How Brighton Rec. leveraged the power of partnership to grow group training by 68%

Hi Cate, what can you tell us about yourself?

Cate Majors (CM): I’m the Fitness Supervisor at Brighton Recreation Center in Colorado. I joined in March 2023 with 15 years of experience in health and wellness, plus previous management experience with the YMCA. I have oversight of the entire fitness section of our facility – that’s everything from weightlifting equipment, to cardio spaces, to group fitness. I oversee the studios and the equipment used for classes, organization of the classes, scheduling, staff, and their continuing education. I also oversee personal training and the city's Wellness Committee. We offer events throughout the year to keep city employees healthy and offer opportunities for them to get away from their desks and take part in fun activities!

How would you characterize your facility?

CM: We offer fitness, aquatics, youth sports, and community interest programs geared towards healthy living and lifestyle enrichment for the entire family. The thing that sets us apart from other local fitness clubs is the diversity in our programming and our whole-hearted focus on community engagement. We're all about activating the whole family and wider community. We offer childcare to support parents and guardians while they work out. We have youth-specific programming, workouts for teens and tweens, and of course, adult programming all the way through to Silver Sneakers.

What’s the secret to the strength of your community?

CM: I think being a recreation center is the crux of it all. A lot of our local competitors have more boutique-style personal training facilities or only offer group fitness classes, but we have everything. We're able to cater directly to our community by being reactive to their needs, and they know that we listen. We do our best to measure demand for the types of classes people want at the time of day they want them. If they have a particular Instructor they really want, we'll kind of hound that Instructor (in a nice way) to see if they're available to teach more classes! So our ability to speak to what our users want really helps to create strong community engagement.

Would you say you appeal to an already active population or does your focus on community create a welcoming space for people to try something new?

CM: It’s a mix of both. Recreation is really popular in Colorado, so we have lots of visitors who are already super active and healthy. We also do our best to be appealing and approachable for people who don't have a lot of fitness experience. We deliver introductory programming to help people get comfortable and offer the support they need through our staff and classes to work towards their wellness goals.

I've learned it's really important to set attainable goals at the very start. When I talk to someone who hasn’t tried group fitness in the past and they're telling me they want to be here four days a week, I tend to try and back them up a little bit and say, ‘Hey, let's start with once a week and when you get that down, we'll graduate and add in more options.’ But once people have established what works for them, whether that's one-on-one training or the group element and the camaraderie that comes with it, we do see progress. We see people who use group fitness as their entry point before adding to their studio workouts and branching out to other formats.

Tell us about your timetable strategy?

CM: When I came to Brighton, it was clear we needed to make some adjustments. We had great classes and great Instructors, but they were scattered all over the schedule in timeslots that didn't really make sense. We didn't have a lot going on during some peak traffic periods, and we lacked classes that repeated in the same timeslots throughout the week.

I worked with Les Mills on a similar project in my former role with the YMCA, so I’d witnessed some of the strategy behind creating a strong group fitness schedule and I reached out for support. We sent our facility traffic footprint, alongside group fitness participation information, and Les Mills came back with incredible analysis and suggestions that were easy to put into action. Being so new to my role, it was invaluable to be able to call on experts who could provide strategic direction and work closely with me to devise a winning formula for our facility.

As a new supervisor, I didn't want to come in and just blow up the schedule. I really wanted to do it in a way that educated our staff on why we were making changes and gave patrons time to acclimate to some things shifting around, so that's why we chose summertime. Here in Colorado, people are camping, hiking, and mountain biking during the summer. That’s the kind of activity we want to support, but it does mean people aren't in our facilities as often. We used summer to start moving things around and talking to staff about participation numbers – setting goals we wanted our Instructors to meet. It also gave us time to test and learn – measure growth and adjust things where necessary. And crucially, we didn't upset staff because it was a gentle, strategic, relationship-oriented approach.

What’s been the impact of the adjustments?

CM: We’ve had incredible growth and the support has revolutionized our group training offering. When we implemented the timetable guidance, we immediately saw tremendous uplift in our participation numbers. Autumn started strong and then as October and November rolled around the momentum kept building. We saw an increase of 68% in group fitness classes in April 2024 versus April 2023, and our numbers continue to rise year-on-year. As every operator knows, when it comes to things like budget, these types of numbers are super important. I report monthly to my supervisor, and I need to be able to quantify why we might want more funding for updated equipment or facilities. Having proof points like these helps us appeal to our City Council and planning and budgeting committees.

It's been educational and extremely helpful for me to learn all the resources Les Mills has to offer. I've got a few years now under my belt with management, but I'm still learning ways we can catapult our programming by virtue of the resources Les Mills provides to partners.

How did you communicate the timetable changes to members?

CM: We used a lot of direct communication. If a class was coming off the schedule, we asked the instructor to announce that for a couple of weeks in advance, because we know they’re our members’ most valuable touchpoint. We always implement changes at the beginning of the month so that when we release our new monthly or weekly schedule, it helps highlight the new classes and key changes to members. We go hard on promotion with everything new using all media outlets available to us, with a particular focus on social media.

You recently implemented LES MILLS™ Virtual. What’s been the impact?

CM: It’s showing up in several different ways. Our BODYPUMP™ regulars have really drunk that Kool-Aid! Having an unlimited supply of that class alone was a big motivator to bring on Virtual – there is such a strong demand for it! And we’ve found that although we also offer non-Les Mills strength classes, members really want the Les Mills experience – the choreography, music, tempo… and the results.

LES MILLS Virtual also helps us with covering for Instructors. Our location is quite far from the center of Denver, so we don’t have the same saturation of certified Instructors as you might find within the city limits. Our Instructors are amazing, but they’re not always available to fill in for each other’s classes. Les Mills Virtual has been great for covering those timeslots and also with filling in some off-peak gaps in our timetable.

Finally, Virtual allows our members to jump into the studio with a bunch of people and still experience that group energy of the class together. We’re using it to measure what other classes people are selecting so we can gauge which programs to bring on next and get staff certified in.

What else do you have coming up at Brighton Rec?

CM: We have great weather in Colorado, and you can often go outside in the sun to work out, even in winter so long as there isn’t any snow on the ground. We have big plans coming up for an outdoor fitness space which will be an extension of our Functional Fitness studio and we’ll use it for programming, independent workouts, and more. I would love to run LES MILLS STRENGTH DEVELOPMENT™ out of that space once it's available to us. I see it being a particularly useful program to appeal to our younger members, as many need weightlifting guidance but are hesitant to ask for it. Adding an outdoor workout space is an expensive undertaking, but we’re very fortunate to be growing so quickly here in Brighton that we have the opportunity to make it happen. We’re also relaunching our BOGA program – it’s a cardio / yoga format you do on a paddleboard that we’ll run in our aquatics facility!