Dave :

The very forefront of our minds call it our minds was to provide and save the nation, which sounds a little corny, but that's exactly what it is, is providing any anyone that's watching providing them with something. And at least it's more than nothing. Of course, you know they can they can go out and they can reach out and go into Wix and all these other little bits and pieces that we can do you. You type in a fitness workout on Google and you're inundated with thousands of options. But obviously, we know that we've got, you know, we've got hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. And we've got a lot of people that like to interact and engage with Pure Gym on social media, so why not use social media platforms?

Will:  

I'm Will Brereton, founder of SH1FT Fitness and this is Group Fitness Real Talk, a show about how to survive and even thrive as an instructor in 2020 and beyond. How does the UK biggest gym chain approach group fitness? And what are the differences between low cost group fitness and the rest of the market? In this week's podcast I'm talking to Dave cross the national group fitness program manager for pure gym. Pure gym is the UK is biggest gym chain. It's International. It has almost 300 locations just in the UK and it continues to grow. David's worked in group fitness for a long time now we ex colleagues from Liz Mills Rumi's from way back and he has so much knowledge to share. We talked about how pure gym approach group fitness programming, pure gym are a low cost provider and I recently listened to another podcast with Humphrey, the CEO of pure gym where he himself referred to pure gym as a budget operator. So I don't think that we should feel bad about referring to these gyms as they like to refer to themselves. They're an important part of the market. But I really wanted to dig deep into how they empower their staff to teach group fitness and how it works for them in their particular sector of the market. Finally, we touch on how pure Jim pivoted when locked down, hit and took everybody by surprise. I personally think Dave's approach to this is up there with the best that I've seen from anyone. In this podcast, I want to bring lots of different perspectives to fitness. And I think it's important that we all understand that no matter where we see ourselves in the market, understanding the rest of the market is super important for knowing where we've come from and where we're going. This is the first time that we've done a deep dive into the low cost segment of the market. And this makes up a huge proportion of fitness. Now, if you're like me, and you're someone that's devoted thousands of hours to becoming an expert in group fitness, and has devoted so much time and love and passion to becoming good at it, you can sometimes be frustrated by the fact that the low cost market just throws people in the minute they finished their primary fitness qualification. But at the end of the day, it's important that we understand what those people need, and also understand the market that drives that experience. This is a really interesting perspective. If you're an experienced instructor, it's quite different to what you might be used to. But I think it's extremely valuable for us all to understand all the different ways the fitness market works. So onto my chat with Dave. Okay, so Dave, cross, welcome to the podcast. How are you?

Dave  

I'm very well Thank you. Very well, how are you?

Will:  

I'm very good. Thank you. So people won't be able to see this on the podcast. But I see that you're very much dressed for winter as usual.

Dave  

Yeah, as always, no sleeves.

Will:  

no sleeves, Dave Cross doesn't wear sleeves. So tell me what have you been up to today?

Dave  

Ah, so today actually, more filming, been filming some workouts for the Pure Gym live sessions and the Pure Gym pre-recorded sessions and some some stuff for our app. And that's been something that I've been doing since we had this second lockdown. Yeah, pretty much back over into lemington spa every single day, a little short drive over there, into the studio. Everything's all set up and ready for me to film pretty much every day. It's all good. It's all good.

Will:  

So for the benefit of our listeners who are not UK based, why don't you tell me a little about exactly where you are and where your accent is from.

Dave  

Well, actually, a lot of people normally find it quite a struggle to pinpoint my accent. But I was born in Lester, in the Midlands and lived there for many years. And then I moved over to the West Midlands and now I'm back over in in Lester. So it's very much all over the place. But it's always been the Midlands, I might sometimes have an occasional Dudley based twang because I spent many many years there. 

Will:  

And so you mentioned mentioned pure gym, obviously you work with pure gym. We're gonna get more into that for the listeners who aren't UK based and don't know exactly what pure gym is. You want to give us an overview of sort of pure gym and the type of gym their presence within the UK.

Dave  

Yeah, absolutely. So Pure gym is the the largest gym chain in the UK. It's got we've got over 275+ gyms in the UK now,

Will:  

yeah, my gosh, wow, I have to admit that even I thought it was more in the mid hundreds.

Dave  

No, no, no, it was when I started. So what is it six? Maybe coming up to seven years now? I've been working for the company that was it. I think gym number 70 something when I started and now we're Yeah, 200 on top of that, and it's just the growth has been phenomenal. And the UK market and actually this, that's just in the UK, we've also got some businesses overseas and some gym chains overseas as well. Right? there. Yeah. And, well, we got this. Well, to be fair, is mainly European based. But yeah, we've got a few things going on, in a couple of different countries, that is obviously still a new business out there. But right now our main priority, and actually, my, my focus has been on the UK based stuff, we've got over a million members, and which is just fantastic to know that we're reaching so many people, and especially at this time, with, we'd locked down and with, with the current situation going on right now in most people's lives. And and it's you might call it for those of you that are probably familiar with this term of a budget chain, and it's a low cost, let's call it prefer is a low cost gym operator.

Will:  

Low cost, high convenience.

Dave  

Yeah, absolutely, you know, and majority of the sites are 24 hours. They they provide and I'm not being biased by any means. But they provide fantastic service, they provide fantastic equipment, great group exercise, you know, all of their the kit, you know, you when you go into a lot of clubs, and a lot of the sites these days, there's huge money amount being spent on refurbishments on brand new equipment on all innovative equipment as well. And we're not afraid to, to trial things to test out new things. And you know, whether we back in the day, we used to get our kit from, you know, matrix and Life Fitness and Technogym. And these days were more about actually, we're big enough to provide and build and make our own kit and reach out to certain suppliers who can provide us with the right tools to be able to build and design our own our own equipment, which is fantastic.

Will:  

And so what is your role of Pure Gym just for everybody listening, so they understand.

Dave  

So on paper, my role is I am the group exercise program manager and master trainer for pure gym. So basically what that entails is anything and everything group exercise related, is sort of steered towards me. And but more recently, over the last few years, that job has steered a lot more into the creative side. And when I first started the role, it was very much yes group exercise manager from a national scale. But looking at data and stats and reports and how we can build occupancy, how we can build on on, you know, penetration, how many people can get into the club, how many people get into our classes, and that is still a huge and main priority for us. But rather than just looking at that, it's now actually looking at how can we get there. So the strategy toward that. And so, over the last couple of years, it's been more of a creative role where I've been able to put pen to paper, put my brain into into its creative mode, get those juices flowing, and start to start getting balls rolling in terms of what can we provide to our new personal trainers that come on board, to our team members, to our managers, to our fitness coaches nowadays, and what can we provide as a support mechanism for them to actually be able to go out and teach group exercise to members, and we, you know, we're not we're not ignorant to know that we get a lot of new person trainers coming on board and a lot of those are can be very inexperienced. So it's important to us to be able to provide some, some level of training to make sure that they feel competent, and also give them the confidence to be able to go out and teach a great group session because if they want to also have a strong personal training business, as you and I both know, group exercise forms are a huge part of that and for those that listen to recording know that as well. And then

Will:  

this is interesting. So feel free to I'm gonna put words in your mouth feel free to jump in if I get anything wrong, but I was a pure gym member probably around the time that pure gym kind of first sprung up. And one of the things I loved about it is that it came in the wave of budget gyms was super cost effective. really needed my house and at first the first iteration of the one in overall London which is the one where close to me was pretty basic and pretty sort of bare bones, but then they did a refurbishment they created this really nice functional own, there was a virtual studio, they increased all the equipment, there was obviously investment and the look and feel of pure gym. And I feel that that was kind of maybe two years ago when they took a big step forward. And then there's obviously been another step forward sort of this year. But when I first encountered pure gym, their class timetable was a little bit of a hodgepodge it was there was some pre choreograph stuff. So some Nismo stuff, some, obviously freestylers that were in the gym, who had maybe come across from the previous gym, it was maybe it was LA Fitness, and it was bought by pure gym, there was a little bit of freestyle yoga. And then there was the very classic use case that you've you've talked about, which is pts or gym floor, people who are making up their hours by teaching classes, and also using that as a lead in to getting more clients. What does the gryffindors timetable across purigen look like now? Like, is it more sort of homogenous and process driven? How does

Dave  

a little bit like what I touched on earlier, and that we're not really afraid to try things to test new things out? And actually we've got across the state, we've got a number of different call them models or types of styles of gyms and within those models, and again, with trials, we've tested out, having live Les Mills programs in clubs we've tested out okay, does the digital market work in having Digital's specific studios? There's there's one particular site that in fact, there's two particular sites now with digital only format classes. So actually, there is no live instruction classes. It's all digital. And so we've tested and tried out many different things actually still to this date. There is there's some of that still happening. And but as it stands now, at the moment, it is a little bit more across the board, it's a little bit more standardized. And that being and, and when you touched on pre choreographed right now, so we don't have any live Les Mills programs running in any of our sites? Well, obviously, at the moment, things are a little bit reduced and a little bit restrictive. And but if at the moment, I was also to reflect that on the norm, it would more or less be a case of every purigen that you go into, there would be a core amount of classes. So we actually call that the eight pack at the moment. So there's eight classes that you would always find the noise see, every single Pure Gym unless and for example, some of our small box format gyms, they might not they might not have a an indoor cycling studio. So therefore we won't provide them with a cycle closes

Will:  

So this is an interesting question. What are what are the core eight programs that pure gym has sort of siphoned down to realize that this is our like, backbone skeleton offering not skeleton, our core offering?

Dave  

Yeah, cool. So very much so and, and we do we do sort of look at that as core. But actually, no, I say this now. But I will also say that it's also being sort of reassessed and reevaluated and we're constantly in and actually, this this information is probably a little bit slightly out of date. And it's but it's still very much live and valid in clubs. So we've got our pump workout, body tone, cycle, legs, bums and tums, absolute abs, circuits, boot camp. And there's one more, we're not saying. Those there is one more, I forget. But the reason why. The reason why. So you just mentioned that about martial arts. So you would sometimes categorize different workouts within you know, you've got a martial arts type workout and more of a holistic workout, you've got a strengthened tonal sculpt workout, you've got cardio, high energy, and we didn't really base our core offering on that, purely because we don't have any sort of specific in house programs, whereby every single personal trainer or fitness coach, or gym instructor within purigen would teach all of those classes. So to have to bring a yoga or martial arts style workout into that core offering would then be a real challenge to have every single side, right, because having is that?

Will:  

Yeah, so you're using instructors that are either working at the pure gym or local, pure German, if your pure gym didn't have a specialist that could teach that class. It's just not possible for it to be on the timetable. Correct?

Dave  

Yeah. Yeah, actually, from certain aspects we do still, we did actually still run and paid for classes. So it was the opportunity for a yoga instructor to come in and charge a little bit extra because those are we see those as a little bit more specialty. And but yeah, it was, and if I'm honest, it probably isn't the best or most of them Do model to run by, you know, work with what you've got, but essentially the same in the same breath. What we don't want to do is force that or push that sort of that button a little bit too hard. and say, Look, you're going to teach this, whether you like it or not, because I'm a firm believer in, if that force nature happens, then the belief that the the trust and love in what they're delivering won't be there. So what we would prefer to do is get our teams to deliver what they kind of what they prefer, but what they know they feel comfortable and confident teaching, which, for the likes of what I've just gone through there, the pumps, the lvts, the body tones, there we go burn it, that was the eighth one, which is a HIIT style workout.

Will:  

Oh yeah, it was HIIT, how could we forget?

Dave  

Which, which, which I funnily enough filmed this morning. That's why it's out of my mind, because it was, it was painful. And so yeah, with those, those types of workouts are more easily. How can I say this? We can coach our personal trainers or administrators or fitness coaches, to be able to teach that better, as opposed to again, you'll probably understand, and mixed martial arts work out. a holistic workout might not be as simple and easy to be able to sort of drip feed information for them to deliver a great..

Will:  

Yeah, for sure I get it because like majority of the listeners to this to this podcast are probably instructors who have invested quite a lot of time and effort in becoming an instructor. But it's worth noting that when you're at a gym, in the sector of the urine, a lot of the teaching resource comes from people that are coming in brand new to be personal trainers and gym instructors, right like that forms a massive chunk of your instructor base rather than freelancers who love to teach and come in for that. That's just the reality of the low cost, high convenience gym sector.

Dave  

Exactly. Yeah. And you know, to what we don't want to do is use that and sort of portray an image of, we're not trying to put on these different style workouts or provide variety. What we are trying to do is just make sure that we're providing our teams because we don't, as a rule, have external instructors or freelance instructors coming in who specialize and the guys that are listening to this will probably have that specialism of, yes, I teach that. And this is all I teach, and I spend my 80 hours a week program, you know, programming, learning choreography, and do what I need to do to go and deliver that 45 minute session in that particular gym a few times a week. Our our instructors are essentially our personal trainers who will do gym floor hours, they will spend time doing everything within the gym, that's writing workouts that spending time with, with our members. And alongside that they will of course teach group exercise, right? 

Will:  

So people who are delivering good classes, but didn't necessarily get into the fitness industry to teach group fitness class, correct?

Dave  

Yeah, yeah, correct. And for the times that I, I see new person trainers and spend time with a new person trainers, because every every person trainer or or group, gym instructor or fitness coach that comes on board with Pure Gym, we'll go through one day's group exercise workshop group exercise Training Day. Now, again, you and I and those that are listening to this will probably understand that going from no group exercise experience to spending one day with one of our trainers, to then going out and teaching is actually quite a daunting process and something that, you know, having eight hours, or for an idea at once isn't quite something that's, that would be perfect in a way of training.

Will:  

I think that's something that a lot of a lot of people listening to this a lot of people that have been in the industry for a long time, like preceding the growth of of low cost gyms might be a little bit annoyed or bitter about but I think is really important. Like this is perfect as real talk. It's just about being real and talking about the realities of the industry. And the simple reality is that a massive, massive chunk of the gym chain market uses this type of fitness professional resource as their class teaching tool. And that's never going to change because the economics of it demand that that's the way it's done. what's what's your biggest learning from bringing in these sort of young fresh pts that have never taught a class before and trying to get them class ready? Like how did how do you find that question?

Dave  

I know, right? There's, I don't think there's actually one straight answer for that because for me, on their side, you always have to sort of think that what's in it for me, sort of thing. Now, most of the the individuals that come on board that are attending these trading days, they will be thinking While I'm only here because I'm told to be here, and this is this is generically speaking. So yeah, what I think, okay, tap into what's in it for them. And a minute ago touched on the link between personal training and group exercise. Yeah. And for potentially majority of those that are attending these training days will be thinking what can I do to build my client base, and so that the buy in and the tie between Group X and PT there is, is really, really strong really paramount for us to be able to hit home the message of Look, if you if you deliver a great group exercise session, essentially, you've got the audience in front of you 10-20, 30-40 people, where you are giving people access to your skills, your expertise, you've seen it, I've seen it and everyone listening to this, I've seen those instructors who kind of don't give a crap, and will stand there with a stopwatch and

Will:  

go through the motions. Exactly,

Dave  

yeah, bark, bark through bark through orders, and just deliver some instructions, and then leave. And we all know that that's, you know, from a group exercise point of view, even if you are solely just a group exercise instructor not in it for anything else, you still know that that just can't be done. So to have to have the link of, Okay, I want to build my personal training business, I want to earn loads of money. Well, when I when I used to teach all the time and personal train. I remember dozens, if not hundreds of conversations at the end of the class, asking, do you do this? Do you do the same kind of book in a session? You know, what have you any tips on this than the other? Well, if you're, if you're a closed book who doesn't look like they care, then none of that's going to happen.

Will:  

I always thought that it was crazy.  Because I like you and I, we're old. We come from the old school of fitness. It used to be about, you know, big box gyms. And I used to always think it's insane to be a PT in a gym and not to teach classes because you paid maybe not that much we know that pay isn't necessarily that great. But you get an hour to show you charisma and to try and sell yourself into a whole lot of potential clients. And yeah, and you have people walking past the room, like most studios have windows, they're thinking, who's that up here? I want to Yeah, I want to get some connection with them. So I know that a lot of people who are listening to this or instructors will be pts. And that's it's got to always be a thought process, which is am I putting myself? Am I putting my best foot forward for this person to buy some more stuff off? Me?

Dave  

Absolutely. Yeah. And you know, what's really what hits hard with me very often. And even yesterday, I had a message from a guy who was a personal trainer, he's now moved into a management position. He messaged me asking about progression. And and, you know, when he started as a personal trainer, he, he wasn't interested, I didn't even think about the whole group x role, or teaching any classes. But now he loves it that much. He almost prefers it. And actually using PT is that side link to, I'm still going to generate more income for myself. But that the two businesses, I don't really want to cause them into two separate lines of business. But essentially, it is, this is my personal trainers hat. And this is my group exercise instructors. And they are kind of two separate entities. But they both work very well in conjunction, you know, that's, that, to me really hits? Well, when someone comes to me and says, you know, they've learned so much from being group x instructor, and they've built their business based on it. And it's sometimes nice to even ask those questions. Look, hands up, if anyone's picked up a client from teaching a group exercise class, and obviously, with anyone with any experience in the room will always put their hand up. Yeah, you and I both know that which is...

Will:  

It's funny, one of the so I've obviously been doing quite a lot of consultation on the digital side, which is something that I want to talk to you about. But a lot of the a lot of the things I say to kind of the smaller operators who might have small boutiques or small gyms or sort of community operations is okay, you're teaching classes, and you're struggling for money because everybody is because, you know, like, it's it's difficult right now, have you thought about delivering stuff one on one. So there's a group fitness instructors who haven't been personal trainers, but they, you know, they have the skills and the expertise to be able to do small group or to do one on one and getting instructors to understand the hits their mindset that potentially if you're a yoga instructor, you're a pilates teacher, you could do a one on one body session or two to one party session. And that's a way that you could increase your ability to make revenue at a time when it's it's a struggle.

Dave  

Absolutely. And those it's interesting you say that actually because I look at it in a very, very similar way. And actually what's what's easier what's harder going from a personal trainer, a one to one PT to actually think, Oh crap, I've now got to teach to a dozen people or two dozen people, where I'm now have to put a microphone on my head and I'm a completely different person. My nerves kick in Actually, when I'm only teaching to one person, I don't really have to. But you do have, you still have to watch what you say, You're not sort of making a huge announcement to a whole group of people. And so what's what's easier to go down the route of, you know, from one to one to group or from group to one to one, and actually, again, both of those journeys can work really, really well. And there's a, there's always a fine middle point to that. And that's small group training, which, again, you just mentioned there any group exercise scenario that you're in, of course, it can go to one to one or one to two, this small group focus, because as much as you probably aren't going to be the big showman, you know, with that one to one person. And you know, you'll, you'll change your language and your mindset and some of your objectives, maybe you'll, you'll adapt, but essentially, it's still the same workout. But what the the group exercise instructors that are listening now are probably thinking, yes, but as a personal trainer, I could deliver eight sessions in a day, I could deliver 10 sessions in a day, you can't, you can't physically do it changes a day, we have that many amount of classes a day, which is where the the small group training pack might sort of potentially tap into.

Will:  

Yeah, for sure. And it's something that like everybody needs to think about at a time when it's difficult to make a living as a fitness professional thinking about all the different ways that you can monetize your experience and your expertise is super important. Okay, so you have a workforce of are not necessarily professional instructors. They're fitness professionals who have gotten to instructing. What's the most popular class format at the most popular gym in the UK. I'm curious.

Dave  

We got 3, 3 high attended, most popular,most timetabled classes and theyr'e our pump legs, bums and tums and our cycle formats. Okay. And now I've always thought this right from day one when I started with Pure Gym is legs, bums and tums I, well, you know, Jane Fonda and Rosemary Connelly workout solos, like, wow, like leotard days and stuff like that. But actually, it's it kind of really changed my mind and changed my thought process behind what is it that people want from a workout and they just now know that that's a muscle group focused workout where you go from gym to gym, and you might slight find a slightly different style workout. But essentially, it's who doesn't love working their glutes these days, right? And if that class has changed to be called, bums...it would probably still be as popular. 

Will:  

It's a core workout, right? Like you will you're working the biggest muscles in the body, the legs and the glutes, which will burn calories. And then you're doing a core workout on top of it, which is all the rage and

Dave  

Yeah, and you'll you'll find, especially now at the moment that you know, 30 and 45 minute versions of those particular classes. They work a real treat and sometimes again, depending on depending on instructor that teaches them depending on the time of day that it is. And we're talking very basic group x timetabling. Yeah, and strategy. But you might find that some guys go into it for a leg day session or for for session, they might find that they go into their...

Will:  

Ah, so you're getting you're getting the LBT class well attended by men and women.

Dave  

Absolutely.

Will:  

Interesting. Okay, I was about to say, if you got like a big male, female split, or is it

Dave  

I mean, I will say that, you know, LBT does, does read are slightly more female. Yeah, very slightly. But again, the beauty around having the autonomy from club to club is you might have a particular personal train that delivering this LBT session in a particular club that actually focuses more on more time and attention more load, because within our, within our classes, we've got a set amount of guidelines and structures. So LBT, we don't use a bar with LBT, but we do use weight plates. And we were really sort of adamant on that and making sure those guidelines are strict across the board. So it's not a heavy loaded workout. But the the other guidelines around that are a little bit more flexible, as long as essentially you're training those particular muscle groups that it says, you know, we're not, we're not too fussed about hitting burpees in every different type of class that we have on offer. But yeah, if you've got a particular instructor that stares more toward getting more men into the studio, well, that's fantastic, you know, to have a 50/50 split within our group x formats it will be will be phenomenal and just depending on the type of class that we have, will sometimes find that which is great.

Will:  

You said something really interesting, which I'd like to come back to which is I so one of my sort of biggest thesis theses thesis, is that, thinking what's the plural? One of my theories? One of that theories that I have about the impact of COVID is that, that conventional wisdom about the gym being busy. So in New Zealand, where I'm from the gym is busy at 6am 1230 and 6pm. Those are the three bursts. I know that in the Northern Hemisphere, 6am is not as busy. Because people don't do the getting up early thing. But you know, lunchtime and evenings are the busy times. I have a suspicion that working patterns have changed, potentially for a long time. Certainly until the end of COVID lockdown happens. Have you found that the patterns of when classes are busy have changed? Or have they been relatively stable up your gym? I'm aware that you've probably got a reduced timetable. So it's hard to do a like for like comparison. But have you found the distribution across those peak times to have changed when? So to give people listening context, David in the UK, there was a lockdown in it was open again. Now we're back in lockdown. So for that period in the middle, when gyms are open again, did you notice that things changed? Or did they still kind of fit around the old wisdom of lunchtimes, anything?

Dave  

Yeah, that that is one as the tricky one to answer. Truth, not truthfully, but accurately

Will:  

It's early days, right? Like, I don't think anybody knows. 

Dave  

Ah, so the classes you did run with the classes that were at the busy times previous.

Dave  

Yeah and, and when when, like you said, you pointed out when we reopened, we had to reopen with a hugely reduced timetable because of our the manning of the gym, the doors, making sure that everyone was keeping distance and so on. And but we still had those those peaks, those spikes, and those particular times, but also the

Dave  

Yeah, as much as we possibly could. And because what we had to understand was, okay, if we've got a if we've got a little peek at seven 7:15am, which we still do get in a lot of our clubs, and maybe not the six AMS, but the seven AMS for sure. And as you said, Here, the 12:30, and then the 5:30, 6 o'clock, generically speaking, and those those peaks would still happen, okay, they wouldn't be quite as high. And, but what we also had to think and consider was because when we reopened, obviously, all of our or a lot of our attention went on back into cleanliness, again, making sure that the entire clubs were

Will:  

right, such a focus on making sure that people felt safe for the hygiene purposes. Yes, absolutely.

Dave  

And obviously cleaning the studio in between classes, we have these gaps in between sessions. So to be able to, to be able to sort of facilitate those peak times, knowing that actually, we're going to have a hot, much higher footfall at those times made it a lot more difficult for us to be able to provide all those group exercise sessions, right, we're having the same amount of calling them staff. And because some of them were still self employed at that time. And so it was quite tricky. But we still to answer your question, we still did find that there were those those spikes those peaks, it just meant that they weren't anywhere near as high. Right? Yeah.

Will:  

Well, basically, the class wasn't as full as it was before.

Dave  

Yeah, you know, opening up a class for eight people, when it used to be at 30 or 25. You know, it was, it's almost a little bit heartbreaking. But at the same time, it was it was a, it was a necessity, and something that we've been able to adapt to. And of course, we've been able to improve progressively over the weeks, which has been just been really powerful. But still, I don't know when we'll ever get back to that normal.

Will:  

Yeah, you know, what I was thinking this the other day, I was having a conversation in a separate context was more about boutique, but I was like, I wonder when we will get back to the class numbers of January 2020. I suspect it might take a while, right? Like the that January period, because they because if you think about the fitness industry as a whole has grown, so you know, pure gym went from 70 sites to what 250 sites now like

Dave  

over 275

Will:  

Exactly. So you know, so many sites, you think about the number of attendances, and then you have the boutique sector and other gyms and the gym, like fitness has just grown. And so the number of attendances in January 2020, must have been like the most attendances ever in the history of the world. And then it's quite sad to think you wonder when we'll get back?

Dave  

No, I know it is. It is so sad. And I think the biggest thing to take away from this from what we've done, and okay, a lot of it was reactive versus proactive because we kind of as an industry, we had to really, and is what we then did to move to the online platforms. Yeah. And moving into, okay, we can't offer what we can offer in clubs anymore, for obvious reasons, ie we're closed or we've got a reduced capacity, but what can we do as a business to still provide the nation with physical and mental health opportunities, and it's okay. We still won't be able to hit every single member that did come into our studios because of what might be time things. There might be home equipment restrictions that, there could be all sorts. And

Will:  

So tell me what was the pure so pure gym is, as we've talked about, you know, numerous times, you know, it's the biggest chain in the UK, it's got the most venues it's kind of the biggest gym in in our country. It was taken as surprise that by the speed at which lockdowns etc happened, and I was working at classpass at the time, and we have, you know, an Asian office. And so we were seeing lockdowns happen in Hong Kong and Singapore and other Asian markets. And we were still like, that's gonna be fine. So I think everybody was was just floored by the speed at which stuff started to lock down, right? Like, I remember, Italy was in lockdown, and I was going to one rebel class thinking it was gonna be fine. Um, so what was the experience of working for pure gem? Like, what were you doing right prior to lockdown? And then what did you do in response to it? Because I know you were a very vital, singular part of a lot of what Pure Gym did around digital provision?

Dave  

Yeah. So we before, before any of the talks of COVID, and have any potential downs, my role was still very much in the creative side and providing a little bit of content for our new PTs and for the guys coming in, that they can look at Watch, Learn and deliver if they want to, and to having this sort of what's happening in the world right now and think, oh, because we all put across a few ideas. This is going back maybe a couple of years about what can we do still on that digital format. You know, we've got digital classes, virtual classes in some of our clubs. Yeah, we've got our purism app, which is managed by our team itself, which we've got, we had at the time, some content, which has been by given by another provider. And but in the weeks building up to our closure and locked down the amount of calls and video conference calls that we had to talk about options and talk, right? If this happens, what can we do? And how quickly can we can we get it launched and get getting going. And so the one thankful thing that that we had is that I was already technically, from a technological point of view set up ready to record things because I was doing that anyway.

Will:  

And why was that, were you recording resources for your in house staff. And the creative that you were writing?

Dave  

Yeah. But I would do that, it wouldn't be a daily basis thing, because I would spend all the time either writing stuff or reaching out on other projects. And but they obviously soon then turned into and one conversation was based on and right. How many workouts do you think you could do per week to get a written reachout...

Will:  

A minimum library of content?

Dave  

Yes, yeah. Because essentially, well, that was what the conversation then ended up is, you know, we want to provide our members. And actually, it turned very quickly into members and non members, right?

Will:  

Because pure gym, actually, all of the content that you created for pure gym members, you actually opened up to the public, right? I thought this was a really interesting thing for a company to do, which was like, take the approach, which I heard you talk about before, I think I cut you off when you're doing it, but that, you know, the nation's health is important. And so we're going to invest not just in our customers, but also in sort of Yeah, patient as a whole.

Dave  

Yeah. And that, you know, I don't know, because I didn't really see some of the the senior management and the higher management decisions around, do we don't we or anything like that. But I do know that the very forefront of our minds call it our minds was to provide and save the nation, which sounds a little corny, but providing any anyone that's watching providing them with something, and at least it's more than than nothing, of course, you know, they can, they can go out and they can reach out and go on to show Wix and all these other bits and pieces that we can do you. You type in a fitness workout on Google and you you're inundated with thousands of options. But obviously, we know that we've got you know, we've got hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. And we've got a lot of people that like to interact and engage with, with pure gym on social media. So why not use social media platforms? And the app, the content that we've got for our app, we can build on that. So yeah, the question was, how many? How many pieces of content how many workouts can answer

Will:  

100 questions: So tell me how many pieces of content did you personally shoot and deliver over how many weeks?

Dave  

so well actually before I answer that, and about about halfway through or just before, halfway through through lockdown, I managed to get some help from a second one of my trainers at the time, who's no longer working for Pure Gym, actually, but and so she was able to get over to the studio and do some filming as well. So as a, as a collective, we managed, this is purely for the, the app content, we've got 87, I think 87 workouts completed, and the lower the course. Anything from 20 minutes to sort of 45 minutes. 

Will:  

87 individual workouts. In how long?

Dave  

Well, how long was how long we closed for? that many weeks. And because, you know, it started off. And again, to just sort of go down the route of the conversation, the process that we went through, it was, okay, now do we do just do it on your phone, or, you know, maybe more than anyone will understand the, the needs and the necessities for certain the right technology to get this done properly. We can't just, you can't just stick your phone on a tripod and just go for it from from the perspective of loading it onto an app. Okay, if you're reaching out to social media or doing something on zoom, you know, you don't need all that tech to, to do those sort of things. But

Will:  

you know, you're you're you're a big brand with a million members, there has to be a certain level of level of professionalism within the content. Absolutely.

Dave  

Yeah. And previously, if, you know, there was no lockdown, and we didn't have to do this, and I would carry on, I would film a workout, which obviously, I would take a number of weeks to create, yeah, I would, then I would, I would trim edit crop, you know, write notes for it, and then send it out. And that would be a good number of weeks process. And, but to speed that process up, it was quite a raw process of right, I'm going to write a workout super quick, and maybe find some music in the background sort of thing. And, and then actually just whack the SD card out the SLR digital SLR and then stick it in my laptop, we transfer over to our marketing and design team. And then they would then stick

Will:  

the bumpers on at the start and the finish. I think you described this to me as basically, you'd write a workout in the afternoon, you drive to Leminton spa with your DSLR. You'd set it up by yourself, you film it, download it onto your computer, send it across to the marketing team. And repeat. 

Dave  

Yes. Essentially that yeah, and obviously, no, not to not to discredit. Because it wasn't actually all me that was deciding which titles, which classes? Yeah, I feel a big part of it was coming from the commercial side, from your marketing team. What the members one, essentially, and that's what we could do, because I don't know what everyone wants. And so there was a there was a point of, Okay, well, yes, I can do those that that really isn't something that we should be doing now. But actually, yes, let's do that, that that and that. And some of them were, I'm going to really need to choreograph this. And some of them were, I'm going to put some background music on and just restyle it.

Will:  

Let's see. Yeah. Yeah, the thing that I really like about that the the approach that you took, and the thing that we've talked about sort of offline and before this podcast is that you kind of just did it, right. And I think any of the people that I think have had success, and I I run sort of digital fitness, trainings and boot camps, and I use you as one of my examples of just like, basically understanding what needs to be done, and then just rolling your sleeves up and actually doing it. And of all of the people who I think, had success during during COVID during lock downs, it was the one that kind of just went okay, we just got a start. And we've just got to get moving. And that's definitely been the the biggest suggestions that are given to any instructors is just start make a few mistakes along the way. Improve, iterate, but the worst thing you can do is worry too much about getting it right first time.

Dave  

Correct. Very, very correct. Because I think I actually remember, I think I was in my fourth or fifth workout recorded when the announcement came out. Okay, tomorrow morning we've got to close, on that Saturday morning we've got to close. And and actually, I remember I remember that vividly because I had to, I hadn't quite finished one of the workouts and it was getting quite late.

Will:  

You're like, it's done!

Dave  

And obviously because I say obviously so it's about a 50-55 minute drive from Wellington, home again. And, and thought right, well, we've got to close we're closing the gyms tomorrow morning 8am. So actually I've managed to find some accommodation there overnight and then get back in first thing to get it from and then the thought, well I've now got the keys to this studio space. To come in every every day and get it done exactly that is that. There was no time wasted whatsoever, we got in. And I think as much as the process around some of the workouts on the app from when you would see it, we're hoping anyway that it still comes across as you watch the first and the last and the quality still matches. Yeah, there wasn't like a rushed process. Yeah.

Will:  

Because you know, okay, the first few did take a bit more time to, to get right and perfect, even though I'd been doing that's the difference, right is that you just get you get comfortable with the process. And so it just becomes a lot easier to whip up the camera, get the mic on, like all of this. It's like driving a car, right? The first time you drive the car, it's impossible, but then you just get in you go. And it's exactly the same with, I remember the first time to take it back to the big box gym example. First time teaching a new studio when you don't know the stereo, you don't know the microphone, you don't know the levels. It's a bit too. But you know, that worrying? You know, after you've been there for a year, you just rock out one minute before the class.

Dave  

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Which we always discourage people to do.

Will:  

Never do that. Never do that. Yeah,

Dave  

you're right. You know, and because about, again, probably about halfway, two thirds of the way into doing all these recordings, we started to slightly change the angle, because obviously, we got to one point, and I'll say this as well, the workouts that are currently on the pure gym app, and we've still not uploaded everything that was recorded. So you know,

Will:  

just with the catalog?

Dave  

No, no, I mean, some of them. And we've been hanging five, because some of them are a bit more equipment based. But then we also decided to look at a return to gym sort of programming as well, you know, rather than you are now at home, it's, you're coming back into the gym so you can access this you can access that we've just started.

Will:  

So potentially they can use some of the gym equipment to do their thing that they could do the workout on their phone or on the app.

Dave  

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And some of those have been quite, quite present on Instagram or Facebook as well. So Harley, one of my colleagues, she's been doing a lot of the social media stuff and some of the back to gym sort of workouts and sessions like the the swipe sessions. Yeah. And but yeah, just the fact that we sort of needed to get those done. And all those times, but about halfway, two thirds of the way in, changing our mindset around that and looking at the equipment based stuff was was a real, a real challenge, actually. But what I was going to say is being on autopilot for so many workouts, I then had to sort of change my thought process a little bit in the language around what kit to use. How are you training now. And actually, the hardest thing was, was changing my introduction script. The whole time for the first sort of a couple of months. It was I'm honest, David, welcome to your pure gym workouts at home series and all this sort of stuff. But then it had to change to MGym. And it was all it was mind boggling.

Will:  

So tell me, you did a whole lot of filming during lockdown. And then we opened again. And now unfortunately, we find ourselves back in lockdown. Hopefully for the last time, but I suspect it might not be unless that vaccine really gets distributed nice and fast. So what are the biggest learnings you've got from digitization round one? and digital mark two, like what are you doing differently now to what you did before? What are your learnings?

Dave  

So differently? I mean, actually, probably touching on what we've just mentioned there that what I'm personally doing differently now is, I'm not really having to keep back filling the content for the app, because there's still some content there. But in the background, we're doing more things for our social media presence. And so previously, there would have been Instagram workouts live Instagram workouts on our first lockdown. This time, we've moved to the platform of YouTube, using YouTube Live, and to so having the ability to reach out to a lot more members. And so what was the

Will:  

what was the thought process behind moving from Instagram to YouTube

Dave  

for that exact reason, actually, but to potentially anyway to potentially reach a bigger audience. And because not everyone's got Instagram, not everyone's got Facebook, but anyone can get onto YouTube and re watch the workout. And actually, a lot of the feedback that we had from our members are in the first lockdown from the Instagram Live Sessions is all they're doing is able to watch it on their phone on a screen, which is sometimes quite hard to follow. 

Will:  

Right, Of course, because you can't stick Instagram up on your laptop Kenya or unless you've got unless you've got some real good tech.

Dave  

Yeah. And all that sort of stuff. Yes, not simple to do. But, you know, my mom jumps onto onto the workouts, you know, plug plugs in To the TV from the from the laptop, yeah, gets gets YouTube or a lot of people got smart TVs these days. It's all it's all available. So you can do

Will:  

that that makes a lot of sense. I hadn't really I was I understood it from a reach perspective and that, you know, if you have an older demographic of members, maybe then on Instagram, but I hadn't thought about the use case. Yeah, like I, the more and more I see people sticking up on their television, whether they're playing it or, you know, doing it through an HDMI cable, but doing it the living room, potentially with their kids and family.

Dave  

Yeah, and, you know, I think anyway, I could be corrected if I'm wrong here. But it also seems to have a lot more stability on YouTube. Once everything's all you know, all the technological stuff is all set up, there seems to be a lot more stable, and Instagram kept on sort of pitching and we need to find a little bit of interference sometimes and, and I've got the only real downside, I quite enjoyed the interaction that you'd get from from the live Instagram or Facebook sessions. Whereas obviously, we don't really see a lot of that there is the live chat on YouTube. But as the instructor, we don't really talk to that anymore. It's more of just we're doing this live workout, right? 

Will:  

Right, so you've moved more to like a, it's a live workout. But it's it's the same type of teaching as an on demand. So like a live class or like a class that you could you could be recording in a different time. But you're because you're not interacting live. Obviously, like we've talked a bit about the different methods does, you know, just get your two way on zoom or your one way on social media or, or or that sort of, yeah, one sided communication.

Dave  

I do like, if I'm honest, I do like the two way stuff.

Will:  

But you're working volumes, though, you know, the number of users that you have, it will be almost unmanageable to be able to do multiple

Dave  

It would, it would. And I think a big thing, though, to consider. And actually, when I start when I did it for the first couple of Instagram Live sessions for pure gym, in the first lockdown, I didn't really take this into consideration much. But recently I have is because all of the live sessions would be archived so that any member can scroll back, you do them whenever they want. So doing a workout on demand that was live. And actually, in that live session, you were talking to some of the comments and you were, you know, you were doing some random stuff that would always be engaging would be a little bit artificial. And of course, same time, it would be like Stop, stop chatting to them.

Will:  

So you're gonna consider the use case, right, like if the use cases that it's going to be turned into something that exists in a library, then you got to take into consideration how people will be using it.

Dave  

Yeah, exactly that. Yeah. So the more recently when when doing the YouTube workouts, they have had that sort of mentality. And that objective of, we're still doing this, we're still talking to you right now, we're still talking to you this morning. And I'd be having a great day, that sort of thing. It's cold outside. But actually, we're just going to crack on with a workout. whatever time you join me, because we're probably found, and looking at numbers and statistics, there's probably about 100 people that might join us at 10am at the moment, live time, actually at the time. But then, when you look 24 hours later, it's already at like, four or 5000 times it's been streamed, you know? So it's proof that actually, okay, we're doing it live at 10am. But loads of people are piling in afterwards to watch in.

Will:  

This is a question I get quite a lot. And maybe it's worth a podcast. And it's sort of like how do you deliver a live? I'm doing I'm doing you can't see me in the podcast, but I'm doing how do you deliver a live workout that also works as an on demand? Because I think there's a few tips and tricks about how you make it spontaneous without making it so that if you view it later, it's weird. Yeah, you have to kind of consider us because I'm working with a few different studios and fitness businesses, they film it every morning, and then people watch it throughout the day. But so essentially, they can kind of call on you know, today's Wednesday or, you know, it's remembrance weekend, or you know, there'll be certain things that you can latch onto it. Because the intention is that while it will sit in the library, everybody that consumes it knows that it's it was filmed on Friday of like the first Friday of November or whatever. And then you've got the other style, which is it could live forever. And so you'd need to like what are the tips and tricks about how you go back to make it sound like it's non spontaneous. But yeah,

Dave  

I think that one is you have to just be blatant and obvious. The fact and the fact that we have we've launched a live timetable. So we've advertised that 10am Monday to Friday 10am on Mondays that work out with this person and and we've done that we've we've publicized that we've launched that. So to know that we can still talk to that I think is important because anyone doing the workout will know and would have seen that time. table, what we tend to do is on Instagram 10 minutes prior to going live at 10 o'clock, we'll just jump onto Facebook, put a story up to say jump over, swipe up, jump onto our workout on YouTube now, and, but to actually deliver the workout knowing that it's live and pre recorded, I think what I tend to do anyway and, and Harley, who's the other girl that teaches the other workouts alongside me. And we, we tend to just sort of sounds a bit funny, but kind of just roll with it and make yourself, entertain yourself a little bit. You know, you can't react to anything else other than what you just said, or what you've just done. And, and I I'm always such a big believer in I can't You can't be too serious.

Will:  

I mean, at the end of the day, it's just fitness, right? Like we're not we're not curing cancer or creating the COVID vaccine. We're delivering a fitness experience. If something goes wrong, it goes wrong. However, it isn't life and death.

Dave  

Exactly that, yeah, you know, and things have gone wrong in the past. Of course they have and that's, that's only natural. That's the beauty of doing something using internet and using something that's got technology involved, but to be able to react to something that you've just done, or I can remember doing something the other day, and I needed to balance and I couldn't balance for the life of me. So I was just laughing. It was right after a heavy leg session, so

Will:  

Oh, yeah.

Dave  

You know, those stairs are real.

Will:  

LBT class have been using the booty band.

Dave  

Absolutely. But no that, to be able to risk to react to your own sometimes your own stupidity or sometimes just just being yourself, I think is you know, that's not cutting corners by saying that but to be yourself and to react to yourself and be as normal but without having a script because actually I don't go into the these live sessions. Okay, of course I go in with structure I go in with, what was the choreography if it is choreographed? Or what's the session, the structure of the workout? But I have an idea of what I'm going to say. But I don't fully script all the words that I'm going to use because I want it to feel natural.

Will:  

Yes, brings me this. So one of the first podcasts we did for Group Fitness Real Talk was with Susan Renata, your friend and mine. And one of the best things that she said was that, you know, she traveled the world. She taught thousands of like, probably hundreds of thousands of people over the years. No one's ever come up after class and gone I really like the way that you corrected my knee alignment. They're always like, Oh, I loved it when you swore or you use the pole dancing.

Dave  

And Susan, the best at that, is she not.

Will:  

Yeah, exactly. Okay, so that actually brings us to the end of our conversation, I did actually want to talk to you about the martial arts side of things, because I haven't had anyone that does punchy kicky stuff on my podcast. But we might have to save it to another time since we talked so much about your experience with pure gym. The one thing I do want to ask before we finish up is, with everything going on and everything kind of like crazy. And it's very hard to plan into the future. What's big on the group fitness front for you and for pure gym as we move into 2021?

Dave  

Oh, well, what's big for me, oh, I have some thoughts and some ideas and some potential projects and some some ideas and lots of things that I'm looking at at the moment. And my circumstances recently, I've changed in terms of what I'm doing from a group fitness point of view. So I'm still heavily involved with pure gym. And so I'm now looking at expanding that a little bigger now a little further now. And on the pure gym side, we're still going to continue to roll with our workouts reaching out to our members and of course, predominantly from my own projects, reaching out to our teams, our group, fitness instructors, our fitness coaches, and personal trainers. And but potentially now looking at growing walks given to them and the opportunities and almost like going back to the start conversation of the moment, we're only providing them with three or four sort of workouts to get content from and learn and sort of feel like they've got some experience and education. But that that can potentially now grow, you know, from next year and actually the start of the end of this year, things are growing so that there are more workouts and if someone does want to go down this specialized route have more of a martial arts feel or more of a holistic feel. We've got people and thoughts and projects and ideas in place to be able to start that ball rolling and get out a real good brand. But yeah, from from my point of view, I think all I can say really is just watch the space.

Will:  

That's a good place to finish. So Dave cross. Thank you very much for joining me.

Dave  

Cheers Will.

Will:  

Good luck with everything. So, that was my chat with Dave. I know that we have a real range of listeners on this podcast. And many of you are highly experienced instructors, as have been many of our podcast guests, and as is Dave, who is a fantastic, fantastic instructor and have spent thousands of hours perfecting his craft. What I think was really interesting when chatting today is the insight into how commerciality and the realities of needing to run a low cost gym, factor into instructor training and instructor selection, and eventually what the members of that club experience in the class. Whether you teach for yourself in a big box and a premium boutique online, understanding every part of the fitness industry is super important. If you're going to continue to cement your position within the industry. The low cost segment of the market makes up a massive proportion of fitness and it's growing every day. And as you can see their approach to how group fitness should be delivered. And the people that teach the classes is very different from what you or I might choose. Regular listeners to the podcast will know because I say it all the time that I've been involved in the fitness industry for two decades now. And the local sector and the growth of that part of the market was something that was really at the top of my mind when I was creating shift. If you're a shift instructor, you know there's a voice on and a voice off option. The Voice off option where you don't have the vocal cue is designed for instructors like me, the ones be the center of attention, that can memorize a workout that know what's coming next. But the voice off option was designed specifically for the type of teacher that pure gym are bringing through someone that is fresh out of their fitness qualification, they might not have the understanding of group fitness, they may not have the ability to memorize, they may not have the confidence to be in front of a group. And that is why I designed shift to do the work for them. The funny thing is, is that now when I teach shift, I use the voice on option two because it just makes my life so much easier. Finally, on the podcast with Dave, you will see the way the pure gym team approach the digital pivot and how great it was. I'm going to post some links in the show notes so you can see the virtual setup and the content that they created. I feel that they really found the perfect blend between delivering a professional solution that was also quick, simple, and highly effective. Thank you for listening. If you're enjoying the show, don't forget to subscribe for all the latest episodes wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, please drop us a review. You can also get in touch with me at will@sh1ftfitness.com. I'm Will Brereton and you've been listening to Group Fitness Real Talk.