Examples of successful, single-session wellness lectures include outsmarting your fat cells after age 35, menopause, breast cancer, and how to green your household, all offered at The Fitness Group in Vancouver, British Columbia. While the 92 nd Street Y in New York City holds lectures on subjects such as power sleep and what to eat when you give up meat. Featured at the El Conquistador Country Club in Tucson, Arizona, this program helps clients make lifestyle changes and lose weight as a natural consequence of these changes. Personal training sessions are also helping clients look at their total wellness picture. At Premier Fitness in Cambridge, Massachusetts, clients work with a certified nutrition specialist during part of their sessions and anyone with a health challenge is referred to a registered dietician.
Clients can also purchase a grocery shopping tour to learn how to understand food labels.
As these sessions increase in popularity, fitness facilities are finding that wellness and lifestyle programs can be moneymakers, especially if material costs are kept low and the programs are marketed beyond the existing membership. Our lifestyle lectures definitely contribute to the bottom line, says Julie McNeney, The Fitness Group s vice president of operations. Yet, generating revenue is sometimes secondary to new member recruitment. We want to get people involved peripherally, and slowly move them into our organization, McNeney adds. If attending a lifestyle lecture is the first step that people can take to get through the door, that s great.