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How to Keep Fitness Clients Engaged with Contests

How to Keep Fitness Clients Engaged with Contests

Reading Time: 8 minutes 35 seconds

BY: ISSA

DATE: 2024-01-24


Accountability is second only to motivation when it comes to keeping clients committed to fitness programs. If a client is not motivated to hire a personal trainer or join a group fitness class, they won't. However, if they are motivated to join but are not held accountable to showing up and working towards their goals, they will quit.

Contests are a fun way to keep clients motivated and accountable. In this article, we explore ways personal trainers can use contests and social media to build clientele. We'll share ways to get started with contests and how to support clients to reach their goals. And we'll talk about how trainers can leverage their time to make more money.

Why Do Fitness Challenges Motivate Clients?

Challenges and contents are fun, exciting, and play into your client's intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. They also build a client's autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Motivation increases when you help clients fulfill these three needs:

Relatedness

Clients need to feel connected. Hosting group fitness contests motivates clients by connecting them to a fitness community. People want to engage with others who share common goals. Some clients even want a bit of competition. Group training is the sweet spot for this kind of interaction.

Research has shown that family members have the strongest influence on exercise behavior.1 Encourage clients to invite family members to join!

Autonomy

Exercise and fitness contests might have rules and guidelines for participation, but clients must make the daily decision whether they will participate. As clients engage in the challenge and meet goals, they build autonomy for choosing healthy habits over unhealthy ones.

Challenges also encourage autonomy because participants have something to lose (the participation fee) or something to win (bragging rights, a Bullet blender, etc.).

Competence

Exercise is intimidating if you don't know what you're doing. With over half a billion health and fitness articles on Google, it's difficult for clients to know what to do to improve their health. They depend on you, their personal trainer, to make the right decisions for them and teach them how and why they're doing this or that exercise. Unless a client understands why they are exercising, they won't stick with you long enough to see results, nor will they see any health improvements.

How to Get Started with Contests

Contests take time to plan and execute. Here's a quick 8-step guide for how to get started with contests:

1. Define Your Objectives

Why do you want to host a contest? Is it to attract new clients? Do you want more engagement from current gym members? Are you trying to start up group fitness classes? Group fitness is a great way to boost your business and reduce the number of hours you spend on the training floor. Did you earn a new certification and want to promote your new services? For example, if you just became certified as a Specialist in Fitness Nutrition, maybe you want to have a diet or fat loss challenge to get new clients.

Think about why you want to host a contest and design it to meet that objective.

IDEA: If you want to boost your social media presence to attract new gym members, create a hashtag contest. Have current gym members check in and use the hashtag. Whoever posts the most hashtags in a week, wins a prize!

2. Decide What Kind of Challenge You Will Host, the Duration of the Contest, and Dates

Set realistic goals for clients. Give them enough time to make lifestyle changes. And don't schedule a challenge during the holiday season or you'll hear things like, "I can't stick to a diet, it's pumpkin spice season!"

Here's about how long a contest should run:

  • Weight-loss contests - 90 days

  • Healthy habits contests - 21 days

  • Activity contests - 7-14 days

3. Set Rules and Guidelines

Consider the following questions when designing your fitness contest:

  • Who can join?

  • What health and wellness goal will clients aim for?

  • What metrics will you track?

  • How is the winner determined?

  • What prizes will be awarded?

  • Do clients need to attend a certain number of sessions?

Thinking about hosting a weight loss challenge? It's smart to track a few different metrics:

  • BMI

  • Percent body weight lost

  • Inches lost

  • Percent body fat lost

If one client has 40 pounds to lose and another only has 10, then counting pounds isn't fair. Since the goal of this challenge is fat loss, calculating percent fat lost keeps the playing field level. You can add prizes for "most inches lost" or "most weight lost" if it will get more engagement from the group.

Activity trackers make challenges easier to track. You can also use them to monetize your business. Consider becoming an affiliate for a brand and offer them for sale during the registration period and at the beginning of the contest. Read this activity tracker article to help you choose which activity trackers might be best for your clients.

IDEA: Money is a powerful motivator. Clients should have to pay an additional fee to participate in contests. The fee can become the prize. For example, if ten clients join at $100 each, that's a $1,000 prize at the end and a strong motivator to work hard so they don't lose the $100.

4. Get Prizes

Boost your client's extrinsic motivation by carefully selecting prizes. They can be themed, sport specific, or meaningful in some other way. Consider these fitness challenge prize ideas:

  • For a cardio challenge, you might give a fitness tracker or fruit infuser bottle.

  • For a scavenger hunt, award funky shoelaces, a backpack, or crazy socks to winners.

  • Consider a healthy recipe book, food scale, or Bullet blender for nutrition challenges.

Other great prizes include a t-shirt, towel, yoga mat, hair tie, hat, gift cards, or cash.

If clients don't pay to play, you could collect donations from local businesses. The smoothie café, chiropractor, tanning salon, and spa would probably love to promote their products and services to your clients. Local tech or sporting goods store might also donate items.

5. Create Promotional Materials

If you're not a graphic designer or marketing guru - don't feel bad, most trainers are not - consider hiring someone to design social media graphics and a landing page for your website to promote your new group contest or weight loss challenge. Find deals for these services on Fiverr.com or Etsy.com.

If you've got an eye for design and want to save a few dollars, try using Canva.com.

6. Begin the Registration Period

Plan to market your fitness challenges for two to four weeks. Decide how you will collect information and payment from participants.

7. Start the Challenge

Run the challenge as you outlined in your plan. Focus on giving amazing customer service and support. We'll discuss this next!

8. Announce the Winner and Get Feedback

It is very important to finish your fitness challenges, announce the winner, AND get feedback from the participants. Not all contests will be an instant hit. People want to see social proof before they join. If this is your first health and wellness challenge, you may have less than a handful of participants who finish it.

Motivate, encourage, support, and educate them. Get feedback on their experience and use their input to refine the future fitness challenges.

How to Support Clients During the Contest

The most important part of the challenge isn't the marketing or even the prizes. The most important part is giving your clients an incredible experience - every session, every social media message - every time. Here are some ideas to support your clients to ensure they have fun and that they reach their goals.

Weekly Meet-ups

Get together with fitness contest participants once a week. You can have virtual hangouts or meet up at the gym together. Spend this time answering questions or offering exercise advice or education.

Some ideas to support your clients in their health and wellness goals:

  • Meal prep class

  • Healthy grocery shopping trip

  • Salad in a jar party

  • Smoothie in a bag party

If you're not comfortable hosting nutrition-focused classes because it's outside your expertise, earn more money and expand your knowledge and business by becoming a Specialist in Fitness Nutrition.

Social Media

Social media is engrained in our lives. Use it to your advantage by making it a key part of your group fitness contest. Make a private group on Facebook. Create a hashtag for clients to share progress on their fitness goals. Celebrate clients by posting their progress and tagging them in the post. Send inspirational videos or quotes, healthy recipes, or how-to videos to the group via chat.

Read our article, Social Media Marketing for Personal Trainers, for some insights into how to use social media effectively.

Track Progress

Keep very detailed records of your client's progress. Include photos and measurements. Use a fitness app to track other key data you determined while planning the contest.

Post a "leader board" to get clients in the competitive spirit. Offer weekly prizes to clients based on their weekly measurements. These actions keep clients more engaged, especially if the contest is a 90-day weight loss challenge.

Contest Ideas to Keep Clients Engaged

Your group contest should be focused on helping clients achieve their health and wellness goals. Here are some contest ideas to get you started.

Group Challenges

You can earn more money and spend less time at work if you do group fitness contests at your gym. Coach small or large groups. Do circuit training, a boot camp-style workout, or other fun group exercise sessions - goat yoga? - to get clients motivated.

Individual Challenges

For clients who aren't crazy about working out in a group, you can host solo challenges. Everyone can join, but workouts aren't done together. Instead, participants track their workouts in a journal or fitness app and share their data with you. Some contest ideas include:

  • Step challenge

  • Plank contest

  • No sugar challenge

Themed Contests

A good theme can make anything fun! Here are a few themed contest ideas you might consider:

  • Walking week: A basic step-counting contest to get your desk-bound clients to move more.

  • Journal week: Inspire clients to keep track of important health data and learn their unhealthy patterns. You might have them track calories, exercise, water intake, sleep, or have them write positive affirmations. Research has shown that gratitude changes the structure of the brain and promotes peacefulness and happiness - so how about a gratitude journal week?

  • Movie week: gather your group at the gym and do a workout DVD together. Or host a movie-themed outfit contest - best Jedi costume wins! Of course, make sure clients can still perform workouts safely. Another fun idea? Choose an exercise to do every time something specific happens in a movie - like when a punch is thrown in an action movie, everyone do a squat!

Healthy Habits Bingo Board

This one is a lot of fun. Create a bingo board with various healthy habits your clients struggle with. Print one for each day of the contest. Clients keep track of the habits they do each day with the goal to earn a bingo.

Some habits you might add to the board include water intake, 8 hours of sleep, 5 servings of vegetables, meditation, etc.

Daily Activity Challenge

We've warned you about the 30-day push-up/squat/kettlebell swing challenge. Those kinds of challenges could lead to injury and imbalance. But a daily activity challenge could be just the thing your beginning clients need to learn how to do exercises and get into the habit of moving.

Host a 14-day activity challenge. On each day of the challenge have clients complete a set number of a certain exercise. For example:

  • Day One: 25 push-ups

  • Day Two: 25 squats

  • Day Three: 25 triceps dips

  • Day Four: 25 lunges (on each side)

  • Day Five: 25 crunches

  • Day Six: 25 jumping jacks

  • Day Seven: 25 minutes of meditation

Boost Engagement and Accountability as a Transformation Specialist

The possibilities are endless! Ask your clients what they would like to do and they'll tell you. Deliver the best experience possible and they'll be back for more.

If you enjoy motivating groups to help everyone reach their goals, check out ISSA's Transformation Specialist course. As a certified Transformation Specialist, you have the power to help your clients create lasting positive changes in their physical, mental, and emotional health. With your expert knowledge of identifying change, motivation, and positive psychology techniques, you can help clients break through any roadblocks that are keeping them from reaching their goals. 


Featured Course

ISSA | Transformation Specialist

As a Transformation Specialist you will be armed with the skills and techniques required to truly coach and influence behavioral patterns as they relate to your clients physical, mental and emotional well-being. With this skill, your clients will see better results quicker and have an easier time with the transition to the behaviors and activities you suggest.


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