Why we don’t do free trials

I get a lot of new leads and clients asking to come and do a trial of a session. This is normal for pretty much all gyms and it’s certainly not a bad thing. My response is the same pretty much all time, “Sorry, we don’t do trials”. The reaction for the prospective member can often vary quite a lot. From complete understanding and acceptance to confusion and frustration. So I wanted to fully explain why we don’t do trails at RIP Training and what we do instead.

Over the last 20+ years the norm in the fitness industry became a race of who could offer the cheapest memberships or the best deal to get as many people in the door as possible. The was as a result of a business model that necessitated having 1000+ members but only ever having 150 or so of them actually come and use the facility. These gyms usually have big spaces, with tonnes of super expensive equipment and lots of staff. Their expenses are high and they need to have a huge number of regular paying members to keep the doors open. So what do they do? Offer memberships as cheap as possible and give out free trials to get as many people in the door as possible then sign them onto long term contracts that ensure a steady income for the business.

Now, I’m not bagging out this business models, the gyms that use it or the owners that run these places. This model works. It tried and tested and has spawned many huge national and global chain and lead to the boom of the fitness industry since the start of this century. But in the last 10-15 years a different kind of model has surfaced, one that aims to be the opposite of giving a basic service for the lowest amount possible. And for this model the focus is on coaching rather than access. People rather than equipment.

At RIP Training our model is all about being a coaching service. We provide this service through our main two channels of Personal Training and Group Classes. So here’s why free trials don’t really work for our model;

1. You simply can not gauge what we do and if a program, gym, coach or training method is for you off of 1 session or even a week trial. The way we train is so broad and varied that you would need at least a month of training 5 days a week at absolute minimum to see if this style of training is right for you. And even then you won’t have started to see much physical change by then and you would really need at least 12 weeks to start to see some decent results. Change takes time.
2. When you jump straight into a class you are far more concerned with just fitting in with the group then actually getting what you need training wise out of that session. Everything is new, the environment, the people, how things work and you are just trying to keep your head above water and not fall behind that you will probably won’t retain anything you learn in the session and you won’t be able to perform the workout effectively as you’re just trying not stand out and fall behind.
3. In a group coaching environment the coach has to always manage their time as evenly as possible between the entire group they are coaching and they need to triage who needs their help the most. The person that needs the most help is going to get the most attention, it’s just natural and it’s expected. But if now that person is completely new, they have no rapport with the coach and they have no familiarity with even just the basics of the gym like where equipment is and how they group sets up and operates then all of sudden the coaches time is now going to be disproportionately skewed to one person. Just do the numbers, if there’s 10 people in a 60 minute group class then that means the coach gets a maximum of 6 minutes attention on each person in the hour. Now factor in the group coaching time and that amount of time is already down by a couple minutes per person and if you then add someone brand new who takes 15-20 minutes of the coaches time throughout the session then now we have the regular paying members getting only a few minutes (or less) of the coaches attention and assistance.
4. We put our current members first! Sure, a business needs new members. Churn is inevitable and if a gym doesn’t ever get new members it won’t replace those that just naturally leave over time and it will cease to exist eventually. So getting new members into the gym is a core part of the business but without the current members the gym wouldn’t even be around. And these current members are the ones that are already committed to us, are paying for our services and have been with us often for many years. They are the core of our business and we have to prioritise them getting the best service possible by putting them first.
5. And lastly, we set our coaches up for success. If a coach has a brand new person they have never met, seen or know anything about walk into their class it can create a tonne of uncertainty and change the service they give our members for that hour. On the other hand, if a coach can see who is coming to their session, know the training expeirence of each of those individuals and have a good idea of what they are capable of then they as the coach are able to be far more prepared and professional. Remember, our service is coaching so we must always put the quality of the coaching first.

So I hope this gives you some insight as to why we don’t do free trials and why they don’t work for us. I’m not saying that free trials are bad or that the big gym access model is wrong but it just isn’t what we are. I’ve given 5 detailed reasons above but I easily could have given another 5 as over the years of being a coach and a gym owner I have seen time and again why there are better ways to introduce a new member to a gym and create a better starting experience that benefits all parties involved. It’s for these same reasons above that we aren’t part of single session based schemes like Fitness Passport or Class Pass.

I often read articles that are like this blog. All they do is talk about why something isn’t good but never give a solution as to what could be better. But I’m not doing that. So here is what we do:

1. Instead of a free trial we provide a free consult. We call this a No Sweat Intro and it’s basically a chat with a coach where you actually get to meet the coach, face to face at the gym and talk about your goals and how we can help you get there.
2. Onboarding sessions. We start new clients off 1 on 1 with a coach first (remember coaching is our number 1 priority, you’re starting to see a theme here). This is the best way for a new client to get the best experience at the gym.
3. From here move into ongoing Personal training sessions or group classes. Now that you’ve gotten the hang of things work around here you can dive in even more and start to get the most from the coaches and from the training.

So if you are someone who is used to giving something a trial before you commit, I encourage you to dig deeper and trust the process that a gym has laid out of they don’t do trials. A lot people won’t even step through the doors if they can’t get a free trial and they are probably missing out on something that could change their life if they just have an open mind. If a gym or a business has process that seem different or confusing to you it probably something that they have put a lot of time and thought into because they saw a problem and needed to solve it. So keep an open mind, and help them to be part of the solution.

If you ever want to have chat, you know where to find me.