As a health club operator, you should want to deliver the best experiences in as many ways as you can. Simple as! Therefore, you should do your best to make sure your members can listen to the music they are most comfortable with while they are working out.
Let’s look at some other lines of work.
In the food and beverage industry, the hospitality trade and the wonderful world of retail, selecting the right music is viewed with paramount importance. Studies have even gone as far as suggesting that the music played during a shopping experience or a dining experience can affect how people buy.
That’s right, the mere melody of a track can elicit a positive uplift in a customer’s mood and attitude, and this not only influences the amount of time they spend in the facility but the amount of cash they spend, too.
Yet in the fitness industry, where we may well see parallel findings, it just feels to be more of an after-thought?
Should we be taking a leaf out of some other industry books and putting more time, effort and consideration into maximising our member experiences through music? I certainly believe so…
What’s so great about music?
From the moving, inspirational lyrics to the rousing, upbeat tempo, music has a number of motivational properties that can aid your members through their workout.
It is no wonder that with so many characteristics, music can encourage your members to get more from their workout. Let’s see some of the science behind it…
Music makes you motivated
According to research, music has the ability to engage the body’s sympathetic nervous system.
What on earth does that mean?
Well, this system is responsible for getting the body ready for action. So, as your members listen to music, their heart rate will accelerate, their palms may start to sweat and their muscles will be primed for movement.
If this is true, it’s clear to see why music may be so beneficial to someone trying to raise their arousal levels in an exercise or Health Club environment.
On top of that, the actual rhythm of the music has been shown to help with motor coordination so this will reduce the likelihood of your members sustaining injuries.
From this alone, it seems to me like music should go hand in hand with any warm up.
The double-edged chord?
Not only does the music stimulate a person’s physiological arousal levels, but it also inhibits the opposing feelings of demotivation. It’s a double-edged sword (or chord, if you’d excuse the pun)!
If a gym goer focuses on their favourite song during a workout, it will restrict the signals in the brain which are associated with fatigue and boredom.
This is particularly useful for someone who is participating in moderate exercise and finds it a little boring. Know the feeling?
Think back to a time when you have been doing a light-jog on the treadmill or a steady state row. Did you press that red ‘stop’ button because you were tired, exhausted and simply couldn’t go on any longer?
Or did you press it because you were bored and just couldn’t bring yourself to put your mind through any more of it?
If it was the latter, perhaps the presence of some livelier music could have pushed you to work a little harder, for longer.
The melody lifts our mood.
Above all, music has the power to elicit positive emotional reactions from your members and enhance their mood.
Advanced neuroimaging has pretty much evidenced this, this fancy new technology which monitors brain activity has revealed that certain motivated-related regions of the brain are activated when a person listens to a piece of music that either a) contains meaningful lyrics or b) is associated with extremely fond memories.
Do I dare say that’s why music makes blasting out those burpees a little more enjoyable?
Now you just need to think of some music which is universally appreciated by your members. *Sigh*
If everyone’s a listener, everyone’s a winner!
As I touched upon earlier, music can serve as a distraction by helping your members to get ‘in the zone’.
Wait, there’s more. As individuals enter that all elusive ‘zone’, this can improve the environment of your Health Club as a whole.
With your members more deep in focus, they will be less aware of what is going on around them, and less aware of themselves. This will go some way to eradicating those horrible feelings of self-consciousness and nervousness that some of your members may have, and your place becomes a better facility to workout in!
So, while the music serves a purpose for an individual, simultaneously, it has a satisfying ripple effect for the rest of your members as it creates an environment whereby everyone feels more at ease.
This is perhaps another reason why music is so effective in a Group Exercise setting!
Retention is again worth a mention.
Motivational is multi-dimensional. It is based on the direction, duration and intensity of effort.
With duration and intensity, we are looking at the time and the effort levels a member spends exercising.
With direction, we’re simply referring to whether a member turns up to your facility or not.
As I’ve emphasized throughout this blog so far, listening to the music undoubtedly leads to increases in duration and intensity, but it can also be considered as an influential factor in determining the direction of one’s effort.
A report conducted in 2012 among 2,000 gym goers found that half of the respondents would visit their gym less if it didn’t play the right music! Pretty alarming, right?
In case you are unaware of the damage that a drop in visitor frequency can cause to your Health Club, check out my recent blog’ – different levels mean different devils.
What type of music should your Health Club play?
With music tastes and choices being so personal, can health club operators ever get this right?
The be truthful, you won’t be able to get this right for everyone, all of the time.
You should still try and do your best to get it right for as many people as possible, most of the time!
Oh, and because you care about the minority who are not happy with your music, you should still create a comfortable environment for them to bring their own headphones and other such devices if they wish.
Really, are headphones OK?
If a member doesn’t like your music but everyone else does, or if they just prefer to listen to their own music, then you still want them to have the best customer experience possible!
In order to make sure the members who aren’t so fond of your playlist don’t feel marginalised by it, you should encourage them to bring their own headphones. You can surely appreciate that they will enjoy their workout more if they do.
As I kind of said though, if a member is bringing their own headphones to train, it is often an indication that they are dissatisfied with your choice of music. So while it may be acceptable for some members to bring their own headphones, if the majority of your members start to – then you could have a wider problem!
On that note, be mindful that a relationship may exist between the ‘percentage of members you have using their own headphones’ and the ‘amount of time spent by those members using their phones on the gym floor’.
We all know too well how mobile phone usage ‘in between sets’ can impact the flow of gym equipment usage and member satisfaction levels.
So go on, how do you decide what is right to play?
Music and exercise theorists have contended that the ideal tempo for optimal exercise performance is somewhere between 120-140 beats per minute.
However, the tempo is just one aspect. If you really want to go out of your way to create a better environment, you should examine the demographic data and the profiles of your members at certain times throughout the day, and choose songs they will appreciate.
For instance, if you know that 70% of people who come to the gym between 10.30am – 11:45am are over the age of 50, perhaps playing the latest Calvin Harris chart-topper may not evoke the same feelings as it would to a younger audience.
In the same way, if your ‘check-in’ data shows that 65% of your member base who visit the gym on a Friday night between 5pm – 6pm are 18-21 years old, you may wish to switch the genre of your music to something more relevant and upbeat as it’s likely this cohort may be using the gym prior to engaging in a different type of social activity.
It might even be a bright idea to invite a top DJ who can play ‘requests’ to replicate a party-style atmosphere on the gym floor.
Are there any other options?
By constantly gathering feedback from your members about your music choices, it will only improve your customer experience and boost your retention figures.
You might be tempted to just play the radio on the gym floor, but that’s definitely not the way to go – the last thing your members want to hear while you’re working out is Scott Mills talking about what he’s having for breakfast, or Chris Moyles talking about Brexit.
You may also be tempted to play your own advertising commercials over the sound system, but just remember, there are many other ways to target your members using much more personalised techniques that don’t interfere quite so much with the members’ overall experience.
See my post on omnichannel marketing for further ideas.
A final note
Music benefits both your members as individuals and your health club as a whole, which in turn will benefit your members as individuals and your health club as a whole.
It is another one of those amazing, positive upward spirals that if you get right, (just like those top department stores on the high street and the most popular restaurants in the city that I mentioned right at the start of this article) you can expect to encounter a lot of success.
If you’re not in a position to get your music choices right, because you don’t have the data to hand to see who is using your gym, eFitness are here to help.
Schedule a call with eFitness to see how our gym software can transform your Health Club’s thinking from 3-star to 5-star.