Setting Up a Circuit Class

In my last post I mentioned that I was going to set up my own Circuit Class in my local area (Grays, Essex). So I got the ball rowing with my new website, POW! Fitness Training, not sure why I chose “POW!”, I just liked the word and saw a cool Painting the other week that had POW! On it. Its also a pretty good name to play around with, me and my brother come up with a couple of ideas for class names, i.e KA-POW!, a strength based Class, or WA-POW!, for a speed class etc. Good ah?

I’ve been looking into Venue hire, and contacted my old school, which rents out one of there gymnasiums. £25 an hour, a bit steep, and could probably get some space for cheaper than that, think Church Halls, Village Halls etc. But as its my first outing, I think id like to stick with some where I know, and after spending 5 years of my childhood at the place, I know the school pretty well. I can also use there equipment, like mats, which will save me buying a few, for now. Also, they offer a 10% discount if I book for 12 weeks. So its only £22.50 a week.

Next up was Insurance, I mentioned a while back that any Trainer working independently of a Gym needs their own Insurance. REP’s can sought you out with this, for £80 a year, with a £5,000,000 limit for injuries and death (god, I hope I don’t kill anyone). Just go on the REP’s website and follow the links.

I found out on my Circuit course I did through Future Fit, that you also need a Music Licence if your doing your own classes. This is to allow you to play CD’s you buy or to play music from an MP3 player. There are different licences out there depending on what it is you will be doing. For the use of up to 1000 songs to be played in a Fitness Class the Fee is £100. The question is, will anyone actually check up on you to make sure you have a licence? I doubt it, but I don’t fancy taking the risk, knowing my luck they would.

Finally, equipment. It is possible to set up a Circuit Class with next to know equipment really. Just have your participants do Body Weight exercise. But who would want to keep going back to a class like that? I wouldn’t. I’ve come up with a small list of essential equipment that I could use to make a pretty okay class to begin with. The list includes, 2 Gym Balls, 2 Steps, Resistance Bands, Dumbbells and a skipping rope.

I was thinking I’d need a few dumbbells, but then I thought of Resistance Bands, which can easily be used for several exercise and are far cheaper than weights.

So total cost for my first 12 weeks, I reckon, will be £600. The only ongoing Fee will be the Venue Hire. Everything else is either payable annually, or as and when I want to add/replace equipment.

Oops, I just remembered about advertising, that’s probably the most important thing. Obviously I have my website, and I can use the services of Facebook and Twitter to get the message out to my friends, but to get the word out to the masses, id need a lot of flyers and make sure a lot of people see them. Apparently 10% of the people who see your flyers will attend your class, or was it 1%? Will have to check that. That’s what my instructor said on my course.

The good thing about a lot of these costs is that they aren’t need every month etc. Once I start getting a fair amount of people along each week I don’t need to advertise the class, word of mouth is pretty powerful.