If I had a nickel for every time a client has gotten my hopes up by saying, “I have a friend who wants to join,” (yet that friend, or sister or husband never ends up showing up) I would be a rich coach.
Recently, I retraced my steps and asked clients why that friend of theirs never followed through. All of their explanations were more or less, “Oh, he was just really scared because he isn’t very fit.”
I have also learned in seven years of coaching that the hardest part for many people about joining a gym is just walking through those doors on their very first day. The fear and apprehension of the unknown can be crippling.
So I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m about to reveal exactly what the process will look like from the moment you contact our website and the end of your Day 1 one-on-one introductory session with a coach. Here goes:
After you contact our website, or call us, you will be assigned a coach and he or she will call you within 24 hours. Yes, they will call you. We want to hear your voice. We want to get to know you. We want it be more personal. Email isn’t very personal. You’ll compare your schedules and settle on a day and time for your intro day.
Then, you will walk, drive, take the bus, tram, metro or Uber to the gym and, you WILL, walk through the doors.
You will be greeted by your coach. At some point you’ll probably sign a waiver, and you’ll listen and watch!
You won’t be weighed and measured (unless you want to be), and you won’t be thrown into the fire of a group class workout with experienced athletes.
What will you talk about?
In the beginning we’ll tell you all about CrossFit and explain how group classes work. But the end goal is simple: To see if you’re a right fit to train with us.
To do this, we will ask you about your wants and needs are, how you found us and what brought you into the gym.
Why are you really here today? What do you really want to get out of this? (We don’t want the politically correct answer; we want the REAL answer).
The reason we do our intro days in a one-on-one setting with one coach and one client is to allow the two of you to get to know each other and truly discover if you will work well together. Discovering this in a group setting with 8 to 10 new athletes all sweating together chaotically is next to impossible—and is what sets us apart from many other gyms in the area.
At the end of our conversation you‘ll be put through a short fitness assessment—just some basic sit-ups, squatting and rowing.
The assessment will give your coach a chance to see where you’re at physically, and will help him/her decide approximately how many personal training sessions you will need before you’ll be able to graduate to group classes. Then, if you’re happy, you’ll book session number two and then the real fun begins…
That’s it. That’s as scary as walking through the doors is going to be.
If you have a friend or family member who has been considering joining, but is terrified to take the leap, don’t hesitate to forward this to them if you think it might give them the nudge they need to get fit.