Tomorrow is New Year’s Day. You know what that means…
Yes, that’s right- your gym is about to be flooded with New Year’s Resolution gym-goers. Your club will be over-run with people full of the short-lived self-starter motivation that only the promise of a new year’s fresh start can bring.
How do you survive such a calamity? Should you just stay home for a month until they lose steam and quit?
No. You should go to your gym. For more reasons than you might think.
This is the single most frustrating thing in the world.
Every year countless people have the cliche New Year’s Resolution to “get in shape” or “lose weight” or “get healthy”…etc. So they all go out and get a gym membership, and all the gyms are packed during January…then a little quieter during February…then by the time April rolls around it’s back to normal. Nearly EVERYONE in the “New Year’s Resolution” crowd falls off and quits.
Not This Year.
This year it’s time for us to make a change.
This year our gyms are not going to get flooded out for a month and then empty like the streets of Dodge City at high-noon.
This year we’re going to do it right.
How. Do I. SURVIVE this?!
We’re going to go about our business as usual.
Whether you like it or not, these people are here. They have just as much right to be here as we do, and we should make them feel at home – after all…they’re members now, so they ARE home.
And maybe…just maybe…if they feel “at home” enough…they’ll be just comfortable enough to go up to staff or an experienced-looking gym member and ask a question. Maybe then they won’t get discouraged and quit because they don’t know what they’re doing.
Maybe they’ll feel they have such a positive workout environment they’ll have the willpower to say no to that piece of pizza at home. Maybe then they won’t quit because no matter how hard they try they don’t see results.
Maybe…just maybe…we can help these people succeed.
Not everyone has to be a hero.
We don’t all have to be the white knight and save the day. If we all come at them like over-friendly cult members they might run away screaming anyway. So how do you survive Gympocalypse if you just want to keep doing your thing?
Timing is everything.
The gym is going to be busier at certain “peak hours”. For my gym, this is generally 7 – 9 am and 5 – 7 pm. Want the easiest solution available?
Don’t go during peak hours.
Same solution we alllll use when we don’t want to hit rush hour traffic…just avoid the time of day you KNOW you’ll hit it. It’s that simple.
This is not the end of the world.
Rather, this is potentially the beginning of the rest of someone’s life. Maybe a lot of someones. Shouldn’t we be encouraging the people who are coming out of the woodwork joining the gym and making a resolution to achieve positive change? After all…if they’re actually walking through the door…somewhere deep down there exists a true desire to make real change that lasts.
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| I started in August…but so what if it had been January? |
Don’t forget…we all started somewhere.
Joining in January doesn’t make them any less worthy of being there or able to succeed than if they joined in December, February or June.
You can not only survive this…you can even help keep some of the Resolutioners from vanishing back into the self-loathing pit they crawled out of. Keep your gym a positive place where positive change happens.
Who knows…You might just save someone’s life.
