Advice for someone who wants to own a gym

[Drewfasa]

Hi Mark,

So I've finally finished university here at LSE and am now having sessions with the careers advisor. We've decided that I need to own a gym. I think a first step on what will probably be quite a long journey will be to get some kind of coaching certification. Which of these options do you think would be the best:

USAW
BWLA - (British Weightlifting Association) offers a powerlifting and weightlifting cert.
Your cert (probably involves flying out to USA, unless you are still planning on coming to London)
Crossfit Cert

Am I correct in thinking that a coaching cert is the logical first step? What other advice can you give to a young Padwan who wants to follow in your footsteps?

Your advice is greatly appreciated,

Drew

[Mark Rippetoe]

My advice for someone who wants to own a gym is to get a thorough psychiatric examination. It's a fine business if you aren't interested in money and don't care what happens to your own training. Really. With this economy, rethink this idea. It will be an excellent way to lose your ass, especially if you are concerned about training people correctly. The only hope you have is CrossFit and it's potential to reshape the general public's perception of what to expect from a gym.

[travelgirl1978]

Unless it's a new kind of discount "Curves" type place, where you can say to people "Now that you don't have money to eat is the perfect time to lose weight, here, sit on a big rubber ball and curl 1/2 kilo dumbells", I don't think it will work either.

Now, I work in a wealth management group. There are people out there who will hardly be touched by the Credit Crisis (as you probably know having studied at the LSE), and a lot of them live in London. Selling yourself as a personal trainer to the teenage kids of Saudi and Russian billionaires is a better bet, seriously. You'd be shocked at how unfit those brats are. I know one guy who teaches these kids Krav Maga at their homes. If I told you his hourly rate, you wouldn't believe me. Senior partners in law firms earn about the same per hour. (Plus, a lot of it is undeclared... shhhhhhhh....).

Just my two pence worth ;-)

[Drewfasa]

Well, I don't need the psychiatric exam, that's one certification I already have. But the gym scene in London is so incredibly poor that I've decided the only way to fix it is to start my own. There isn't a single crossfit gym in all of London (let alone a proper barbell gym), and there's probably more Americans and Canadians here (myself included) than in some smaller states and provinces. I work at my university gym and many people come in asking about crossfit and olympic lifting and bemoan the crappiness of English fitness facilities.

My mind is made up! And my psychotic monomania shall be devoted to opening a usable gym here in London, hopefully around Elephant and Castle.....if I build it, they will come!

On that note, when on earth are you coming to the UK?

-Drew

[justinmoulden]

...the only hope you have is CrossFit and it's potential to reshape the general public's perception of what to expect from a gym.

And why they should pay more than $20USD a month for a membership. This has been the biggest deterrent for me whenever I've considered making the career change to gym ownership. In my area at least, it seems to me you're not likely to make too much money off the bat without selling out (at least partially) to the MO of the corporate gyms: Rows of ellipticals and tradmills, pilates, daycare, shitty pop music and legions of contract-bound customers to pay the bills.

I know you said in a previous post that you've never been a pussy, but have you ever been tempted to sell out to this business model, Rip?

[Andy Baker (KSC)]

First of all, if you are going into the business for yourself, don't worry about certifications unless its important to you. You can waste alot of money here. The only caveat might be that having a certification can lower your insurance premiums which you definately must have if you are going to train people. I let my USAW cert expire and am letting my NSCA cert expire at the end of the year.

As a gym owner, all I can tell you is to start small and don't get in over your head with a bunch of loans, etc. The worst thing you can do is to get into a situation where your overhead costs are real high and you can't afford to pay yourself. I started off with a minumum of equipment, which was all used, and I have slowly upgraded to better and better stuff. I have financed nothing and I rent a space for a very reasonable rate.

Have you ever trained anyone before?? You may get into it and realize you don't like it very much. If you have a bunch of illusions about training powerlifters and football players forget it. You may get a few here and there, but for the most part, there is no market for it, so you better be content working with a crowd who is 45-60 years old, many of which are highly unmotivated and frustrating to work with.

If you want a black iron gym research your market first. If you have Gold's, Bally's, 24hr Fitness, etc in your area you will have a hard time competing because even though Crossfit and similar type gyms are growing, the general public is still awestruck when they walk into a gym and see a sea of treadmills and stationary bikes. If you want an open gym, go with the Crossfit affiliation and let the main site do your marketing for you.

Contact me via my training log if you want to talk about it more.

[RobertFontaine]

Sad but true. The bigger question I have is why? The fitness, snake oil, industry is huge. A gym with 32 racks, with olympic platforms, should be a simple recipe for success. Add a couple of qualified lift instructors, a sports therapist, and a small retail outlet and it should be a licence to make money.

BUT IT ISN'T. Most gyms appear to be lucky to pay the rent. Those that have short term success appear to do it by selling far more memberships than the facility can handle and hope that the members do not return after 6 weeks.

If people will pay hundreds of dollars for pixie dust why won't they pay the same for real equipment and real training?

[Draco]

He might have some success opening a machine-only facility, with Pilates/Yoga classes and an entire room filled with Swiss balls, located directly across from your gym in Wichita Falls. He'd get all the bored housewives and kids who live to concentration curl.

But Drew, you're gonna need to get on an arm program and keto diet before you do any of that. 20'' arms and a 30'' waist. And orange skin. Otherwise, no one will listen to you.

[Mark Rippetoe]

That place is already here. The Powerhouse Gym is just around the corner. They can have all that business. They are involved in the standard business model: 24-month paper sold to a finance company, 55% cardio, "trainers" that they certify themselves for a fee, etc. God help them. My entire overhead is half of their electric bill. And I have never tried to do it this way because it is unpalatable to me, having worked in that type of club when I was first starting in the business. I have always had a black iron gym, and it has always been very hard. But if you have no one using this model in big market like London, it might just work very well.

[Konstantinos Kavos]

There isn't a single crossfit gym in all of London (let alone a proper barbell gym)

http://www.stemlerfit.com/

I'm afraid you might be wrong there. I haven't visited this place of course, but they seem to be the real deal.