7 Ways to Grow Your Box’s Community Through The Open

Here we are again; The Open season is upon us.

If your box is like mine, your athletes fall in a broad spectrum anywhere from having no idea what The Open is, to “Why would I pay to do that?”, and then there are those who purchased special programming, have been training two-a-days and are fully prepared for whatever 17.1 might bring.

Regardless of where your athletes fall in this spectrum, The Open is an awesome opportunity for your box to grow its community, your members to reach short and long-term goals and for you to net some extra money.

Make sure to include communication to your athletes about what The Open is, how to register and when important announcements, like workout releases, go out.

Today, we’ll cover seven ways you can use The Open to grow the community at your box.

Grow Your Community

Whether your box competes in the actual open or not, do The Open workouts.

Have members judge each other to build rapport. Teach the standards, as well as how to properly ‘no-rep’ with kindness and integrity. Your members will gain better body awareness, they will feel more comfortable in addressing no-reps, they will become confident competing and bonus – they will actually grow to appreciate and learn from the no-reps. Your athletes will become better from it.

When you do these workouts, localize the idea of The Open to your community. Here are some ideas to make it a party!

• Throw a “Friday Night Lights” event where your athletes compete in that week’s workout together every Friday after the announcement. Celebrate with food and drink afterwards.

• Display the Zen Planner Leaderboard on a large screen to showcase results and make each workout more special. Our team will be adding each Open workout to Zen Planner’s pre-made library as soon as they’re released, making it easy to add to your programming.

• Encourage your coaches to log in and comment and “like” each member’s results on the Member App to build confidence and rapport.

• Host a throw-down of pre-selected athletes to compete head-to-head against each other in the workout, similar to what happens in The Open announcements. Choose fun themes like “morning versus afternoon”, “husband versus wife” or “master versus teen”. Highlight these athletes as the stars of that week and encourage other members to come watch and cheer them on. Then allow other athletes to compete alongside afterwards. My gym did this last year and it was a blast!

• Compete against another local box for the best overall placing after The Open. Reward the winner with a ridiculous trophy to showcase in their box until the next year’s competition.

• Implement ideas unique to your box, community and culture to make it your Open. Use your members to help do this. If one of your member’s deejays on the side, ask them to spin at your Friday Night Lights event. Embrace your people and their talents to celebrate their success.

• Host an Intramural-Open! Get tips on how to do this from our partner, Two-Brain Business.

Next week, we’ll cover how you can use The Open to help your athletes reach their short and long-term goals, as well as how you can bring in some additional revenue from this event. Here’s to an amazing Open season!