Every senior living community offers group fitness classes. If you want to stand out from the competition, you have to offer more.
Good is no longer good enough.
So much in senior living is evolving, except for fitness. The fitness industry itself is evolving, and rapidly, but many communities aren’t progressing to adopt new exercise equipment for older adults, updated staff-led services that increase resident participation, or smart data from the fitness program that can inform future decision making.
What about your community? It’s likely that you are offering at least some group fitness classes that the residents choose from each week. These classes in senior living, especially formats that specifically address balance training or brain health, are a must for any senior living community. There’s a decent chance that your residents love their group instructors, and the report from your life enrichment director probably notes that the classes are well-attended and well-liked.
There’s also a strong likelihood that you haven’t looked closely at your exercise program recently as a place where the community could position itself as a leader in your market. Good is no longer good enough. Good is a starting point; it doesn’t mean the exercise program for your members is complete.
It’s time to do more than group fitness.
When prospective residents walk into your community for a tour, they see a welcoming, warm lobby area with social nooks for sharing a cup of coffee and the latest gossip or viral YouTube video. On the tour, you show them contemporary dining venues with menus that make their mouths water. You talk about updated apartments, technology tools that help them stay connected to their family and the larger community.
As the tour progresses through the community, you eventually arrive at the exercise room. (Or maybe you skip the exercise area because it doesn’t contribute positively to the lifestyle you’re selling.) And it looks old, maybe like an afterthought. The equipment is donated or dated, the artwork is original to the wall, the small collection of dumbbells have cracked vinyl or rusted edges, and the information on the bulletin boards is no longer current. Worst of all, it’s a ghost town; no one is in there.
It’s a disconnect for the individuals on the tour. And while that disconnect is real for your prospects today, it will be even more jarring for future prospects and adult children who are the savviest health consumers we’ve seen to date. Certainly, you can’t update all areas in your community at the same time, and there are many priorities ahead of the fitness space(s). But that doesn’t mean a revitalization of the exercise program should be entirely off the table.
You don’t necessarily need massive capital budgets to make improvements in your community fitness center. And you don’t need to blow your operating budget to provide vibrant exercise-related programming to community. But if you want to start using elements of your senior living programming to combat someday syndrome at your community, you absolutely have to do more than offer group fitness classes.
Find out how to do better for your residents.
Your prospects expect more than just classes on the calendar, your current residents deserve better, and NIFS can help you get there. Find out more about how the right staff, the right services and the right equipment can positively and profoundly impact the exercise program you're offering your residents. Click below to find out more.
