How to be a Great Fitness Manager by Cam Bridger

I was a fitness manager for a national company, David Lloyd Leisure, for 3 years, this means anyone can be a fitness manager for a national company!  

The fitness manager role is often the first step into management for fitness professionals with aspirations of making it to General Manager positions and beyond.  One of the most common sights I’ll see when recruiting for fitness jobs for senior management roles, is to see these candidates have completed a prolonged stint as a fitness manager earlier in their fitness career.

In many companies the fitness manager is a multi-faceted role with you heading several different departments. For example, during my time with David Lloyd I managed swim, gym, group exercise and the kid’s department - so be prepared to get out of your comfort zone!  In other brands you may also end up leading other services in the business, not just fitness.

So, what are the key elements that make up a great fitness manager?  I have listed below the ultimate guide to this and if you have any questions just let me know.

Getting Started the right way, have the right foundations

Before you know how to be great you need to know how to lay the foundations.  This advice is from working with and finding jobs for some fantastic fitness managers is that these people all have these strong foundations.

Becoming a fitness manager will normally have the same start point for most (albeit there are always exceptions to the rule) starting by gaining a level 2 Fitness Instructor qualification before progressing onto the level 3 Personal Trainer course. If you do have any queries or questions about this, please reach out and I would be more than happy to take you through the best options for you.

From here the best thing to do would to build a strong and successful personal training business. I would recommend at least a couple of years, so you have experienced everything that your future team is going to go through at some point. Personal trainers growing their businesses is a big part of the role and are areas you are likely to judged on so having experience of the problems and solutions yourself can be hugely important.

With most fitness manager jobs it isn’t all glitz and glamour and there will be times where the gym floor will need covering or you’ll have to step into and lead a class which is why having these qualifications and experience of working in these areas are often needed.  A couple of years of being a Personal Trainer, Fitness Instructor or Group Ex instructor (or ideally all 3!)  will give you the opportunity to work closely with the management team to observe and learn how the job is done before stepping into the fitness manager role.  This is what I did.

Passion

There are a variety of elements of the role you will need to embrace and master to be a great fitness manager.  The one element no one can teach you is passion for fitness, for helping people and for your product.  A well skilled, well connected fitness manager who brings love and passion to work every day are the very best fitness managers that I have seen.

Team

You will only be as good as your team and that is a fact. You could be the best fitness manager in the world but if you do not have a strong team that you can trust then it’s going to be very hard to make the impact that you want.

Creating and assembling the ideal team is going to come through a mixture of parts.  You’ll need to train and up skill your team, you’ll need to recruit right and you’ll need to have a mutual respect with everyone.

Top Tip: Have regular impromptu chats with your team, take a genuine interest in their lives and remember what is important to them. Remembering the little things like their birthdays, their partners names or something that is going on in their life will show that you care. Remember that everyone responds in different ways, whether it be to criticism or praise so learn what works for the individuals in your team and act accordingly.

Training - Most companies will have courses available for all team members in your department, so encourage them to go on courses and go on them with them if you can.

Look around for resources, places like REPs have historically had free online CPD units with areas like pregnancy and working with special population, encourage learning and your existing team will grow!

Along with this take the time to make sure the basics are trained into the team consistently from gym inductions being completed to brand standards to safety procedures being adhered to. Make training regular, consistent, engaging and as practical as possible. The more time and effort you invest in your team the less time and effort you’ll spend correcting mistakes.

Top Tip: Schedule in monthly training days with your team, make them after hours (this way they can be less formal), fun and engaging. Order food and organise a social after (beer and pizza is always a winner). When you are able to make these feel like fun and not a chore, you will get buy in from your team and when you have buy in from your team your department will thrive.

Recruitment - Hopefully you will be able to build a culture and team where turnover is kept low however the fitness industry can be a place for high turnover of staff especially when looking at it from a PT level.  When you have a gap in your team though, my single biggest piece of advice here is to not rush the recruitment process. When I was a Fitness Manager, I can speak from personal experience where I made the wrong choice by getting in a candidate to plug a gap instead of the right candidate.

If I had taken the time to find the right person, taken on the extra work myself initially and sought help I would have had a long-term solution instead of a recurring problem. There is no one clear solution, so take your time, reach out to experts for help *cough www.loverecruitmentgroup.com *cough and make sure you find the right individual who can become part of your team.

Top Tip: Ask to sit in and be a part of the recruitment process with your GM and other HODs, you will learn the process of the company and pick up tips from other more experienced recruiters which will aid you in your future recruitment.

Mutual Respect - Never ask of anyone what you wouldn’t be willing to do yourself. This could be covering a gym floor class to cleaning up an overexcited kids sick from the pool drains (not all glitz and glam) but if you show willing to muck in, I guarantee your team will do the same.

If you are not already, become a people person.  My team was made up of close to 100 people, PTs, instructors, kids crew, swim teachers and group ex instructors, and they were all from completely different walks of life so it is imperative that you can learn to deal with almost anyone that you come across. Not everyone’s going to like you but ultimately people respect good leadership.

Top Tip: Schedule in 4 hours a week to work on the gym floor. You will get an understanding of what your staff go through, the problems they face on a day to day basis and how you can help to alleviate these problems. By showing you are still willing to ‘muck in’ it will help to keep the respect of your team.

Finances

A lot goes on behind the scenes at gyms and the fitness manager is responsible for a lot more than you might think, including having targets and financial responsibilities, for example, a number of different lines on the P&L.  You won’t necessarily have to have experience of this initially but a keen eye for numbers and an openness to learn and embrace this is a must.  Have a look out for potential overspending, if that’s on staff or equipment etc.

Next, be entrepreneurial. Beyond personal training there isn’t a lot of ways to create additional revenue streams or increase income so look around see what you have at your disposal. Empty studio time during the day? Look at hall hire or creating your own clubs within clubs and remember to be brave with it and trust your judgement. Something that became massively profitable for us was the creation of our own gymnastics club - the initial outlay was quite large, but we were brave enough and confident in our product that we turned it into profit in no time. A gym is an amazing place to be creative so think big and it will take you places!

Great fitness managers have strong fitness, operational and financial successes.  Embrace it.

Top Tip: Look to take responsibility for non-fitness lines on the P&L. You have limited scope to show your ability and affect the success of the overall P&L with just your fitness lines. Taking on these extra responsibilities will expose you to different aspects of club life, allow you to work closer and learn from your GM and make you a more well-rounded manager.

Operations

Now this is key with fitness managers, they either love it or hate it. Rightly so there are hundreds of rules and regulations when running a gym or leisure club to keep the centre secure and to keep everyone in it safe. You will learn loads of new skills (I never knew I could fix a jacuzzi until I did it) but you will also spend some time behind a computer, which does not come naturally to some.  

Being a fitness manager often also means being a duty manager which is check after check after check but as soon as you realise it has to be done, you’ll soon get over it. As you can probably tell this was not my favourite aspect of the job but I’m very happy that it was part of it as I can confidently say I can help run almost any fitness facility in the world now.  My key message here is embrace all areas of the role, each and every one makes you a better fitness manager

Top tip: Routine. Schedule in these tasks for the same time every week – you will not put them off and all checks will be completed to the same standard.

Understand your Pathway

The fitness manager role can open up so many doors. I would say the most common one is to become a General/Club/Studio Manager next then regional after and so on.  Succeeding as a fitness manager will give you so many options that you thought you may never have.

My career path has been Food and Beverage Assistant, P.T, Lead Coach and then Fitness Manager before I decided to do something slightly different and join the country’s best fitness recruitment company in Love Recruitment.  If I had never pursued the fitness manager position this would never have happened.  That word is crucial too, PURSUED.  I set myself that target and that gave me purpose and clarity as I built my experience.

Roles like national fitness manager, national trainers, fitness directors and many more become available to great, successful fitness managers so it will be one of the early steps on what could become a very long and exciting fitness journey.

Top tip: Talk to your GM, part of their role is to develop you. In monthly 121s talk about your career development and how you are going to get there. Set some achievable goals that you can work towards and help you develop.

A fitness manager role is perhaps one of the most important building blocks in developing a long and successful career in fitness, choose the right company for you and work hard and the sky really is the limit.

Thanks for reading and I mean it when I say ask me anything you like around this role.  You can find all my contact details on my profile here.  You can also check out other videos and articles in our blog section.

You can have a look at any fitness manager roles we are recruiting for and you can also connect with us to complete a profile and never miss a fitness job again.

cam@loverecruitmentgroup.com