Fitness Management is the magazine for owners, managers and program directors in physical fitness facilities. Founded in 1985, the magazine publishes 12 issues per year with editorial content emphasizing facility management and preventive health care.

Fitness Management is the magazine for owners, managers and program directors in physical fitness facilities. Founded in 1985, the magazine publishes 12 issues per year with editorial content emphasizing facility management and preventive health care.

Fitness Management also publishes an annual Buyer's Guide with listings of the industry's suppliers, and runs the annual Nova7Awards competitions, which recognize fitness facilities and suppliers for innovative excellence.

Fitness Management is the premier industry publication used by fitness managers to make the decisions that run their facilities. It is also the best read publication in the industry, with more than 78% surveyed reading 3 of the last 4 issues, (according to a 2007 Readex Preference Survey).

Market: Fitness Management serves the $17.6 billion fitness facility industry, including: health clubs, YMCAs, JCCs, hospital and medical fitness centers, corporate, fire and police fitness programs, college and universities, hotel and resort clubs, country clubs, and property development firms.

View Fitness Management Magazine, September 2008

Welcome to the digital edition of Fitness Management.

Click the "PDF" button, you can download full publication in PDF format.

Special Report: Facility Upkeep

Exercising Care
Solutions for Keeping Your Facility in Shape

Equipment Maintenance
How to Plan for Preventative Maintenance

Amenities
Staying On Top of Locker Room Amenities

Green Cleaning
Exploring Eco-Cleaning Options and Solutions

Plus:

    * Meet the Expert: Group Programming
    * Science Update: Pilates for Rehab
    * Purchasing Guide: Interactive/Entertainment Products

Visit Fitness Management Official Website

Issues & Solutions for Fitness Facilities.

Editor’s Note
BY RONALE TUCKER RHODES, M.S., EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

The Issue Is: Facility Upkeep

My husband’s nickname for me is “Ms. Putaway.” I’m a neat freak. I’m not a clean freak, really, I just like for everything to be in its place. But, while that might be my particular fetish in terms of “upkeep,” every one of you reading this column, no doubt, has a different fetish of your own. And, although there’s nothing wrong with having your own “style” of housekeeping at home, it’s a completely different story when it comes to a commercial business.

Cleanliness is many things. It’s about hygiene, orderliness and functioning equipment. But, most importantly, whether you are a clean or neat freak, or not, you and your staff need to put on both of those hats and wear them at all times.

For the fitness facility owner, a big concern is minimizing the possibility that members will contract the MRSA staph infection. And, while there haven’t been any widespread outbreaks that are known to have occurred in fitness centers, when a member does contract staph, who is to know whether it was caused from swapping sweat on machines or from some other source? That’s the problem. No one really seems to know how big of a danger fitness facilities pose to the transmission of staph. And although it’s assumed that some, or even many, cases have occurred in facilities, they’ve never really been proven.

Proven or not, facility operators would be wise to follow Health Department guidelines. And, while you’re at it, you might want to consider a non-toxic way to accomplish this (see the article Exploring Eco-Cleaning on page 32). In addition, a consistent schedule needs to be followed for cleaning, especially in equipment areas and locker rooms.

Which leads to the fact that cleanliness in the fitness facility is not just about hygiene. It’s also about the life span of your equipment and the happiness of your members. Putting a preventive maintenance plan in place will give you a detailed, regular log of what needs to be and has been done to keep equipment running properly, which results in lower repair costs and reduced down time (see the article Keep Up with Preventive Maintenance on page 30).

A scheduled maintenance plan should also be in place for locker room amenities. Nothing is more annoying to members than to find a dispenser empty, which means your staff members need to be vigilant about inventorying, ordering, stocking and storing these items (see the article Staying on Top of Your Locker Room Amenities on page 36).

Back to Ms. Putaway. My top-two pet peeves in the fitness center are 1) free weights that aren’t put back in their proper location, and 2) locker room benches that are left wet from a member’s wet swimsuit. If that seems trivial, don’t bet on it. Your members will remember these little pet-peeve annoyances far longer than they will remember the great class they just took.

Use the information in the articles in this special report of facility upkeep to provide you solutions for helping you to exercise the utmost standard of care in your facility.

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