Now there are many other things we could talk about in programming but today I want to talk about something that I have spent an unimaginable amount of time on, making sure that the programming allows for maximum efficiency at The Spot Athletics.
What I mean by this is making sure that our Large group, small group, athletes and personal training clients are all able to get in great workouts and not be on top of each other. Our facility is approximately 8,000sq. ft., with about 6,000 of that being workout floor.
The way we are set up allows for 40-45 clients, maximum, to be training at one time. This summer during our prime time slots we have roughly that training and it seemed busy but not overcrowded. This was due to the fact that we have put an immense amount of time in programming all of our different services so that they can happen together in our facility.
One of the unique things about The Spot Athletics is that in the same hour your will see house wife, world champions and young athletes all training. These people all get trained under one philosophy but obviously they can't all be doing the same exact thing as they have different needs.
Besides having different needs, you can't have every client group following the exact same pattern because then you would run out of room very quickly.
How we went about doing this was designating different areas of the gym for different time periods. So if athlete group A was on the turf from 10-10:15, then athlete group B would be on the turf from 10:15-10:30 and so on and so forth.
The challenge with this is still making sure every group is getting sound programming so that they see the results they expect from The Spot Athletics. Although everyone would love unlimited space, that is not a possibility in the private sector. So we maximize the space we have by creating a template that maximizes our space.
What allows us to do this most efficiently is that we start our programs at offset times and that allows for maximum usage of all of our equipment. So while our small groups start at 5:30, our large group starts at 6. This ensures that everyone is not vying for the same space at the same time.
The other huge and probably most important thing that allows us to maximize our space is the fact that we are a team. Everyone at The Spot Athletics follows our protocol and our training template. This allows for a smooth operation of all the groups. If we were to have a group of independent contractors just doing whatever they want our space would be maxed out at 20 - 25 people. But because we have a great team of people working together to maximize our space and our client experience, we are able to easily coach many more people without an issue.
Over time we have had to become better and better at this as we have grown. When we started and it was just Matt Barnauskas and I training people, we really didn't need to worry about maximizing our programming for space. As we have grown we have realized it doesn't work having everyone in the facility squatting heavy at 4pm.
So we have adapted the training times and the program to ensure we can maximize the space we do have. If you own a facility and are just starting out, I suggest that you start this process early. I wish I would have thought about how the program would work when we were at capacity from the start and I would have had to make far less changes over time. If you start thinking about how it will work when you are full, then when you get full, you won't have to spend so much time adjusting everything, like I have had to do.