What A New Gym Manager Notices First
How A New Manager Identified Key Issues And Quick Fixes
There are many advantages a new gym manager can bring to their new team and facility, and perhaps the biggest is the simple fact they are seeing the gym through fresh eyes. Every gym owner knows how easy it is to stop noticing things in a building you walk through every single day.
That is why we are going to be using the firsthand experiences of a seasoned manager joining a new gym and a new team to highlight the changes that any gym owner or manager could start making around their facility today.
Dieter had run gyms before joining The Fit Club, so the day-to-day wasn’t new to him. This article looks at the small improvements he introduced in his first few weeks, turning his attention to everything from the stock rooms and maintenance fixes, to checklists and rotas. The goal was to secure quick wins and fixes to help The Fit Club feel like a sleeker, more professional environment for members and staff alike.
Facility Standards and Safety
Air quality is a good example of the kind of thing members don’t tend to complain about directly, but they can start to grate over time and they become very noticeable when a shiny new gym moves in down the road. That’s exactly what Dieter picked up on during his first walk-through of The Fit Club. He reviewed the Fresh Air System’s performance and identified areas where improvements could be made, and within days the rooms within The Fit Club that had started to feel a little stale began feeling fresh again.
Dieter noticed the ice bath’s closing-down process required some additional attention and started to formalise the procedures, refreshed staff training and introduced clearer written checks. He also took the time to ensure that the schedule for regular TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) testing to keep the water in good condition was up to date and fit for purpose. Once that was in place, closing down became the same straightforward process no matter who was on duty.
The stairwell had become a bit of a catch-all for spare kit and boxes, the kind of thing that happens gradually in any busy gym. Dieter got it cleared and reorganised, and new signage went up throughout the gym once the other jobs were done. It was a series of small changes that together made The Fit Club feel noticeably sharper and better presented.
Team Responsibilities and Rotas
Teams change faster than the systems built to manage them. As The Fit Club’s team grew, Dieter noticed the rota hadn’t kept pace, still built around a smaller team than the one actually on the floor.
He worked with the team to build a new rota that matched its actual size, and followed it with a daily staff task checklist. Between the two, responsibility for day-to-day running became something the whole team could point to, rather than something everyone assumed somebody else was handling.
Cleaning and Stock Processes
Stock management often ends up resting on one or two people, usually whoever’s naturally good at noticing what’s running low. It works fine until that person’s away. Dieter had the stock room deep cleaned and reorganised, improved stock management using Ashbourne’s system, and delegated logging responsibilities across the team rather than leaving it with one person, removing a single point of dependency that catches out plenty of small teams.
Cleaning was another area where Dieter clocked that there could be an improvement and implemented a refreshed daily rota with staff signing off each area once it was done. It’s a small change, but one that gives cleaning clear ownership rather than leaving it to whoever happens to be free, and it’s a solution any independent gym could apply immediately without spending a penny.
Using The Systems
Given Dieter’s eventual destination is joining Ashbourne’s sales team, it was also important that he spent time learning Ashbourne’s systems within The Fit Club. When they did, he spent time learning the member journey from the front desk, and how Ashbourne’s system supports it end to end, from sign-up through to the day-to-day admin that keeps a membership running smoothly.
That understanding fed into a team meeting on getting more out of the system, drawing on training and support from Ashbourne itself rather than figuring it out from scratch. Getting more from software you’ve already got is one of the cheapest improvements any gym can make.
And that’s only the start of what a system can do once a team properly buys into it, which is why the next article in this series takes a deeper dive how any gym can make sure they are getting the most out of their systems.
What Next?
After only a few weeks, Dieter was also looking beyond his own to-do list, meeting with Toby, co-owner of The Fit Club, to talk through future developments for the gym. For any independent gym, that kind of regular contact between owner and manager is worth prioritising. That contact means decisions get made faster and the smaller issues don’t have time to grow. In just a few weeks, Dieter had already touched base with every part of the gym, from the building to the team to the systems behind it.
And the best part is all of it can be done at little to no cost and behind the scenes. Rotas, stock rooms, checklists and small maintenance fixes. None of these are likely to rank highly in a membership survey but taken together, these details shape how professional and well cared for a gym feels.
Next time you walk into your own gym, try seeing it the way Dieter saw The Fit Club on his first day. You might be surprised what stands out.
