sets do you have left?” repeat if they don’t hear

Now this is the hard bit.

Think about whether or not you’re okay waiting that amount of sets.

If yes, wait.

If no, say this.

2. “Do you mind if I work in with you?”

If they don’t know what this means, explain it.

If you don’t know what this means, I’ll explain it.

Working in with someone just means that you’re going to share the equipment and alternate etc. It’s easy.

Please be social.

The worst thing that can happen is you just wait and someone ends up taking it when the other guy finishes, it’s not worth it.

OKAY IT’S TIME FOR THE APPROACHES.

Patient Approach

This is the first approach someone should try.

If you’re not patient at all then you’ve only got two options. Do the no-time approach, or take a week off. i really don’t recommend this…

For the people who aren’t TikTok brained.

Here are my protocol to finding a time where the gym’s empty.

1. Today should be your day off. Go do some cardio at your usual gym time. Assess.

2. Outside of that the best thing you can do is take a look at the heatmap of your gym. Is your usual gym time busy? When is it least busy?

This is literally the patient approach. Find the least busy time, and assess damage.

Good luck.

No-time Approach

“I’ve got no time Fletcher, I tired to go when it was the least busy but there were so many people I had to queue to get in the gym. I had to queue to fill up my water bottle. My usual 40m workout took 3 hours.”

Okay this is for those guys.

It doesn’t have to be SO overdramatic.

It can just be an extra 20 minutes you can’t handle.

Time is precious, I get it.

I’ll give you a few things to try, and I want you to follow them in the order or you’ll be going overkill.

Find the least amount of change possible to make this bearable.

1. Skip your warmup cardio by running to the gym/doing it before you come.

2. Bring bands to the gym/do bw alternatives when you KNOW you don’t have the time. (Match your usual movements as closely as possible)

   1. Here’s a link to some good resistance bands

3. Go home crying after your workout got changed

Not too hard really.

So, crowded gyms.

I reckon there’s 3 main things happening.

1. Location (population, competition, window shopping)

2. Psychological (utilities/avatar, buying power)

3. Availability (hours/days)

There’s also one joker, promotions/marketing.

Playing the joker card is both the most important thing, and doesn’t really mean much of anything.

It’s an amplifier. If there’s any promotion/marketing, the amount of potential members a gym can claim is higher. The better it is, the more they can take.

But it’s not just about the amount they take, it’s about how much can be taken.

No matter how good the marketing/promotion is, it can’t fix super weak major 3.

This is supposed to be a way for you guys to plan ahead and a mini rant but it’s going to end up being a guide on how to construct a gym for future gym owners 😭. If that’s a future dream, I guess you’re in luck.

Location

This quite literally is just where the gym is built.

No way to change this, it’s also not surprising it’s the first thing that matters to the amount of people.

A big part here is going to be the physical location. Major metro = better transport = more gyms you can go to easily. Countryside = far gyms and car transport.

Some countries also have a bigger emphasis on having cars, some don’t.

Population

I’ll start at the top.

This is just all the people in the vicinity who are able to go to the gym.

This is super super wide. Like takes 3 hours to travel to wide. That might sound strange but I’ll dial it in with the other categories.

And yes I’ve known people who have travelled 3 hours to get to the gym.

Remember here too, there’s many ways to travel.

Part of this would be more psychological, what type of vehicles do your people use, but whatever I’ll cheese it and count this as “vehicle population” 🙄.

Competition

I know this section is really self explanatory, so I won’t dawdle.

The more gyms that are close to someone, the harder a gym has to work to fight the other gyms for the customer.

If there’s another gym down the street, right next to, opposite, etc. Every person who joins gym 1, was a potential gym 2 customer. They’re practically the same, one just won them.

Gyms will win with a little bit of the other 2 (psychological and availability) but more times than not it’s the marketing/promotion which wins.

Think about it, who switches gyms?

The second they’ve got you, if you stay driven, you stay here.

It’s kinda like you reading my newsletter… 😳

Window Shopping

As much as the population and competition matters, you’re only cutting down the potential customers as you go along.

There’s a huge cherry on top that helps gyms.

Let me ask you a quick question. Why do you think TV ads before the most popular shows cost more? The “prime time” slots.

Anyone could answer this, there are more eyeballs.

The amount of people who watch TV, or watch that specific channel didn’t matter. It was all about it being in a good spot.

If a gym is the first thing outside a bus stop/train station, if it’s on the high street in the busy part.

It’s going to have a lot more eyeballs.

A good location is almost like it’s own marketing.

Psychological

This isn’t going to be some deep level analysis of the psychological state of gym goers.

It’s just explaining humans, people.

How they think. What they like. How to view them.

Utilities/Avatar

The most important thing in a gym is the utilities.

Most people join a gym because of just one thing.

Planet Fitness built it’s entire brand on cardio machines and pizza. Serious bodybuilding/powerlifting gyms ONLY do that one thing. They’re built around it.

Every gym is tailored around one type of person.

It just so happens most tailor around the “average person”.

If you go to a serious gym. You won’t really see this spike. You’re quite lucky…

Some guys have a bit more money, they need their message chairs and swimming pools and saunas.

They need to feel good.

The more generic a gym is the more at risk it is of New Years’ crowding.

The more niche it is…

I’ve heard horror stories of guys trying to get into proper powerlifting gyms 😭 

Buying Power

Gyms aren’t cheap.

If your gym REALLY ISNT CHEAP cries in £35 a month…

People aren’t going to join on a whim UNLESS the promotion is that good.

You need to feel like whatever you get from the gym is WORTH it.

This is a huge part of why New Years does so well. Even without promos and discounts, the motivation is there for them to accept. You’re highly motivated today.

Buying power is linked to your location, what are the people near you like? Rich? Poor? In between?

A lot of rich and in-between areas already have everyone at the gym who wants to be.

Availability

This is a big one.

If the times aren’t good for you, why sign up?

Hours

Okay kind of obvious.

The hours matter.

24/7 is the best.

Days

This one isn’t as obvious until you give it a bit of thinking.

By gym is closed today, it’s always closed on January 1st.

If today was the day to start my new journey. I’m not joining this gym. It’s not on my radar.

How can I join a gym that’s shut?

Same goes for gyms that close on the weekends.

TANGENT CONCLUSION

So yeah, at the end of all of that you can see how they go together.

Some matter much much more than others, others matter meh a little.

Marketing and promotion is INSANE when done right, but it needs the right foundation. little bit of pent up rage from my marketing days here. can you tell?

Use all of that to predict how your gym will be.

If you ever open a gym, read this to work out how to structure things.

Hope you enjoyed a newsletter I could have split into two.

Here’s my rationale btw.

You guys don’t come here to learn about how to get the most amount of people in your gym. You come here for actual actionable insight. My random tangents too 🙄 

If I split this into two emails it wouldn’t be fair to you, it’d mean one email about something irrelevant with no real pieces of gold in.

Your Hypertrophy Hero,
Fletcher

P.S. Best approach (not legal advice don’t do this) is a stink bomb.