Corporate Fitness and Active Aging

It should come as no surprise that most people aim to improve their lives in one way or another with the start of a new year. Particularly when it comes to focusing on better health and fitness, January’s clean slate seems to be the ideal time to get back on track and into shape immediately following the busy holiday season and prolonged period of indulgence. This seems to be a universal practice as we have found that to be no exception for our members and residents in senior living communities!

NIFS partners with communities across the US to manage their fitness center programming. Similar to most public gyms, our staff also notice patterns related to New Year’s resolutions. In the first few days of January we have come to expect an influx of participation, but these numbers start to decline after a few weeks as old routines creep back and resolutions are abandoned.

Knowing how to set goals, find motivation, build better habits, and remain consistent are all huge components of why so many “resolution-setters” fail. In fact, one study conducted by the University of Scranton suggests that only 8% of people stick to their resolutions, so we saw this as an opportunity to better support the communities and residents we serve and developed NIFS Five Star Fit Club. We piloted this program in ten communities for the first time in January 2019 and it resulted in:

• Total visits: An average increase of 21% in total resident participation to the fitness centers in January 2019 compared to January 2018.
• Group Fitness Visits: An average increase of 28% in participation in group fitness classes in January 2019 compared to January 2018.
• Appointment Volume: Resident engagement increased by 135% in the number of appointments conducted in January 2019 compared to January 2018.
• New Members: Across the communities, a total of 43 residents began participating in their fitness center for the first time as a direct result of the Five Star Fit Club program.

This incentive program is three weeks long and includes both a personalized assessment and exercise prescription as well as an interactive workshop where residents learn how to effectively change their habits and routines. Additionally, members are encouraged to visit their community’s fitness center independently and attend a set number of group fitness classes. The premise of the program is for participants to earn five stars over the three-week period by participating in the mentioned programs and services. In doing so they are being recognized and rewarded, experiencing accountability, and sensing small wins all while creating sustainable healthy habits and routines to keep them on track for the remainder of the year!

In 2020, even more NIFS clients are kicking off the New Year with the 5-Star Fit Club and we look forward to hearing about the healthy habits and lifestyle choices residents adopt. Robust programs like the 5-Star Fit Club are a great way for senior living providers to support resident well-being while increasing utilization of amenities such as their fitness centers and pools. Click here for some other programming twists brought to NIFS clients.

The holidays are a busy time for everyone. Multiple family gatherings, end of the year projects, tons of shopping, yet somehow you have to find time to exercise. Consistency is key with almost everything in life if you want to continue to have motivation towards something important to you. Often times individuals find themselves taking one or two days off from something and those couple of days turn into a week or a month. Exercise is especially something that can be difficult to get back on track after a short break, so continuing your normal routine is vital.

Tips for Fitting it In:

• Schedule it - add a time to your calendar and treat it like an appointment
• Pack your bag the night before and set it by the door - take active steps to be prepared
• Wake up and exercise - the day of an event, or function, start your day with exercise
• Short bouts - if time doesn't allow, 10 minute bouts are better than none!

This time of year also brings about a lot of stress. Exercise is proven to reduce stress in various ways such as swimming, biking, running, lifting, yoga, and many more. Exercise has benefits in reducing feelings of anxiety, fatigue, anger, frustration, and even depression. Along with stress, this time of year also brings about depression and sadness for many. Continuing with a routine not only helps you stay on track even after the holidays, but can also be beneficial to help you get through them. Exercise helps provide structure during the day. If it is something individuals are used to, it is important to continue that during a long break from work. The Food Diary mentions that having a consistent routine helps individuals stay on track with proper meals, getting proper sleep and provides a “framework” for the day to keep you prioritized and on schedule.

Aside from the mental benefits, there are physical benefits to sticking with a routine with exercise. It does not take that many days off to lose everything you had been working for throughout the year. Endurance declines quickly when taking too many days off from exercise. Studies have shown that when a regular exercise routine is disrupted and an individual stops working out, the de-training process begins within a couple of weeks. In addition, it is a time of year where weight gain can quickly occur. Continuing with the same workout routine can help prevent this from occurring and allow you to better maintain your weight. If the exact same routine cannot be managed due to access to proper equipment, shorter maintenance workouts should still be followed so that exercise is not stopped all together.

Walking everywhere is slowly becoming a bigger trend, specifically in states that it never used to be. As fitness trackers are being used more and more, step challenges are increasing both at work and at home. Research is discovering the benefits of walking and ensuring that people are getting their steps in every day. Walking is one of the best means to reach physical activity recommendations and by meeting those recommendations, individuals lower their risk for diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, and many more.

Disease prevention is the number one benefit of walking. Diseases such as dementia are being researched more thoroughly and it has been found that physical activity is being proposed to be a prevention factor. Walking is a primary factor to address the obesity epidemic, which can help reduce the risk of major non-communicable diseases mentioned previously. Compared to other activities, walking meets the recommendations of physical activity and creates a lower risk for injury. With little impact on the joints compared to higher intensity exercises, it prevents high risk of injury while being physically active. There are also some psychological benefits to walking, it can improve blood pressure, glucose control and many more, which overall can lead to a much more relaxed lifestyle.

Walking also produces indirect benefits as well. If more people choose to walk as a means of transportation, it will reduce air pollution, which can lead to lower rates of cancer and asthma. Walking or hiking also allows for more interaction with nature, which has also been shown to improve mental health. Walking  is typically associated with social interaction, therefore improving social health and greatly impacting overall mental health and decreasing an early mortality rate. Lastly, by showing more initiation of walking regularly, it can greatly influence the lives of our children. They will see that walking is a regular daily activity and will be more likely to follow in those footsteps. There are many programs that encourage biking and walking to school to increase physical activity in children. Incentive programs are a new norm specifically for increasing activity, by utilizing a program it could also indirectly influence their parents as far as walking as a means of transportation goes.

The benefits of walking are never ending whether it be a direct or indirect association. If individuals learn and understand these benefits, walking can be the new norm for every day transportation. It will not just occur when it is the first warm day of the season or the last warm day of the season as many do now. The benefits of walking and the fact that it can lead to an overall healthier lifestyle physically, mentally, and socially, should be more than enough reason for individuals to ditch their cars or a seated lunch break and walk more regularly.

When thoughtfully planned and executed well, there are a variety of opportunities to generate revenue out of robust health and fitness programs in senior living communities. But you might be thinking, “I didn’t realize there was ANY revenue potential."

In terms of expenses, there is the initial startup cost of thousands of dollars worth of exercise equipment and the necessary square footage to house it. Then there is the maintenance cost on that equipment and a range of budgeting that needs to be considered for fitness staffing, ranging from a dedicated full-time employee (or multiple FTEs) to simply having group fitness instructors. Don’t get me wrong, fitness centers absolutely give back to the community from a marketing perspective. Consumers are demanding quality fitness programming in the senior living market, but calculating the true ROI is next to impossible.

Revenue Opportunities in Senior Living Fitness Programs

If you are looking for potential ways to get revenue out of your program, consider these opportunities:

• Fee-based personal training: Whether you are in a commercial fitness setting or private fitness studio, all consumers expect to pay for individualized one-on-one attention via personal training. Having select fee-based services that are tailored and custom to individuals will not shock residents that there is a cost associated with it. In fact, many older adults and their adult children are coming to expect that this service be available in a comprehensive fitness program, and they are willing to pay for it. Thoughtful consideration should be given to establishing competitive rates, allowing for trainer commission, and securing high-quality trainers, but this service can be a nice opportunity for communities to generate a revenue stream.
• Specialty group fitness classes: Requiring residents to pay for specialty group fitness classes like yoga, Zumba, or Barre is a fairly common practice. A quality instructor must be secured and paid for each class, and including a slight upcharge to the instructor rates is an additional means by which a community can generate revenue while also benefiting from having a well-rounded and robust group fitness schedule.
• Nonresident participation: Some communities explore opportunities to provide fitness center memberships to nonresidents—particularly marketed to those 55+. Sometimes this is for full access to the amenities and services, and sometimes it is allowing participation only in select programs like group fitness classes. Strong consideration needs to be given to rates, available space, and how this will impact your existing residents, but in the right situation with proper planning, participation from nonmembers can not only be a revenue source, but it can also help increase exposure of your community’s lifestyle to a broader market in your area.

Revenue Goals, Marketing, and Investing the Extra Income

When implementing some or all of these practices, consider a revenue goal for your fitness program and how you can creatively promote each opportunity to support that goal. The annual revenue generated is rarely a cash cow for communities, but it does create opportunities to further support your fitness program needs. The cumulative total at the end of the year may be enough to purchase a piece of equipment, offset the cost of your preventative maintenance service agreement, or pay for a new class on the schedule. Give some thought to how these revenue opportunities can help fund your fitness program.

Looking to take your programming to the next level?  We can help by simply consulting with you to tackle what areas you need help focusing on with your wellness program. Click below to find out more about NIFS Consulting Services. 

If you missed the first blogs of this series featuring insights on developing a robust wellness-based lifestyle at your community, start here. Some content will cover practical tips and some will identify barriers to achieving success meant to spark conversation within your community. Read on for the final piece of the series.

All personnel working in a senior living community have a stake in supporting resident well-being from your concierge to your bus drivers to your service staff in the dining room. The daily interactions your team have with residents and the work culture at a community all directly impacts the quality of life of residents. As communities pursue opportunities to both evaluate resident care needs and broader program and service needs under the banner of enrichment, forming a wellness committee of your key stakeholders can be an integral step. Finding the right balance of personnel to represent different arms of the community as well as getting their buy-in with already full workloads can be a tricky step.

A few considerations in forming a wellness committee include:

• Establishing balanced representation from key departments that impact resident well-being. Your wellness committee members shouldn’t be strictly clinicians and it shouldn’t be strictly activities personnel. It should be a healthy blend of both areas plus fitness, dining, chaplain services, etc...
• Establishing balanced representation from staff who are connected with leadership’s vision for the lifestyle you want to foster (i.e., perhaps your marketing director) as well as representation from staff who are interacting daily with residents hearing directly about their interests (perhaps your activities coordinator). Make sure the personnel encompass both ends of the spectrum from your administrative staff to your line staff to best meet the needs of current residents while also modeling for future residents.
• Establishing goals for the group to help keep all of the personnel with different daily job duties and focus areas working on the same track. Your Wellness Champion from part II of this blog series is integral in supporting this step but allowing your team to come together to talk about the challenges they are experiencing in their departments, the feedback they are hearing from residents, etc., can help them identify their goals as a team and establish a work plan to move forward together.

As your wellness team comes together and begins having a strong team dialogue, identifying challenges and problem solving together, you might also consider the formation of a resident wellness committee or including a resident on your staff committee. Once again, the same level of thoughtful diversity in your resident representation should be considered. Many communities will invite their most active and fitness-oriented residents to join such a committee but you also want voices that have strong connections to spiritual well-being, volunteering, etc…

In establishing your wellness team, having them form goals, and collaborating regularly, your community will uncover ways to bridge resources and support one another as a collective front. In turn, your community will make more of an impact on residents’ lives and will have more positive stories to tell about your culture.

Looking to do wellness better in your community?  Connect with NIFS on how you can better evaluate your wellness offerings for residents in your community, schedule your free 30 minute consultation today!

This series features insights on developing a robust wellness-based lifestyle at your community. Some content will cover practical tips and some will identify barriers to achieving success meant to spark conversation within your community. In part 1, I talked about defining wellness and the importance of how you use that word in branding. Read on for part 2.

Staff who work in senior living communities are some of the most compassionate, dedicated, and often creative people you will meet. Their plates are full, their to-do lists are long, and it can be a heavy lift to bring down the silos between departments, which is necessary to truly cultivate balanced lifestyle offerings for residents.

The problem is not that the staff are resistant to meeting with other stakeholders in resident well-being, having more dialogue, or planning differently. (Notice here I said planning differently—not planning more. That is the key to this approach.) It’s that there is often a missing link in bringing these different people, talents, and departments together in a sustainable fashion.

Identify a Wellness Champion

This is where it is critical that communities identify their wellness champion. This person can act as a catalyst in eliminating the silos and bringing everyone together to work from a unified vision of how lifestyle offerings and services are delivered to residents.

In NIFS’ case, where our staff members are regularly referring residents to therapy and the Registered Dietitian, or collaborating with activities or dining staff, shifting our onsite Fitness Manager’s focus to a Wellness Coordinator role has been a great fit in many client settings. It’s often a natural progression because residents and other departments are already accustomed to our staff bringing people together and fostering collaboration.

Our degreed and certified staff act as educators with community staff, and they also learn how to best tap into the personal passions and interests of the team members to improve buy-in to the process. After all, they’ve already been working with many of these stakeholders for some time on other programs. Now they are simply bringing everyone to the table with improved consistency and more structure.

Here are three tips when considering how to identify your wellness champion:

• Your champion should talk the talk and walk the walk if they are going to advocate for the message of wellness and collaboration for your community. Ask yourself, “Who would be a good spokesperson at our community to message our wellness program to prospective residents?”
• Your champion should have strong communication and interpersonal skills to foster collaboration among your wellness team. They should be able to determine how to tap into the personal passions and talents of those on the team to leverage strengths and improve buy-in.
• Your champion should be well organized and have strong attention to detail. After all, they are the individual responsible for keeping the team organized, establishing timelines for special events, tracking completion of tasks, and more. The champion is once again that catalyst bringing everyone together and being responsible for maintaining cohesion among the team, so they must be organized.

Help from NIFS Consulting Services

Does your community need support identifying who your wellness champion is or how to shift roles and responsibilities to support this type of position? NIFS consulting services can help you answer those questions and many more to support a collaborative approach to wellness planning.

What Does Wellness Mean to You?

Wellness might be one of the most overstated and broadly defined terms in the senior living industry—at least in how it is modeled from one community to the next—and it can be exhausting trying to keep up. At community A, wellness might refer to your health service offices, therapy gym, or clinician staff; whereas wellness at community B might refer to your fitness spaces and programming. Neither of those models is wrong. Neither of those models is necessarily correct, either.

When we’re talking about whole-person well-being, it isn’t just the health care options available, or the fitness program offerings. Communities should be cautious about how narrowly they define “wellness” when connecting it to their physical spaces or services. This can have a significant impact in the messaging of your community culture to your residents and prospective residents. Supporting resident well-being should flow through every nook, cranny, department, and service under your roof; however, many communities miss opportunities because they want the word “wellness” labeled on a space or department.

Wellness Branding Barriers

Here are some remarks I’ve heard from communities through our consulting work, where they have unknowingly created barriers for themselves.

We can’t brand our lifestyle and wellness offerings because…

• “We call our clinic our Wellness Center, and it will confuse residents.”
  You are right. If you want to put emphasis on sick care as opposed to preventative lifestyle offerings, this would cause confusion.
• “We call our fitness room our Wellness Center, and it will confuse residents.”
  Once again, you are right. This sends the message to residents that the only space to support their well-being is associated with physical exercise.
• “Our monthly “wellness newsletter” promotes our fitness offerings.”
  Once again, your communication channels with residents and how you promote monthly activities carry a connotation.

Slapping the term wellness on physical spaces, services, and communication channels narrows the potential, perspective, and understanding of how your community creates purpose and intention in resident lives. It also perpetuates the silos for staff and departments who have a stake in resident well-being, keeping them from seeing the potential of how their buy-in and collaboration can make an impact. (We’ll talk more about that collaboration piece in part 3 of this blog series.)

Questions for Starting a Wellness Branding Dialogue

Ask yourself these three questions as a guide in sparking dialogue in your community:

• What person, space, or services would come to mind for our residents if we use the word wellness?
• Does this connotation of wellness create opportunity for a broad application of purposeful lifestyle choices that spans the interests and passions of all residents?
• What barriers can we identify that limit our potential for broadening that definition of wellness?

Identifying your current model and barriers is your first step in making positive change toward more effectively use that term “wellness” to your community’s advantage. And now that you’ve defined and branded wellness, part 2 of this series talks about the importance of designating a staff wellness champion for your community.

Wellness Consulting from NIFS

Need some support? NIFS provides wellness consulting to senior living communities across the US. Visit our website and download the “What to Expect from a NIFS Consulting Visit” for more information.

Oh, my aching feet! More importantly, why do my feet hurt? Let me explain further. At times in the past, the top of my foot has felt like it was being crushed by the laces of my sneakers. I logically thought that all I needed to do was loosen the laces of my sneakers and it would solve the problem. It did not help. Really, all it did was create more problems because then my sneakers felt like they were going to fall off, and then the loose-fitting sneakers began to rub on and irritate my heels. On top of that, when I did loosen the laces, the shoes would then come untied too easily.

Asking a Podiatrist

I am a runner, and having this issue was becoming extremely frustrating. I even went so far as to try new running shoes (to no avail). After all of this, I began to think there was something wrong with my feet. I asked one of my friends, who happens to be a podiatrist, his thoughts. He began by asking me to take off my sneakers. (“Ugh,” I thought to myself, because I had just run in those things, and you could only imagine my embarrassment!) This first thing he did was take the insoles out of my shoes and examine them. He didn’t look at my feet—just my shoe insoles!

Then he said to me, “You have a high instep, and we need to create more space in your sneaker.” Create more space? I was perplexed. He then began to unlace my sneakers and re-lace them, avoiding lacing the middle eyelets of each shoe. I put my sneakers back on; and to my delight, I had no pain.

From there I began to think about how lacing your sneakers differently or more creatively could alleviate pain in your feet in other scenarios as well. Turns out, there is a plethora of information on the internet that speaks to that very topic.

The Important of Shoe Fit for Seniors

I am lucky enough to have a job doing what I love. I work in an active aging community, and so often I see people suffering with painful bunions, toe or foot deformities, and even arthritis. These painful issues combined with mobility problems seem to go together with people wearing ill-fitting shoes to accommodate their foot and/or mobility concerns. I see things like people buying shoes that are too big to make it easier to slide their foot in and out of, or trying to alleviate the pressure of a shoe pressing on an already painful bunion. Ill-fitting shoes can even increase your risk for a fall, and adversely affect things like circulation or neuropathy.

If balance or painful feet are an issue for you, you should start with your doctor first and from there consider meeting with a shoe-fit specialist only after your doctor has assured you that there is nothing that needs to be medically managed first. It may be something such as a shoe that is too large or small, or even just your laces!

I came across this article in Self magazine that speaks to creative lacing techniques. It made all the difference for me, and it might for you, too!

NIFS is participating in the Wellness in One Word campaign sponsored by Monarch Collaborations and the International Council on Active Aging (ICAA). The campaign will launch a digital photo gallery during Active Aging Week on October 1 – October 7, 2019 of individuals taking a picture or selfie while holding up their defined word of what wellness means to them in that moment. The goal is to collect and share 1,000 pictures to connect people, spark discussion and create a strong sense of community amongst participants across the world.

It is fascinating to think how this “word” can change for us so many times throughout the day depending on life’s stressors, our interactions with others, what we are able to accomplish in that day, etc.. It’s also interesting how this “word” might be felt or interpreted by different generations.

When I asked our NIFS team members to share their “word”, I received submissions of vitality, fulfillment, longevity, power, and balance. Our staff join our team from all walks of life and personal and professional experiences, yet their commonality is a strong desire and passion to work with seniors. Through providing individualized exercise services and teaching a variety of exercise classes, our staff are building relationships and helping improve the quality of life for older adults across the country. The tone and context of their submissions was similarly unified.

When I first started my career with NIFS, I managed a fitness program for a senior living client on the south side of Indianapolis. During my time at the community, I enjoyed sharing personal milestones with the residents of purchasing our first home, celebrating our first wedding anniversary, becoming pregnant with our first child and receiving a job promotion. As a young professional in that environment surrounded by active older adults with so many stories to tell about their own life experiences and rich histories, it helped me gain a strong perspective in how much one should truly cherish those milestones and experiences. While my job was to teach and lead the residents in various fitness programs, I learned so much from them in this perspective that I have carried with me through my career and life.

We can reflect on the emotional highs and lows of a given day or a given hour of a day when our words might be anxious, happy, excited, or accomplished. When it comes down to focusing on our overall well-being and pursuing a life of purpose and intention, I believe the “words” our staff are feeling transcend all generations whether you are a young professional at 23 beginning your career or an 83-year-old taking a balance class in a senior living community. The NIFS team is learning valuable lessons in how to appreciate those universal truths for all of us pursuing vitality, fulfillment, longevity, and balance. As I personally reflect on this campaign, our teams’ work serving older adults across the country, and what my “word” will be, I chose grateful.

Follow us on Facebook to see some of our Wellness in One Word submissions.

Variety is the spice of life, and that’s what we’ll have in town this week at our annual managers’ meeting. Each year we fly our management team to our headquarters in Indianapolis for professional development, collaboration, and networking. Our passionate team arrives from across the U.S. from different client settings and with varying personal interests and backgrounds. Their one commonality is their passion for serving their members, and we love the dialogue and collaboration that unfold when everyone gets together.

3 Benefits of Collaboration for Fitness Staff

This connection and access to a wealth of resources is one of the strongest value elements we bring to our clients. They receive our onsite fitness staff managing their program and building relationships with members, plus the expertise of a national organization doing this work across the U.S. How does this routine collaboration truly elevate a fitness program?

• They don’t feel like they are on an island. As a fitness professional in a corporate or senior living setting, it can feel like you are isolated without resources or like-minded individuals who have similar goals and job duties. NIFS has routine meetings, workshops, and events like our annual meeting in Indianapolis to bring new ideas, resources, and inspiration to your fitness program, keeping things fresh and exciting for your members as well as your fitness staff.
• They can benefit from vetted programs and promotions. Sometimes it can be hard to execute a vision for a program or determine how to best reach a group of individuals because you aren’t quite sure how to get started or you are concerned about unanticipated road bumps along the way. NIFS managers regularly connect on a variety of platforms to discuss new ideas and ask for feedback among their peers. This provides members at our client sites with more finely tuned and professional programming.
• They are connected to the latest trends. Fitness is a trendy industry, whether you are working with children, the general population, or seniors. By having staff from the four corners of the U.S. and a little bit of everywhere in between, this broad reach keeps our team connected to not only what is trending but how to educate and market new programming to members in our client settings.

3 Tips to Garner Collaboration for Fitness Staff

So what do you do if you aren’t connected to an organization like NIFS to help keep your staff connected?

• Professional development: Provide funding to send your staff to workshops to help them stay plugged into the industry. Without an organizational connection they might still miss opportunities to learn how others are effectively implementing that type of programming in your setting, but it can certainly lead to some fresh ideas and keep staff inspired.
• Create a network: Do you have neighboring communities or businesses with staffed fitness centers with which you could encourage collaboration? Perhaps there’s a network of senior living communities in your town where the fitness staff could get together once a quarter for idea sharing. Perhaps your group fitness instructors, trainers, and fitness manager at your corporate site could meet once a quarter to discuss what they are hearing from members, share ideas to attract new participants, etc. Your network can be in-house with existing personnel or branching out, but creating space for discussion among like-minded individuals can be advantageous.
• Identify a strong contact: Whether or not someone at your setting is in-tune with the fitness industry, make sure your fitness staff has someone who has a good listening ear and an understanding of your fitness program’s goals. Fitness staff can feel less isolated in their decision-making when they have a partner at the site level who understands the work they are doing, and when they have someone in their corner for brainstorming or discussing member needs.

This collaboration is where the magic happens in taking a fitness program from good to great!