What Equipment Do You Need to Start a Gym?

Transcript

a lot of people ask me like chris what does it actually cost to start a gym how do you go from owning nothing to owning a big gym owning the building that the gym is in owning the building next door owning property having multiple trainers and the answer is that you don't need a lot what you need to do is ask yourself what do i need to get people results hey it's chris cooper this is one of the first boxes we ever had at catalyst this is a plyo box that a member built in 2006 and we were trying to open our second gym at that time and uh we had gone from a personal training facility to a crossfit gym so we actually had two locations and uh the build out cost us more money than i had i really didn't have a lot actually and uh so our members started building stuff and i had built plyo balls myself and a member built that box for us so that we'd have something now today i mean we have a huge gym we have a couple of hundred members and a lot of people ask me like chris what does it actually cost to start a gym and the bottom line is like you don't need you know a bunch of rowers you don't need tvs in a gym you don't need all the fancy equipment and all the toys and all the air dynes and all the reverse hypers stuff like that what you need are the basics to get people results so start with this ask yourself what kind of training do i believe in if it's crossfit style training that's great if it's pilates or bar or yoga or something else that's great too but you don't need to go straight to the top of the line equipment for any of those things what you need to do is ask yourself what kind of intensity am i trying to create then you say if i had to do this on a hundred dollars what would i do when i was starting out as a personal trainer one of the things that i did was go to clients homes and train them there well that's a bit of a challenge because you have to carry equipment with you so everything you need has to live in your truck or on your back and so i would start off by taking you know stretchy bands with me stretch tubing or i would take maybe like two dumbbells to a park or one med ball to a park and i would say how can i get creative with this limited equipment you know and that actually made me a better coach because imposing these restraints on myself made me get more creative but it also made me think about the physiological response that i was trying to create so for example when people get these big gyms and they have lots of equipment they tend to program for that equipment instead of programming for the client's results when you start out and you have nothing then you have to work within that restraint and you start to see things differently you don't program for the equipment that you have you program for the result that you're trying to create what does it cost to get started as a personal trainer well first you need your insurance that's a non-negotiable so you're looking at probably about a hundred dollars a month maybe less you also need something that's going to create a physiological response well you can do that with jogging so you need some space you can do that with skipping you might need skipping ropes you can do that with like one med ball or one plyo box that's the kind of thing that you're looking to do if you have a little bit of equipment that's great and your first equipment should be obvious and flashy stuff so like you don't just want to have one black med ball you want yellow med ball stuff that sticks out you might want to buy a parachute even if you don't believe in having people sprint with a parachute you might want to have stuff that stands out because if you're going to be in a public place you want to attract attention you also want to check with your insurance company about using homemade equipment because some insurance companies don't want you to build your own plyo box maybe you're a really crappy carpenter like i am or maybe they don't want you to use your own medicine balls that you made out of an old basketball and sand and duct tape because if the duct tape comes loose then the stuff gets in people's eyes right and they don't want to be liable for that if you have to buy stuff to start out with start with skipping ropes stretch tubing something for people to stand on jump on step up to and maybe some pvc pipe when we used to travel to train big groups in facilities like retirement homes or banks or schools we would pack up a plyo box we'd flip it upside down we'd pack it full of skipping ropes stretch tubing and some pvc pipes like this and we'd wrap it all up sometimes we might take mats with us and we would show up and for less than 100 bucks we had a kit that would allow us to train 12 people the roi on that time was incredible but that's really all you need to start so instead of asking like what can i buy what do i want you know thinking about all the barbells that you might want to pick up all the sets of rings think what is the most leverageable equipment that i can get mats skipping ropes stretch tubing even a set of rings will take you a long way in your career