Okay, so I’m an admitted exercise hater. I can’t stand regimented exercise programs. In order for me to enjoy exercise it has to be fun and games. Why don’t any gyms, trainers or whatever organized exercise providers have sessions that consist of a mixture of different things? I would love to do a program where we rotated through a list like this on a weekly basis:
modern/freestyle dance
volleyball
ballroom dance
tennis
deep water aerobics
hockey
skating
golf
basketball
bicycling
pilates
karate
step aerobics
zumba
I would lose so much weight and be in such GREAT shape if I could find something like this!
I would guess that the organizational difficulty of setting this up is the main reason it’s not widely available now.
And it may well not be commercially successful anyway, as even though we all like variety, there will be people put off by a few items on the list they don’t like. Or they may enjoy one activity so much that they drop out to just focus on that particular one.
I should also point out, that with the possible exception of one or two of the pricier activities like golf (which might not make economic sense to do sporadically), there is nothing stopping you signing up for a bunch of things and organizing such a programme for yourself.
Frankly if you’re telling yourself that the reason you can’t lose weight is because nowhere provides the kind of diverse programme you need, it’s likely you’re kidding yourself. I don’t mean that to sound judgemental; we all kid ourselves in lots of ways.
In addition to what Mijin said, that gym would have to hire a ton of trainers since they probably can’t find just one or two that can do all those things well enough to train people in all of them.
On top of that, a lot of those are team sports. Which means you’re going to have a lot of trouble putting together a group of people where everyone can do zumba together this weekend…enough of them have any interest in golf for next weekend…and you can put together a few teams that match up well enough to play basketball the following weekend (2 on 2 isn’t going to be fun if the teams aren’t fairly matched).
It sounds to me like you’re better off taking individual classes for a few weeks at a time and rotating them around and doing some of the individual stuff (biking, skating, golf) on your own.
I’m thinking of casual games, too, rather than anything super organized play-by-the-rules or with Official-Quality equipment. Sure they’d need access to a court for some things, a pool for the water stuff, etc. I know nobody does this but basically I don’t know why they couldn’t pay to rent those for one week.
If I do it myself by joining five gyms then I’m paying five times for things I’ll use for one week out of twelve. Not fiscally smart. Also, one of the things that helps to keep me motivated is playing with other people.
You don’t need a different trainer for each of the activities. Just one guy who knows the basics of each, who acts more like an organizer/planner/casual coach than a hard-ass trainer. An activities director, if you will. Basically I don’t see why adult exercise has to be a chore. Why can’t it be play just like for kids? Adults take things way too seriously.
Perhaps you need to join or create a local Meet-Up group that does something like this. I don’t think it’s really something that the sort of person who is hired to be a trainer/teacher at a local gym would do. You are looking for an adult PE teacher - physical trainers and class teachers aren’t expected to be so rounded.
Since it’s casual there’s nothing stopping you from starting a local group that does this. The hardest part would be scheduling the spaces and coordinating instructors where needed. That can be done by anyone with the will to try.
I think it’s mostly a matter of catering I a smaller market while having higher expenses.
Most people are happy to either focus on an activity, or to join a gym that offers a wide range of classes and mix and match from them. Furthermore, many people actively dislike certain sports, and will not be happy to pay for a golf class (or whatever), when they hate golf. Even just one disliked active can make people not want to join. You will also have a lot of people who don’t want to drive to different facilities every week.
Then there is the fact that costs are higher. Finding and arranging locations, equipment, insurance, and instructors for a range of activities is always going to be more expensive than focusing on one.
I agree this could be a good MeetUp group, but it’s unlikely to be commercially viable.
Hmm, this is a fair analysis and you’re probably right about the cost and the transportation issue.
Having said that, I know I’m not alone in hating repetitive gym exercise. I wonder if other people who feel that way would actually exercise if they had something like this with variety. Golf isn’t actually something I enjoy but I’d be willing to do it for a week. I’m thinking it’s the “short-termedness” of it all that would hold everyone’s interest to keep participating (setting aside the cost/transportation problems). Plus those were just activities that I came up with for examples. I don’t see why the participants couldn’t vote on “next month’s roster of activities” so that everyone had fun.
Thanks but actually I don’t like your addition to the title. I’m good with making it more descriptive but I think saying it’s a gym exercise program will not appeal to the people who would likely agree with my idea so they won’t read the thread. It will likely attract only “gym rats” and exercise aficionados to read the thread. Can you change it to “variable fun activities” or something?
The majority of people who are OK with a gym but like variety go to Crossfit, do some other sort of cross training program, or take a variety of classes. The majority of folks who like variety but don’t like gyms go out and do a variety of unorganized activities each week that don’t require classes or large groups. You’re looking for a subset of a subset; people who don’t like gyms, but like group activities that require significant setup and equipment, but need instruction. I really doubt there’s much of a market for that at a reasonable price - if you want that you may need to hire a personal trainer.
And unless you have experience with some of those you’re going to be awful for an extended period of time. You can’t play hockey, basketball, tennis, volleyball or golf with people of unequal skills, if you bike with people of different fitness levels either you drop the slow riders or force the fast riders to go at a snails pace, learning dance is going to be a lot of standing around at the start and some folks are never going to get it, and the rest mostly already have classes available.
Step aerobics, yoga, pilates, zumba, and spin (stationary bike) were offered in the two high-end gyms when I was a grad student at UGA.
I didn’t use them, since as a student of UGA, I had access to Ramsey, were I could take those, plus water aerobic classes (three different types), plus access to the pool and regular gym, plus I also took a couple of dance classes and was a member of capoeira club. It also had an indoor track I could use for running.
So my answer to you is look for a high-end, all inclusive gym, and that would take care of at least 5 things. In fact, I think even Planet Fitness offers a variety of classes you could partake, so you won’t get bored. As to the other ones, join a club, since many of them are team activities. Or live close to a place that has tennis courts (like say, an university).
I would think any local YMCA/City gym offers a bunch of different drop-in classes, so you could absolutely do a program like this, but it would be on your own to plan and schedule your time?
In some cities, various gyms work together and you can buy a card with 10 passes on it for any of the gyms. This might give you some of the variety you want. No gym is going to be able to do all you want, but if you had access to 5 or 10 gyms you might get a lot of variety. I saw this type of pass advertised in on of the free local magazines centered around fitness. See if you have those magazines in your city.
Many gyms will already have group classes or facilities for these activities. National gyms like Golds Gym and 24 Hour Fitness provide these and you could likely find a single gym which had all of these:
modern/freestyle dance (hip hop aerobics)
volleyball
deep water aerobics (water aerobics in 3 feet)
basketball
bicycling (spin class)
pilates
karate (kick boxing)
step aerobics
zumba
I understand what you’re saying but see this is what I mean when I said that adults take things too seriously. Sure, the “instructor” could give basic instruction on the game, just so we’re not all standing around fiddling with our smartphones. But what I have in mind isn’t getting good enough to compete so different skill levels don’t matter. I’m thinking of games just for fun. Basically just “whacking a ball around”. Anybody who has advanced enough skills to get bored with the slower people can go join a real league/gym/game/whatever.
We often lament how so many people these days are fat and lazy and never leave the couch or computer chair. All I’m thinking is something just fun enough to get **those **people off the couch for an hour a day.
I don’t know why you’d need to join five gyms. At the gym I go do you can do a sort of modern dance (it’s called Cize-the end of exercise), deep water aerobics, tennis, pilates, karate, basketball, step aerobics, zumba, and volleyball. Bicycling, if you want to count their spinning classes. That gets a lot of your list, most classes are included with the membership fee (but not the tennis courts or the pilates classes using the equipment–reformer and whatever else it’s called, they are extra). Of course you would still need a whole other place for golf (a big place) and skating/hockey. They probably have the facliities for ballroom if there was interest.
Or maybe you could join a country club. They usually also have pools, tennis courts, workout areas, and even skating rinks.
But the other thing is, you need specialized equipment for some of these things. I agree it would be a fun thing to try a little tennis, a little golf, etc. They could have some low-end equipment for you to try, but you don’t get the best results with low-end equipment (at least you don’t in tennis). And you would need different shoes, at the very least, for a lot of these things.
I think you should look for some all-inclusive gym and create your own program. Or: create the program yourself, sign people up, find venues, and arrange to make yourself a small profit. Because it does sound more fun than doing the same thing over and over every week. (And then of course you will get the person who thought it was basketball week and is wearing high-tops for ballroom dance.)
If you know how to play hockey, just wandering around on the ice with people who don’t know how to skate isn’t fun. If you know how to bike tooling along at 7 MPH isn’t fun. If you know how to play golf, waiting for someone taking 14 strokes to reach the green isn’t fun. Maybe your target audience includes enough folks who don’t know how to do any of these activities but I think you’re overestimating the audience and overestimating what counts as fun.
