One of the first steps on the way towards opening a gym is to find a suitable space. What kind of basic requirements does a CrossFit gym have for its space? What are your specific needs, when thinking about your future gym? When you know what kind of services you are going to offer at your gym, and to how many members you are going to serve, defining your needs is easier.

Surface

Think, how much space you need to meet the requirements of your estimated member amount. When defining the number of athletes per class, don’t compromise the quality of coaching and safety by having your classes overcrowded. In most cases, twenty athletes is still manageable, more than that becomes difficult for one coach to handle.

In our last post, we discussed limiting the number of class participants by using a booking system; that’s something to consider. A large space, a higher number of coaches and well-organized classes are must if you have several hundreds of members and don’t want a booking system.

The space needs to be large enough so that people can perform different WODs and weightlifting safely. To reserve about 10 square meters for each athlete is a good guideline to start with.

“Get a big enough space right away. There are several examples from colleagues in Finland and abroad, where the space have gotten too small already after 4-6 months from opening.” - Mikko Aaltonen, Reebok CrossFit 33100

Indeed, what comes to a gym space, it’s not necessarily wise to start small. But overestimate your needs either, as you don’t want to pay the operating costs of a huge space when using just a quarter of it – not too long at least. Like Juha Puonti from Rogue Fitness Europe states, the challenge is to find a space where you can grow, but also move out from when necessary.

Building

In addition to the surface, there are many other things you need to take into account, including neighbors.

“The space should be suitable for CrossFit. It has to withstand the dropping of barbells and heavy weights, throwing wall balls and people leaning on the walls practicing handstands. Also, the noise caused by dropping weights, box jumps and large groups of people can cause conflicts with possible neighbors. The perfect space is a building designed for heavy duty industrial use.“ - Juha Metsämuuronen, CrossFit Lappeenranta

The space’s ceiling has to be high enough for climbing ropes, and there must be room enough for a rig. On top of that, you need functioning bathrooms and locker rooms. If you have to build them yourself, assure that the remaining floor space is large enough. Building walls, bathrooms, and toilets from scratch is costly and time-consuming – how big is your budget and how much renovating are you willing to do?

Your needs can also grow corresponding the nature of your community. For instance, having a bunch of moms with small children as clients can create a new set of requirements.

Location

Before you start looking for the perfect space, you need to think about location. How you approach this phase depends on your starting point. You probably have chosen a city where to set the gym, but how well do you know it?

Do some research, even find out about the demographics of different areas. Do people in your city prefer cars or public transportation? At least in a bigger city, your gym is better to be close to bus stops, subway or train, but also a parking place with enough space is necessary. The location is one of the crucial factors when people choose their home gym. Know the competition in the area, think about other gyms’ locations.

In general, there are two options.

A central location usually has a higher rent but gives you an advantage with more traffic, better visibility and good connections. In turn, a more remote location usually enables you to have a larger property with a lower rent, letting you with a chance to lower the membership prices, which makes customer acquisition easier, or the possibility of renovating the space according to all your wishes. Naturally, industrial buildings are often are located further away from city centers.

As Rogue’s Juha Puonti points out, finding a space is not easy; on the contrary, it’s slowing down the spread of the sport in many European cities. According to him, the outskirts of cities are still best places to search for a space.

Negotiating

When you have found a few good alternatives, begin negotiations. Find out what are the renting options and calculate utility costs. Those include electricity, water, cleaning and heating/cooling costs. Carefully choose the moving date, as you will want to open as soon as possible from it. Before signing the rent agreement, show it to a lawyer.