Fitness Challenge Ideas to Energize Your Gym’s Community
Fitness challenges are a great way to engage your community – especially in warmer Spring and Summer months when group fitness class attendance typically declines. Fitness challenges also provide an opportunity to attract and bring in new customers.
So let’s talk about how to get that challenge out there! We’re here to guide you through the how-tos — how to structure it, how to promote it, and how to make it fun so you’ll get lots of word-of-mouth referrals. Let’s go!
1. How to Set Up a Fitness Challenge
Start by identifying the end goal of your target audience. What do your customers want most? To train for a race event? Tone up and build muscle? Lose weight? De-stress? Is there a seasonal theme you can bring to your challenge?
Next, set an appropriate time frame in which your customers are likely to gain a measurable result from their efforts. Typically, for fitness challenges this is somewhere between 30 days and eight weeks. Remember to keep the participation requirements convenient and workable to avoid overwhelming your customers.
How many group fitness classes or training sessions will your challenge participants be required to attend as part of the challenge? Do you plan to host group meetings at regular intervals during the challenge, like a kick-off event? Use this structure to set up your challenge for enrollment in your Punchpass software account. The best way to do this is to create a Series.
You should create some fun and fabulous prizes for milestones along the way! Of course, there’s a grand prize for the challenge winner, but consider weekly or performance-based mini-prizes like t-shirts and water bottles along the way.
Finally, keep your fitness challenge participants engaged and having fun by creating a social media group and regularly posting updates and inspirational content. Host a leader board that tracks progress. This can be as simple as a poster with a chart and stickers that you hang on the wall of your gym, studio or classroom.
Choose a hashtag for your challenge and encourage participants to post photos on social media and tag your fitness business’s account.
2. Boost Results & Appeal with Bonus Lifestyle Content
Add value and help your customers gain maximum results by adding supplemental lifestyle content to your fitness challenge.
Your Punchpass content library allows you to offer on-demand material such as recipes, worksheets, checklists and other PDF documents plus pre-recorded videos that your participants can access at their convenience. These could be welcome messages, instructional videos, bonus guided meditations – get creative!
Best of all, you can restrict access to the online content by using Punchpass to gate the content for fitness challenge participants.
You can also send out emails to participants with links to the online content so everyone stays engaged.
3. Pricing Your Challenge
There are two ways to approach fitness challenge pricing. If your challenge is strictly a certain number of workouts or group fitness classes, then consider making the challenge free, but requiring the participants to pay for the classes they attend with a regular class pass or membership.
If you plan to include on-demand content, specialized coaching, group meetings and other high-value programming, then you’ll want to charge for your challenge. When considering how your fitness challenge should be priced, start with the value of the classes, your time in preparing the bonus material, and your workshop or special event rates.
Keep in mind that you will likely benefit from the participants’ consistent engagement with your fitness business – odds are they’ll stick around after the challenge and take more classes than they would have otherwise, and they might even invite some buddies to join in the fun. So, make the price attractive and consider a bundled services discount.
4. Partner with Local Businesses for a Corporate Fitness Challenge
A great way to reach out to new potential customers is to offer to set up a fitness challenge for a local company. Right now, employers are looking for ways to rebuild in-person comradery after being isolated in home offices. What better way to support employees than helping them get back in shape and socialize with some healthy competition?
Team-based workouts are a big trend in 2021, and for good reason. We’re all craving connection and the satisfaction of working towards a goal together. The company may have branded swag that you can offer as giveaways, and the grand prize can be a class pass or membership to your gym or fitness studio!
5. Fundraise with a Fitness Challenge for Charity
Fitness challenges are a fantastic way to fundraise for charity. We’ve got some inspiration for you to do good with a challenge.
Set up an event and expand your community ties and support by getting local businesses to supply food and souvenirs with proceeds of sales going to the charity of your choice.
A strength challenge, obstacle course, field-day type team games, a mini-triathlon with run, bike and swim or a fun 5K run followed by a picnic are great ways to get everyone engaged.
Pick a charity that has special relevance to your audience and be sure to communicate the good work that organization does in your event promotional materials.
Set up an easy way for participants and sponsors to donate online through Punchpass.
Fitness challenges provide extra fun & incentive for your community, and they can help you to expand your audience and earn some extra income to boot. 🙂
