Exercise-Powered Electricity: Really Not that Crazy

Remember the Flintstone cars that were powered by their legs? Maybe that’s not such a bad idea. Not literally, of course, but the idea that modern machines can be powered by human energy. If that were possible, think about all of the energy that is expended in your facility in one day. Not by the equipment, but by your members.

Since Earth Day was celebrated this month, and since rising energy costs are on most everyone’s minds, I think the time is ripe for a radical idea: Harness the energy of humans exercising to supply electricity.

This idea actually isn’t that crazy. There is currently a cycle stand on the market that has a battery pack that saves the energy created from cycling into a battery. Currently, most indoor cycles use human energy to power the electronics on the actual cycle. This could be taken one step further, so that any extra energy is stored, or used to power other things in the fitness center (maybe the treadmill next to the cycle?).

For treadmills, strength training and even group exercise, willing participants could have a device attached to them (maybe on their wrists and ankles – I’m making this up, here) that would store the energy created by movement – like those flashlights that are powered by shaking them. This power could be stored in some sort of battery to be used later.

I know it’s a bit of a leap to go from a shakable flashlight to powering a treadmill, but the technology is out there. Someday, fitness centers will be completely powered by the physical energy created by their members. And you heard it here first!

Bally’s to be “Speared”?

Now I think I’ve seen it all. As if Bally’s hasn’t had enough problems, a recent blog on iVillage reports that the company is considering making Britney Spears its next spokesperson.

Is this a joke? I can’t think of a worse spokesperson for a fitness facility chain than Spears. With all of her boozing, drug use, lack of morals and just plain loser of a persona, is this the kind of image Bally’s wants to associate itself with? And, don’t they realize that by Bally’s associating with Spears, it translates to Spears being associated with the fitness industry as a whole?

I get the reasoning behind health club operators wanting to associate their brand with a celebrity, but while Spears’ name may be big, it’s big for all the wrong reasons. If Bally’s execs think that she’s really going to make a turnaround just because she’s working out every day, they better not count on it. And, even if she did, her reputation is what it is, even if a bunch of foolish young people do consider her an “idol.”

Maybe this is all a bunch of hype with no truth to it, and let’s hope so. Because this could be another “spear” in the back, not just for Bally’s, but for our industry, as well.

A Fitness Fortune

A wise person once said, “Personal trainers are like surgeons. How they’re educated matters not as much as how they operate.”

Okay, it was me. I said that. I am, on occasion, wise, and I was speaking from experience when I uttered the above sentiment. Sure, it’s the kind of thing you’d read in a Fitness Fortune Cookie, if there were such a thing as Fitness Fortune Cookies. But it’s also true.

My wise thought occurred to me while reading an article about fitness trends in 2008. “Many people have had experiences with bad personal trainers," said Dr. Thompson. But Thompson says more and more gyms are demanding certified instructors, so this presents a win-win for both client and club.

I’d agree that certification is a win-win for all parties involved, but it’s not the only game worth playing. A personal trainer’s bedside manner, if you will, is just as big a factor in his or her professional success as the degrees on the wall.

Brow-beating, red-faced trainers make good television (see: Sgt. Harvey E. Walden IV of Celebrity Fit Club, and the Biggest Loser trainers), but in real life no one wants to pay someone to yell at them. Those people you see on the screen? The ones taking all that abuse? They’re getting money for that, not the other way around.

On the flipside, a lackadaisical, gum-chewing trainer more interested in his hangnail than the sorry state of my abs is not someone I want to pay, either. Nor is the trainer who smirks when I proffer my weekly food log, barely able to conceal her disbelief in my calorie intake estimates.

Certification is definitely the first step toward elevating the status of personal trainers in a fitness facility. But in an industry where technology has an ever-increasing presence, the small moments of interpersonal interaction members get in a club must be more meaningful. Personal trainers are the keys for clubs that want to go high tech with a human touch. Certification in important, but it’s not the only thing that matters.

Technology: The Latest Fitness Craze

I’ve gone to many trade shows over the years, and seen many fitness companies and products come and go. Manufacturers are always looking for the next big thing (remember when the elliptical trainer came out?), and facility owners are always looking for the latest and greatest product to get members in and then keep them coming back.

More than a few times, I have seen products at trade shows and thought, “This product will never make it. What were they thinking!?” (To refresh your memory on some of these, read Top 20 Product Trends from the Past 20 Years.)

Despite past mistakes, I think manufacturers and fitness centers (by way of their wallets) got it right this time. Instead of trying to come up with some new-fangled cardio machine, most of the major manufacturers have focused, instead, on making improvements to their existing lines. The major addition I saw at a recent trade show was in technology. Cardio machines now feature personal viewing screens, plug into iPods, and can track workouts with a USB stick or the Nike+ system. Now, these are things that members will actually use!

A recent article about the newest fitness equipment says, “The future of exercise is here — and it’s heavy on the techno. Fitness equipment is catching up with tech-savvy, gadget-loving exercisers.”

Members can now keep better track of their workouts, or simply have more distractions from their painful miles on the treadmill with movies, music and television right on their console. “Watching a bank of communal televisions is so five minutes ago,” says the article. Technology and fitness manufacturers have finally caught up to the ideal of a totally personal and individualized exercise experience.

Of course, there will always be the dreamers who come up with some strange gadget that they think will be the next best thing. And, more power to them! They always make trade shows more interesting for everyone.

Some Perspective on Dues Value

Fitness facility operators are pretty smart when it comes to membership dues pricing. At least when compared to most members who sign up for club memberships.

Our industry has talked for years about how to make people understand the “value” of their memberships. It’s said that the industry has underpriced its services, which has led to the perception that a membership is really not worth that much. But, are memberships really worth the average $50 or $60 a month being charged?

In recent years, there has been more and more talk about charging users on a pay-as-you-go basis. Most facilities offer the option of paying $10 for a visit, without signing up for a membership. Others are starting to offer some or all of their services as pay-as-you-go only. But, wouldn’t it seem logical that fitness facilities would make much more money by charging people that $10 usage fee for every workout?

Not so. According to a paper published in 2002 by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, when people purchase a membership, they actually believe they will go to the club more often than they do. So, they assume that the monthly rate they are paying is a good deal. But what the researchers found was that most members only use the gym an average of 4.8 times per month. If the monthly membership dues are $60 a month, that means that the average member is paying about $17 per visit. That’s $7 more than the $10 daily use fee.

Another study performed in the Boston area and reported on in January in the Chicago Tribune turned up the same findings. Researchers looked at 8,000 fitness center memberships over a three-year period, and found that most people never make it to the gym three times a week (like they thought they would); instead, they only work out about one time per week. These researchers also figured it to be about $17 per visit, and concluded that 80 percent of the people studied would have been better off paying the $10 daily fee instead of purchasing a membership.

Fitness center operators know this. Read my blog entry The Big Fat Truth About Health Clubs. So why, then, at all of the industry trade show seminars on customer service, are the speakers always recommending that staff get on the phone and call members who aren’t coming in? Health club operators know that that would be foolish. Even an article in the Financial Times this past January highlights why fitness center dues structures rely on those members who sign up and never use the facility. They don’t want to remind these members that their money is being wasted.

So, the whole argument about value is really not true. As the UC Berkeley researchers conclude, most health club members either make “time-inconsistent choices” or they have “limited cognitive abilities.” Pretty smart on the part of club owners, huh?

Murphy’s Law

Some of our readers don’t like it when FM columnist Rob Bishop gets exasperated by the fitness industry. Those readers should probably skip this blog post.

Thanks to Murphy’s Law, it’s difficult to understand why fitness facilities offer amenities. Why bother going above and beyond when there is so much potential for it to blow up in your face?

Senior Editor Anne McDonnell and I puzzled over this question at the Athletic Business Conference in Orlando, Fla. Some readers stopped at our booth and commented on her article about towel service, and we said it was tough to find the upside to offering that amenity. It seemed like lots of work for little to no return. The readers confessed that the only reason their fitness center had a towel service was because members expected it. And, every good club strives to meet — even exceed — their members’ expectations. Right?

I would like to put it out there that some expectations are, perhaps, better left unmet. Why? Because of Murphy’s Law.

You opened a daycare center? Some kid will bite another kid and you’ll get sued. You invested in a snack bar? One of your members will get food poisoning. You forked over a ton for a fancy locker room? It’ll still get robbed.

Stopping an amenity once you’ve started offering it is a difficult proposition, and not one I’d care to advise any fitness facility on how to do. But I would suggest that, before you start thinking about all of the new extras you can give members, think twice. Three times. Maybe even four.

And then forget about it altogether.

Exercise for Cash

Need motivation to exercise and eat right? How about cash? The British government is offering just that with a new program it is launching.

A health adviser to the government explains that children in the U.K. will receive taxpayer-funded financial bonuses into their state savings accounts if they maintain a healthy lifestyle. The payments into the Child Trust Funds would leave healthy teenagers with more cash than their less-fit peers when the tax-free policies mature on their 18th birthdays. Children who get immunized, walk or cycle to class, and take other healthy steps will get bonuses to their so-called “baby bonds.”

The idea came from Julian le Grand, chairman of Health England. Grand also said that healthy eating at school could be rewarded by linking swipe cards to the program. Exercise among young people could also be monitored, perhaps through pedometers or devices attached to bicycles, he said.

It’s about time, right? Fitness centers do all they can to motivate members, but most classes, programs, etc., only go so far. What if insurance companies actually paid people to work out, or at least made their insurance coverage much cheaper? The idea isn’t new, but the British government has finally made a serious gesture in that direction.

Fitness centers would definitely benefit from a plan such as this, since working out in a facility would be easier to track then, say, wearing a pedometer.

But a similar program in the U.S. isn’t going to materialize on its own. Facility owners, healthcare providers and all healthy-minded people need to work to make it happen.

We all know that most people need motivation to exercise and eat right. Maybe money will finally be what tips the scales in the right direction.


P.S. Happy St. Patrick's Day!