Small group training (SGT) will continue to be a popular product, says Stephen Tongue. Here he looks at strategies to help you grow your SGT offering.
If you’re not already doing SGT, you have likely considered it but perhaps need more insight and, if you are already running it, how can you improve it? From a business perspective, compared to large group exercise classes, with SGT you can really target small niches in training, reduce the amount of admin and resources required, increase profitability and create brand-centric communities, while offering a higher quality service level with better customer satisfaction. From a customer perspective, they get a higher level of coaching and attention, have more input into what they would like the product to be, build stronger community bonds and generally receive a level of service comparable to personal training but without the same price tag.
In this article, we discuss strategies that will help you improve customer experience, improve member results and help you grow your SGT offering. To perk up your profits, tantalise your tribe and rev up your results, let’s get into some top tips.
Target a niche
An SGT community will be much more successful if you can pull together a group of like-minded people with a common goal. You may well have a particular specialism you wish to take advantage of or you may recognise a niche in the market that isn’t very well catered for. If your SGT programme is less about general fitness and more about a targeted goal, you are more likely to attract high-quality leads and committed, loyal members, and will help connect like-minded people who build lasting friendships.
I find the best programmes tend to be seasonal, have names that are fun to say, have a clear end game, offer a group size of six to 12 and cater for a variety of fitness levels.
There are so many niches you could explore but here are a few potential product titles to get your creative juices in full flow: Super Dads, Obstacle Course Racers, Bad Back Better, My First Pull-Up, Fresh Air Fitness, Fit & Flexible, Ski Fit School, 60+ & Strong, Racket Fitness & Agility … I’m not going to go on, but you certainly can.
Environment and equipment
If you know your niche, it will be easier to understand what kind of environment and equipment you will need to organise. Plan ahead to understand what you might need to buy, hire, borrow or find alternatives for. What would be the perfect setting? Would you need indoor or outdoor, a warm or cool temperature, a hard floor, pitches, courts, matting or mud? Keep it relevant to the goal of the group. Think about your participants – do you need quick access to toilets, parking, seating, mobility aids or emergency coffee?
What is the best kit for the job? Will you want to use weights, bands, resistance machines, reformers or pull-up bars? Will your kit travel with you or be in situ? You will want to consider costs, transport, ease of set-up and perhaps storage. Try to make it as easy on yourself as possible.
The price point for your SGT sessions can vary a lot depending on where you are in the country and the product you’re offering. Pricing needs to land somewhere in the range of what you charge for group exercise and personal training. I would suggest that groups limited to six or fewer participants would pay slightly more within that range and six or more would pay a price point at the lower end of that range. Do your market research locally to help guide your pricing decisions.
“Plan a full season’s training ahead with structured blocks of training and session plans.”
Periodise the training plan
Plan a full season’s training ahead with structured blocks of training and session plans that apply progressive overload towards the end goal. Such plans can be kept and replicated year upon year with new members, reducing your workload and helping you refine the most successful and enjoyable member journey. Give training blocks strong and relevant themes that can provide members with a focus, training variety and challenge.
Themes could include titles such as speed, balance, strength, agility or core stability. Themes should be aligned with the end goal and follow the logic of progressive overload, for example, progressing members’ fitness to peak in time for the start of ski season. Promote these periodised plans and build excitement around the themed training blocks with your members; you will delight them with training variation and provide them with fitness pleasure from your progressive pathway to success.
Bond and motivate the group
A group that bonds well will train with you for longer and get better results. It’s important that you facilitate the bonding process. This all starts with everyone learning each other’s names in session one. Make a point of using everyone’s names frequently throughout the first few weeks to allow the group to become familiar. I will always open a session with a brief group discussion on their vitality score out of 10 for the day and what went well with their training that week; this often creates banter and funny stories as the group get to know one another.
During the session you can help create group bonds with your fitness programming. Try to make sessions co-operative rather than competitive. An example of creating a co-operative environment is looking at what the group can achieve as a collective, which might be one mile’s worth of sprinting or lifting the equivalent of a Mini Cooper – use your imagination. A competitive environment within the group will create winners and losers, followed by division. Examples would include creating races or individual points in games.
Creating longer term goals or challenges for the collective group is also great for adherence and a sense of togetherness. Create a team challenge for the month, such as burn 10,000 calories or jog the length of the River Thames. If they feel like they are contributing to the group’s achievements, they are more likely to work as a team and feel accountability for their workouts.
Facilitate communication both face to face and remotely. This can be opening a group chat or having an open invitation for a post-workout brew. The face-to-face group chats are often where the strong friendships are formed.
“Every exercise should have options, ensuring the workout is fully inclusive.”
Coaching
The game changer for SGT sessions is the level of coaching you’re able to give in comparison to a large class. It is important, therefore, that you don’t try to run the session like a large class and you adapt your teaching style to ensure you get to know everybody’s physical capabilities and offer everyone personalised advice. This means planning ahead of time for adaptations to exercises that individuals might need personalising and also helping to highlight with each individual where their strengths lie and what they need to work on to improve.
Every exercise should have options, ensuring the workout is fully inclusive for all involved and they can train like a team. This personal touch really changes the experience for the member; it shows you care about their progress and motivates them to try harder. Make a point every session of addressing coaching for the whole group but also every individual at least once during the workout.
Session format ideas
Working with a group of six to 12 gives you lots of options for workout formats. You may wish to keep the same format for a full block of training to allow familiarity or to mix it up every week for variation – you can get the group’s feedback on this. Personally, I like to keep the same format for a training block to allow better physical adaptation. It also means the sessions run more smoothly as members become familiar with the drill. Here are some simple format styles you might use:
Supersets
I like to do this as a team. Split the group in two; each half does an exercise and then they swap and repeat. It’s really simple to teach and creates a team vibe.
Tri sets
This is basically a small circuit of three exercises, which means you can have small pods of two, three or four members going around the circuit together.
AMRAP
Standing for ‘as many rounds as possible’, AMRAP is a collection of usually four to eight exercises that you continually cycle through as an individual in an attempt to achieve as many cycles as possible against the clock. The time limit is usually 10-20min blocks of non-stop effort. The advantage of this style is that each individual can choose their own pace to work at.
Partner rep workout
Working in pairs, members are given an exercise and a target number of reps, for example, squats x 200. One partner works to fatigue and then tags in their counterpart to continue the rep count while they rest. This cycle continues until the target is achieved. It really helps with this style to try and match similar abilities in the pairings; if you have mixed abilities in a pair, one person may end up taking the lion’s share of the reps.
Gauntlet
Lay out a lane of cones and perform a locomotion-based exercise down the middle, for example, walking lunges. When the end of the lane is reached, run back up the outside of the lane to the start and go again. This creates a nice, constant flow of activity where everyone is moving and working at the same time.
Team games
It does pay to throw in some fun games and create some smiles. I like to do this towards the end of the session to finish the workout on a memorable high. I try to make this co-operative rather than competitive if possible. This could be stringing together throws and catches, various low-key versions of tag, Mexican wave-style reps during core workouts or balancing bean bags on their heads while training. Keep it lighthearted and do a risk assessment – it’s often during game play that members get very excited and throw caution to the wind.
The community feel that you get from small group training can be very rewarding and you can really build a loyal tribe. If you’re only used to delivering one-to-one or large group classes, you will find that small group training offers a different and refreshing atmosphere that adds more enjoyment to your working week. Starting an small group training programme doesn’t have to be a big commitment and can be quite low risk from a business perspective. Write a design for an SGT programme you’d enjoy teaching, market it, deliver it and see where it goes. It might just be what your business is missing. Do you feel ready to grow your SGT offering?
Find out more about small group training in this FitPro podcast with Keli Roberts.
