Opening a Gym
This week we received two inquiries about opening a gym. After 15 years working a struggling gym, I figure my first duty is to talk them out of it.
And then I spent the rest of the week using twitter to show where next to turn. Failing to talk a person out of his or her gym-building enthusiasm, I insist on a Thom Plummer workshop. Insist, literally, because in today’s world, there’s little chance of pulling off a financially successful training facility without some guidance.
$10 will get you gym-building answers from hard-working owners at Michael Boyle’s strengthcoach.com.
Mike Robertson documents a few things to look for in his gym-building experience
Current or future gym owners: Thom Plummer’s blog, books, workshops are Do Not Miss. Check out this blog post where he explains the current state of the gym business.
In this outstanding podcast, Anthony Renna covers some of the ups and downs of building a gym
To ramp up your gym-building enthusiasm, Zach Even-Esh is one guy to look to
In this video, Anthony Renna documents nearly $5,000 of unexpected costs, $30 at a time
While you’re collecting data, input and capital, use the time to build an education. Todd Durkin has an IHRSA webinar 3/11 on running a personal training program. Hopefully that will be available in an archive for later study.
Before opening a training facility, learn good teaching and coaching skills, first through a short mentorship, then a longer internship.
You have to do these before you get opened, because after that, you’ll be sucked dry. You think I’m joking; yes… I know it looks like a big empty box, but, well, the thing is, for it to work you need to fill it with bodies.
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Oh! And before I check out, here’s a terrific review of Michael Boyle’s Advances in Functional Training at Amazon














