No myth: Gyms see a rise in memberships with the new year

It's the perennial resolution: to get in shape.

Post-holiday, pre-swimsuit-season months, gyms stand ready to oblige the scores of would-be gym rats who decide to go for it each year.

While a New Year's windfall may seem like a trope, local gym owners such as Matt Diebold at Snap Fitness said the January membership bump is no joke.

"Yeah, we see it definitely," he said. "I'd probably say we see about a 10 to 12 percent increase in new memberships this time of the year."

So it should be no surprise he chose Jan. 15 to open his gym in Cape Girardeau two years ago.

Jill Mills, who owns Anytime Fitness, said her gym also gets proactive early in the year, offering memberships for $1.

"We usually run a promotion," she said. "We have one going on at this time."

She said they'll probably end up running another offer through the rest of the month or into February.

"New Year's is pretty easy for gyms," she said with a laugh. "But it's catalyst. People want to lose weight; they want to get healthy."

But it's not quite that easy; capitalizing on the New Year's bump takes work and a personal touch, she said.

"Once they're here, it's our job to keep them in here not just for a few months," Mills said.

She said there are regular customers at Anytime Fitness who joined around this time and have stuck to it for several years since.

"You keep them by having a nice, clean facility and maintaining member engagement," she said. "Get to know your members. Make them want to come to the gym because it's fun to be at the gym, not just to be grinding away all the time."

Diebold said things such as check-ins from trainers, initial consultations and taking the time to teach newcomers what the machines do and how to use them is key to helping patrons achieve their goals. "That's important," he said. "We don't want people to come in and just go to a treadmill, we'll call it, just because that's the only thing that they know how to use."

While many businesses were closed Monday and many people were relaxing at home, Chris Poyner and his brother, Brad, were working up a sweat at Anytime Fitness.

Chris said he'd been serious about exercise months ago, but knows what gym newcomers might be in for.

"You see guys in muscle magazines and stuff like that. I just wanted to push my body and see what I could get it to do. I already was kind of fit," he said with a shrug. "But that first couple of weeks, I knew that they were going to be the hardest part of it."

After a while, he said, he became more capable.

"Then your body starts to crave it," he said. "And from there, you sort of get addicted."

"You just get bitten by the bug," Brad said. "And if you start to not do it, you feel like crap."

And for those who may be worried about being bitten by the fitness bug, Diebold suggests framing the objective differently.

"I think it always goes back to setting goals." Diebold said. "It needs to be not just a resolution, but a goal. One, you have to do it for yourself. Two, set that goal, write it down. Hang it up in your house somewhere."

tgraef@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3627