A question we get a lot is “Why can’t I find your prices on the website?” It’s a great question. So let’s talk about why we don’t advertise our prices. Firstly, let’s remove the myth that we ‘don’t want to put people off’.Whilst prices at CrossFit gyms and other coaching businesses/micro-gyms may look higher than the average Globo gym, there is a very good reason for that.
But big franchise gyms advertise their prices everywhere.
Your average JD or PureGym sells you one thing. Access. All they need to do is open the door, say “good morning” and you proceed to walk around the plethora of confusing machines completely confused and overwhelmed, jog on their treadmill for a while, maybe pluck up the courage to go grab some dumbbells from the rack, and stand next to a 22 year old monster making highly inappropriate noises whilst he swings his weights around with terrible form. You may even be the lucky winner of a super awkward conversation with one of their personal trainers while they try to sell you 1:1 PT,(which will also be cheap… and for good reason). You think I’m exaggerating? Go stand in the corner of a globo gym for 30 minutes and just watch. It’s an awkward, uncomfortable and quite tense environment.BUT! It’s CHEAP! Awesome, right? For a mere £19.99 a month you can have full access to all that equipment as often as you like. So why can we never stick to it?
First of all, it costs you next to nothing, so it doesn’t matter if you don’t go. If something costs less than a takeaway then what value can it really have? And THAT is where these gyms fail, and why so many people now prefer micro-gyms. One word. Value. A globo gym competes on price. So the gym down the road goes £2 a month less, so the gym opposite that gym goes £4 a month less, and on and on the race to the bottom goes. Microgyms compete on VALUE. Not price!
So how are micro gyms so much better?
Let me explain. You see, we don’t sell access, we sell coaching. Accountability.Results! We don’t just let people buy a membership at our gym having never met them. There’s no ‘BUY NOW!” option on our website. Just a big red button on every page that says ‘Book a free intro’. Here people have access to my personal diary and can choose an appointment that suits them. We work on what we call “The Prescriptive Model”, so we’ll meet a person face to face, we sit down and we talk about what’s most important to them. We ask about their goals, and a number of other questions to find out how we can best serve them. Then based on their answers we’ll prescribe a course of action that will allow them to reach their goals in a realistic timeframe. I’ve often had streaks of free intros where I’ve prescribed completely different plans to every client for days at a time.
Let me give you a couple of examples:
Client 1: Lets call her, Katie. After getting to know Katie and listening to her story, she tells me she’s getting married in 6 weeks, and desperately needs to lose 6kg (or just over 13lb) to fit into her dream dress. She feels she’s tried every trick in the book but can’t lose weight, and if she does she just piles it back on, if she so much as looks at a cinnamon bun. She struggles with motivation to get to the gym consistently, and when she does go she just feels embarrassed. Sound familiar? It sure does to me, because I hear it all the time, and I know exactly what to do.
Here’s Katie’s main issues. Firstly, whilst she’s clearly tried with her diet she’s never actually had any 1:1 guidance or actually been taught how to develop proper eating habits with foods she actually enjoys eating. She’s just been told by social media “Do this and you’ll lose weight!” There’s no wonder she finds it so hard!
So firstly,Katie would really benefit from some nutrition coaching. This way she can learn all the right habits, be supported and encouraged through the process and be held accountable in the run up to the big day. But to lose a kilogram a week for six weeks (which is a fairly aggressive target) she’s going to need to exercise four to five times a week as well. For this i’d recommend at least 1 personal training session per week supplemented by some CrossFit classes. The personal training sessions will allow us to program specifically for Katie’s weight loss goal. So we don’t need to worry about handstand push ups and pistol squats, we just need to safely get that heart rate up and burn some body fat.
So my overall recommendation would be a hybrid package of 6 PT sessions (1 per week) plus group classes 3 to 4 times per week with 6 weeks nutrition coaching in the run up to the wedding. Then we’ll book a goal review for after the wedding and honeymoon and we’ll figure out what would work best for Katie moving forward, as her goals will obviously have changed without the pressure of the wedding.
Client 2: Jack
After getting to know Jack and listening to his concerns, he informs me he’s been following CrossFit and thinks it looks like loads of fun, but he’s a bit apprehensive as It looks like there’s loads of fancy movements he’s never heard of and he’s worried he won’t know what he’s doing in a group class setting. He’s not overly concerned about his weight, he just wants to be healthy and active.
Jack would really benefit from our OnRamp course, prior to joining the group classes. Which is either 4, 6 or 8 sessions, 1:1 with a coach to teach her all the fundamental movements used in CrossFit. We also use these sessions to conduct a full movement assessment, find any limiters and assign scaled down versions of any movements that may yet be too difficult for him. By doing the OnRamp course, Jack will gain knowledge, experience and confidence to take into the group classes. Then we’d book a goal review for 90 days to see how he’s getting on in the classes and find out if he has any specific goals for the next 90 days.
So you see, until we meet a person, find out their goals and listen to their concerns, it is hard to just put a price on it, because there’s no one size fits all option. As we’ve learned from examples above, Katie and Jack had completely different goals, so their prescriptions were completely different. At Team 14 we pride ourselves on being good human beings that genuinely want to help people solve their problems. There are no sales tactics at Station 14, just simple answers to tough questions.
If you’d like to sit down with a coach and talk about your goals, you can book yourself a free intro at www.station14.co.uk
Alex
Founder & Co Owner
Station 14 CrossFit, Goole.