As a gym owner/Coach, your members place their trust in you to wisely manage their time each session, ensuring they get the most out of the gym time they crammed into their already jam-packed schedule. How well are you doing at ensuring your classes are run efficiently? Are you wasting time that could be better spent training?
Here are five easy ways to add more training time to your classes without actually extending them.
1. Write the workout on the board beforehand
This is a huge pet peeve of mine. You’ve probably experienced it before your Coach walks into the room and yells out the first warmup drill. Then he turns his back to the class as he spends the next minute or two writing the rest of the workout on the board. Meanwhile, the newbies who don’t know what that warmup activity is are left to figure it out for themselves and no one has ensured that the chitchat has ended and the class has actually begun. Right from the start, a tone of disorganization has been set for the entire session.
Instead, show up a couple of minutes early and write the workout on the board before class starts. Now you are accessible to everyone who might have questions. You can greet any first timers, ensure that everyone is at least moving while they chit chat, and you’ve set a tone of organization that will bear fruit for you later in the session.
2. Start on time
This goes hand-in-hand with the above. Once you have the workout on the board and since you arrived before the class actually started, now you can make sure your class actually starts on time. You made the commitment to be early and ready, so now you need to demand the same of your members. The vast majority will love you for it.
Surely you will have a few stragglers, especially if you haven’t been very good at starting on time in the past. But there’s nothing like a few extra burpees in front of the whole group to entice someone to show up on time or do their shoes up a little quicker.
3. Inefficient transitions
As you plan your workouts, don’t just focus on the work to be done, but also consider the equipment and floor space used throughout. If you don’t pay attention to these, you can have very inefficient transitions between the different segments of your workout.
When it comes to equipment, try to use the same items throughout so you aren’t wasting time getting stuff out or putting stuff away. You can also have people pair up and share equipment to reduce the time needed for clean up.
Lots of time can be wasted trying to figure out if you are going to be in someone’s way and one change can have a ripple effect around the room on everyone else’s stations. An easy solution is to plan your use of floor space beforehand and then tell your members how to lay out the necessary equipment and direct them to their starting spots accordingly.
4. Not using your timer
A big mistake many gyms make is to use their timer only for their WODs. Instead, each segment should be timed to keep things moving along and ensure your members are being most effective.
Having the timer running during mobility segments helps members ensure they aren’t shortchanging their stretch durations and during lifting segments try using EMOMs/e90s/e120s as they are great structures to keep people moving through their sets.
For many, their current timer may be too cumbersome to use for each segment or incapable of some of the structures you want. Take a look at some of the latest gym tech that makes planning, setup and configuration of your timer a breeze.
5. Prioritize the hard stuff and assign homework
Your time in class is finite. While all that stretching and mobility work, foam rolling, and other modalities are great, you simply can’t fit it all in. So instead of trying to, make sure you keep the intensity of your classes as high as possible throughout so that your members are getting the most bang for their buck.
If you don’t have time to fit it in, that doesn’t mean it can’t be done. Assign some of that work to your members to complete at home. I’m sure they can find a few minutes in front of the TV to roll out their legs or perform some additional stretching.
Next time you find your class struggling to fit everything in, remember these time saving tips and improve the efficiency of your classes.
