When planning your future gym, one of the most relevant things is to define your services. What kind of services and products your gym should provide to its members?

The point is not to list everything you can sell but focus on things that we think are useful. That means services and products that will bring your customers added value, but also money to your bank account. Ordering bunch of cool stuff to sell at your gym's reception might be tempting, but it's probably not wise to make a shop out of your gym. It is a gym, and basic things well executed will do. Some additional products will, of course, be nice to have – we’ll get to those later. Now, let's focus on the key elements.

Core services

The main service of a CrossFit gym is group training. That means instructed classes called WODs, which are usually one-hour long training sessions. Your weekly class schedule will consist mostly, or entirely, of those. Basically, you will publish your timetable somewhere, and your members will choose each day which WOD to attend.

Your programming will include rest days, but it’s about you how to arrange them. Some gyms program rest days as mobility days, when people can attend instructed mobility classes. Another good option is to have rest days as a possibility to your members to perform WODs that they have missed. In that case, your rest days will consist of open gyms instead of prescribed WODs.

Some gym owners choose to schedule open gyms in addition to normal, scheduled classes. Open gyms, where people can choose their workouts, sound problematic to some. One question is, how can a coach adequately supervise twenty people doing different things at the same time? Anyhow, our opinion is that when organized well, they will not cause problems. In fact, open gyms give several members just what they need. A good way is to give members a couple of options from past WODs to choose from. David Osorio from CrossFit South Brooklyn has discussed this subject quite well; we highly recommend you to read this. His other blog posts are very useful too, covering important subjects profoundly.

It takes time until your gym will be up and running with a full week schedule. Start with a few on-ramp courses, and start selling them before you open. This will bring in some cash in advance. Figure out, how you are going to get new members on board and plan the content for your on-ramps. What comes to on-ramps, we recommend Nicki Violetti's old but still relevant guide, find it here.

If you have trouble selling on-ramp courses, experiment with try-out classes for people with no experience with CrossFit. Ask your existing members to bring their friends.

Class scheduling and management

When planning your class schedule, one thing to think about is class size. Some gyms don’t need to control class attendance as their members attend classes evenly throughout the day. In many cases, however, at least when the gym has achieved its full member capacity, that doesn’t happen. When your gym starts to get too crowded at peak hours, a booking system becomes necessary.

A great booking system lets you schedule different types of classes easily, assign coaches to classes and use different attendance-related settings when needed. WODconnect booking system allows you to do all this, as it's designed for functional training and CrossFit gyms. It’s a tool that’s easy to use for athletes, coaches, and gym owners. For gym owners and coaches, it’s also an excellent way to handle shifts.

The best thing for your members is that everything they need to know or keep track of is there – classes, WODs, coaches, newsletters, everything. No need for different sites and systems or unnecessary emails, calls or text messages. Your members won't miss booked classes either, as they can sync the system with their calendars.

When you open, don't schedule too many classes right away. Start with a few classes and expand when they get full. You will have plenty of other things to do and coaching almost empty classes is not something you want to do.

Additional services

After you have defined your core services, you can think about additional products and even expanding your class offering. The main point here is customer service; providing useful products to support training and different classes to make the memberships unique and interesting. The goal is to increase customer satisfaction and keep things exciting for yourself and your staff as well.

According to our experience, the best selling products are usually protein and other supplements; quality products that are not available in the local supermarkets. Another classic is t-shirts - how could a CrossFitter survive without a selection of "shut up and squat" or "running sucks" t-shirts? Yeah, easily, but at least a t-shirt and hoodie representing the home gym is a must, right?

About additional classes. It's an option you can think about when your gym has been running for a while and when you know your customers. In the beginning, focus on core classes. In addition to those, you can organize individual coaching and seminars. These bring you extra cash and provide your customers a possibility to expand and deepen their skills and knowledge.

One trend among our customers is offering yoga, which is an awesome example of something entirely different and refreshing that still supports the normal training routine. If not yoga, then simply offer mobility classes to help members to keep their muscles in shape.

For people that are already familiar with functional training techniques, a couple of private classes can function as an on-ramp. A member with special needs or even a competing athlete seeking to improve weaknesses may also use private classes. Private classes could actually be listed as one of the core services.

Events

On top of different types of classes, you might want to organize events at some point. Seminars, for instance, are great for strengthening community spirit while teaching useful things and skills. Bring professionals from outside the gym to show you and your members completely new things. Seminars, or ‘clinics’, are beneficial especially for teaching Olympic lifting, as many times CrossFit coaches aren’t specialists in that area. To help gyms handle seminar bookings, payments, and participant lists, we have included a seminar tool in our booking system.

Another thing we have noticed gyms organizing is competitions. It's becoming a trend among new gyms to organize competitions already in the first year. We recommend being careful in this matter because competitions don't bring you money. In fact, they take a lot of it, and a lot of work as well. So think carefully before you get into that. That said, we encourage gym owners that are interested in the subject to give it a go at some point when the resources are there. It's a great way to keep members motivated and to improve and grow the community. We are excited about competitions as well and are developing WODcompete, our tool to manage competitions. Try it out!

About pricing

Question: what would you pay for your services? Do some research in your area to find out what kind of prices people are paying for similar services. Don’t try to match the lower pricing of typical 'globo' gyms, as you’re providing much more than just a permission to enter a gym and use its equipment. Too low prices may attract the wrong customers, meaning people that don’t appreciate your services enough and won't engage. However, in the beginning, or at times when getting customers is difficult, offering discounts makes sense. Everything depends on the demand in your area.

One smart thing to do related to discounts is to sell different training packages to your existing customers. Obviously, after acquiring customers, you want to do everything to keep them. Sell several months long memberships with a slightly reduced monthly price. Sometimes sell longer memberships with an even lower price, as a summer promotion for example. It’s a good way to advance the cash flow and commit your customers. On the other hand, you need to be careful not to put yourself in a situation where too many of your clients are paying for their memberships once a year. Managing a business becomes very challenging when expenses are rolling throughout the year, and most of your income is focused on a short period of time.

We don’t recommend competing with prices, as that will lead you to offer your services too cheap, forever. It’s good to know your competition, that's why you should do research and keep your eyes and ears open. More useful however is to understand your own business, develop it according to your experiences, and attain a high-quality level with matching prices. So, to some extent, forget your competitors. It’s exactly the same thing you will teach your members: learn from others but compete with yourself – focus on becoming the best version of yourself. As David Osorio from CrossFit South Brooklyn has said:

“Only worry about the things you can control, which is what happens inside your walls.”

Do yourself and your community a favor, and focus on quality. Create a pleasant environment, attract the right staff, the right customers, build a tight community and develop your gym together.