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event review


Low-cost operations, such as Pure Gym (right), were the talk of the Congress


Anastasia Yusina President, Strata Partners (Russia)


I


always enjoy attending the IHRSA European Congress, with its networking opportunities that


are invaluable to me as the owner of a health club business. However, this year’s Congress was


particularly interesting for me as the keynote by Dr Mario Alonso Puig, from Harvard University, picked up on a theme we’ve been trying to implement in our product positioning and marketing communication for more than a year: ‘exercise as medicine’. You don’t have to love exercising. You don’t even have to particularly enjoy it. You just have to do it. Of course, if the club makes such a good job of it that you start loving it, all the better – but this shouldn’t be the key factor to you joining. So hearing this keynote, with its


medical slant on the benefi ts of the exercise, was a highlight of the event for me. We were reminded of the very basic, physiology-based arguments that every industry employee should know and use when talking to members and prospects. For example, we all know


that stress is dangerous for our health. Indeed, we often repeat it to our customers as an axiom – but axioms never motivate us to change our life. We need to provide an explanation: why is it dangerous, what can exercise do to help, what effects will it have? We all suffer from stress, but some people are less affected by it than others – namely, those who exercise. Why? Because exercise causes our hormonal system to work differently, preparing our bodies to cope with stress. Only when we educate members in this way will it cease to be an axiom and encourage people to actively use ‘exercise as medicine’. The other very important notion that


was discussed in Barcelona was the fact that, up until now, our industry has done a great job of attracting people who like to exercise. However, the world is changing and we have to change with it. If we want to attract new members, we have to change our arguments, our wording, our attitude and the skill-set of our personnel. And this is a new challenge for everyone.


Women-only clubs were one of the key growth areas identified


Paul Eigenmann CEO/owner, QualiCert – Qualitop International (Switzerland)


A 74


s always, Barcelona is a great venue for a congress, and this time was no exception. It was


interesting to see so many participants from Spain (which was to be expected), but also from Russia (which was surprising). And as usual, there were good networking opportunities, but at least in my case, actually not enough time to make use of them all. The presentation topics were


interesting. It’s understandable that


they still tend to focus on immediate sales returns, but nevertheless I missed the strategic and conceptual emphasis on the industry. There was quite a lot of emphasis


on IT, with very useful information; however, I also sensed some unrealistic expectations. Disseminating information does not yet equal disseminating knowledge, and even transferring information into knowledge is not a guarantee for behaviour change. The


Read Health Club Management online at healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital


bottleneck is, and remains, human nature. Our species has an inborn drive for saving caloric energy, and this part of human nature is the bottleneck for retention. This will not change, no matter what IT tools are used, as a lot of research on IT-supported behaviour change interventions have shown. I would have liked to have seen references to this more critical research. I enjoyed meeting old friends and


making new ones in the European context. january 2011 © cybertrek 2011


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