Ben Hackney-Williams, head of content at Myzone, shares tools to drive positive change in 2022

Communities – under the guidance of the fitness industry – need more support now than ever before. People’s willingness to take advice on board and embrace new habits is at a new high and we need to be there for them to keep that motivation strong and fuel a ‘movement of movement’ with benefits that last for years.

Here are some ways you can demonstrate to members how to boost workouts through dynamic community tools and influencing long-term behaviour change that keeps more people moving with you for longer.

1 Discover digital drivers that work for you
The right digital tools are now essentials instead of just a way of keeping up with the competition or offering something for the sake of it.

You need to find ways of unlocking engaging and motivational experiences that are not only effective, but also inclusive. Rewarding effort is key to this, as it’s tailored to the individual and is about more than just ability alone.

Myzone created MEPs (Myzone Effort Points) and placed them at the core of its offering, to not only reward effort, but also to equate that effort to the World Health Organization’s guidelines for physical activity – a target of 1,300 MEPs per month.

Myzone gamifies fitness and drives motivation, resulting in members who stay 24 per cent longer with a gym than clubs that don’t use Myzone.

It does this using in-club displays, the app screen and Remote workouts that can be applied as a member offering from anywhere.

2 Education is always an essential
In short, most of us don’t know what we’re capable of achieving until we do it – even those of us experienced in the industry or as a gym member. This applies to everyone, from the first-time gym user to professional athletes looking for that extra one per cent.

Learning about our bodies and getting comfortable with different degrees of effort is at the heart of what Myzone does. It’s this understanding and education that keeps people moving for longer over time.

It’s no longer simply a case of helping people to understand the benefits of exercise – that’s been highlighted time and time again over the past few years. We’re lucky in that the profile and importance of the fitness industry has been raised more than ever before; now it’s time to give people the tools to recognise their individual physical activity needs and make positive behaviour changes that stick.

In regards to your own professional development, seek the education that lets you bring these benefits to members right from the start of their journey with you.

3 Partnerships are more powerful than you know
The biggest benefits no longer come from hording your knowledge and keeping secrets of your experience to yourself. More people have aligned themselves with businesses through brand loyalty or simply just time and tradition. This means that, instead of trying to create your own version of the thing that members are using, partnerships are key.

Myzone connects through analogue, ANT+ and Bluetooth with gym equipment, Apple Watch, Wear OS (previously Android Wear), Garmin and Samsung Galaxy. It also integrates with third-party apps such as MapMyRun, Strava, and MyFitnessPal. For in-gym benefits, Myzone plays friendly with other technologies, too, including Life Fitness, Les Mills, Wattbike, Precor, Concept 2 and more.

These partnerships should be in equipment and app integrations that benefit your members’ lifestyle (not solely what you have in your gym), but can be so much more than that. Think of local businesses in your area that align with what your community wants to achieve.

Whether it’s healthy restaurants, sports shops, subscription services, nutritional partners – or any other opportunity – be sure you’re not missing out on the chance to team up and add value for both sides.

4 Challenges inspire people to keep going
It’s so important to reward effort, and the best way of doing that is to set challenges that engage, motivate and hold people accountable for their own physical activity levels.

We’ve seen individual and team challenges make a huge difference to building the buzz, keeping members moving and just bringing people together in a fun way that’s enjoyable for all. Even when the competitive spirit really kicks in, it gets people talking who may not have done so previously – congratulating each other on achievements, sharing workout ideas, or innovating in programming to earn more MEPs towards their personal goals.

Individual challenges are a great starting point. For example, everyone meeting the World Health Organization’s guidelines for physical activity in a month gets entered into a prize draw. That way, every members knows it doesn’t matter if you’re in the gym every day or once a week and so long as you meet the standard, you’re in with a chance of winning.

Rewards for these challenges could be courtesy of other local businesses with whom you’ve collaborated or struck up a contra deal to your mutual benefit. Other options are in-house rewards, such as merch, classes and PT sessions, or a month off membership, for example.

5 Focus on helping others focus
Give your members something to focus their goals and performance on – don’t rely on the mundane “I want to lose weight” or “I want to build muscle” induction stereotypes. Functional fitness and concentrating on a defined goal or achievement brings more benefits than abstract ‘nice to have’ reasons for stepping through the door of a gym.

Think about how someone might feel if they worked towards competing in, or simply completing, an event such as a Spartan race. Concentrate on distance goals such as following a mountain trail. Pick a particular lifting achievement, or get your community training for a Hyrox team challenge. The weight loss or strength gains will come as a result.

If you can ask the question “why”, it’s worth inspiring them to delve deeper into the reasoning. Don’t stop at “I want to lose weight.” Ask why? The reasons will vary vastly, but whether it’s to be healthier for longer, be an inspiration to family or to improve mindset and mental health, it’s valuable for both personal trainer or class participant if more of an understanding is there. None of us wants to be treated as a ‘box-tick’ in the same form-filling exercise as the person before or after us.

Heart rate training offers an immediate education into our current physical condition, and guides anyone through short- and long-term goals. Keeping the focus on individual zones from workout to workout will not only indicate the exact level of effort a member can put in above and beyond where they thought they’d stop, but it will help them know when to push, when to recover, and how they’re doing with progression over time.

6 Community should be your everything
The most important thing is being there for your community. In taking any of these steps, you’ll be reaching out to more people in your facility, while also penetrating deeper into the local network.

Make people welcome, surprise and delight with what you offer at this time when going above and beyond can make you stand above the competition.

It’s all about rewarding effort and finding the right partners that can add the most value at the heart of physical activity for your people.

More: www.myzone.org