Re: 100 Starting Strength gyms in 5 years
Posted: Mon Sep 11, 2023 4:25 am
I think it's useful to look back at this old article of Rip's. To my mind it's the one that best represents his driving philosophy - not all the stuff about low-bar vs high-bar, or covid being a fraud or whatever, but why he gets up in the morning and yells at his gym members to drive their arse out of the bottom of the squat, and types angrily online.
https://startingstrength.com/article/in ... _increases
"The typical new gym member comes three of four times on schedule, misses the next two workouts, comes one more time, and then never comes back. [...] I know that I have about 4 workouts in which to change something – preferably something they can see in the mirror – to even have a chance to keep them paying dues. And I need the money. As a practical matter, I figured out a long time ago that the easiest way to make the human body look different in the shortest period of time possible was to make it stronger, and that the easiest way to guarantee that this happened was to add weight to the bar every time the member shows up."
Both for member results and a gym owner's income, we need people to keep coming. It doesn't matter how brilliant the training is if they don't do it. And if the training's awful but non-injurious they keep doing it, well they're still better off than at home on the couch. Blasting them so they get their sweat on for an hour is going to do that. But showing them tangible, measurable changes in four sessions does that, too.
The question is which works better for long-term retention. And anyone who says they know the answer to that is lying, because if they did they'd be running a huge chain of financially successful gyms with everyone ranting feverishly about their results. At most we might say that it's different markets based on people's personalities, but then we get dangerously close to saying, "we're narrow-casting" which always sounded to me like trying to avoid saying, "shit, I dunno."
How do you make them show up?
https://startingstrength.com/article/in ... _increases
"The typical new gym member comes three of four times on schedule, misses the next two workouts, comes one more time, and then never comes back. [...] I know that I have about 4 workouts in which to change something – preferably something they can see in the mirror – to even have a chance to keep them paying dues. And I need the money. As a practical matter, I figured out a long time ago that the easiest way to make the human body look different in the shortest period of time possible was to make it stronger, and that the easiest way to guarantee that this happened was to add weight to the bar every time the member shows up."
Both for member results and a gym owner's income, we need people to keep coming. It doesn't matter how brilliant the training is if they don't do it. And if the training's awful but non-injurious they keep doing it, well they're still better off than at home on the couch. Blasting them so they get their sweat on for an hour is going to do that. But showing them tangible, measurable changes in four sessions does that, too.
The question is which works better for long-term retention. And anyone who says they know the answer to that is lying, because if they did they'd be running a huge chain of financially successful gyms with everyone ranting feverishly about their results. At most we might say that it's different markets based on people's personalities, but then we get dangerously close to saying, "we're narrow-casting" which always sounded to me like trying to avoid saying, "shit, I dunno."
How do you make them show up?