Barbell Shrugged - Last Episode on Shrugged Collective: Essential Equipment - Business of Fitness #77

Starting point is 00:00:00 All right, everybody, welcome back to the Business of Fitness podcast. I'm Jason Klipa. I'm here with MDV. We were just recording a previous episode for the same episode, but I went down a total rabbit hole and we're reeling it back in. It got dark. It got dark. So guys, we're talking today about equipment. What are some of the needs? How do we get started? And as a gym owner, you know, if you're looking to open up a gym, what type of equipment should you be looking towards? What are we thinking about when we're opening up new spaces? Before we dive into the episode, just wanted to let you know

Starting point is 00:00:41 that if you're currently listening to this on the Shrug Collective, which we have been putting out unique new content every week for the last, I don't know, about three months, this will actually be our last episode on the Shrug Collective. Now, the good news is we've been putting out content for the last two years or so on our own business of fitness channel. So if you've liked this business of fitness conversation, if you've liked the different things we've been diving into, if you're looking to open up a business or definitely a gym,

Starting point is 00:01:10 check us out on the Business of Fitness channel. We have new content every week that's coming out on there and you can still look at older episodes that we currently have on the Shred Collective. If you wanna backdate those or go onto our website, you can find us on Spotify, SoundCloud,

Starting point is 00:01:27 or wherever you find podcasts. So this is our last episode of the Shred Collective. I want to thank all of you who've been listening to it on this channel. Please check us out on Business of Fitness. Also, check out our friends over at Whoop. You know, they're a wearable we've been using for quite a while.

Starting point is 00:01:41 You can go to their website. It's whoop.com. And just go ahead and use the checkout code Jason for a nice little discount. But MDV, we were all fired up. I started talking about price per square foot, which was not what this conversation was about. But ultimately what this conversation is about is that if you're someone out there right now looking to start a gym, what type of budget should we be thinking about for equipment? Because the days are gone of starting gyms, in my opinion,

Starting point is 00:02:11 with $5,000 like we did. We spent $5,000 in equipment 12 years ago. But 12 years ago, the industry was much different. The consumer was much different. The expectation was much different. Now, you've got to kind of set yourself up for success from the get-go, right? I mean... that five to 15 members come on in and you had a $5,000 budget and you're going to, you know, share equipment between these five to 15 members and, you know, hope that it's all kind of hunky dory. It comes down to me, this kind of conversation about what are your expectations and do they align with what you want your client experience to be? If you want to be a single one-on-one trainer, you know, maybe you can have a budget of $5,000 or less and you can have one person in the room and get out. But if you're opening your

Starting point is 00:03:11 gym and you're expecting to have a class-based experience and you want to have the members all get a very similar experience, you can't have one rower that everybody passes around and constantly is shuffling on and off of it and always adjusting workouts and always scaling or staging workouts based on your lack of equipment. You use this analogy in the previous episode, which we which we trashed, but it's a good one. It's if you opened up a coffee shop and you constantly ran out of mugs and you're like, hey, why don't you just borrow that guy's mug? He's done with it. Right. And like that, that doesn't work. Right. At some point it doesn't work. It breaks down. Right. So if you're looking at your classes and you're saying, Hey, I've got 10 to 15 people in here and we have three rowers and I'm always adjusting workouts and I'm always saying, Hey, you got to run, you got to run, you got a bike. It's probably time to evaluate whether or not you need to invest in more got to run, you got a bike, it's probably time to evaluate whether or

Starting point is 00:04:05 not you need to invest in more equipment. And if you do that evaluation and you can't afford it, there's something wrong. There's something wrong, right? Because you should have the financials at that point and you should be able to pull the trigger to buy some of that equipment. Or if you're saying you don't want to do it, your member experience is probably suffering at some level, right? Yeah. It's this big kind of circle, right? And we've seen it before. So all of a sudden you open up a gym and you say, okay, I'm going to, my budget for opening up gym with the equipment is $10,000. Let's start here. If my budget was 10,000, which, which depending on how many people you want to service. So you got to start here. If you're, if you're out there and

Starting point is 00:04:42 you're interested in this conversation with opening business, start here. How many members am I looking to service on the floor? And if you say two, then I'd say, okay, no problem. Just keep in mind that if you're only looking to service two people at a time, what are you charging them? And do the financials even make sense to even open a business? You got to start there on your own. Then you say, okay, well, I want to service 10 people. And for us at our locations, we generally think about it one person per every hundred square feet. So to utilize MDV's analogy of 2000 square feet, right? We would accommodate 15 to 20 people in that setting. Okay. So now you're saying, all right, I want to, I want to service 15 to 20 people. That's what I'm going to need to make the financials make sense. Once you've done your analysis. Well, at that point,

Starting point is 00:05:24 then you got to back in your equipment. Okay. So if I want going to need to make the financials make sense once you've done your analysis. Well, at that point, then you've got to back in your equipment. Okay, so if I want to service 15 to 20 people and the lights just shut off. If I want to service 15 to 20 people, right, and that's my goal, how many rowers, how many sets of dumbbells, how many different types of equipment do I need to service them? And if you're interested in this and you have a $10,000 budget, will that accommodate a class of 15 people? And what should we be buying? When we first opened the gym, I made some mistakes. I bought the things that I wanted, not the things that the gym, the, they're going to provide the best experience for our members, right? I bought two GHDs because at the time I

Starting point is 00:06:00 loved the GHD sit-up. I loved the hip extension, but in reality, I don't need a reverse hyper jerk boxes and GHDs. All those do is take up a bunch of space and they don't accommodate enough members. So if my budget's like 10, 15, 20 grand for equipment, what do you think are the foundational pieces of equipment that we need to accommodate a class of, let's just call it 12? Yeah, I think that let's dive into that for a second but i want to highlight the ghd reverse hyper jerk block thing for a second because all all those are fantastic tools right they're all amazing tools that can get you incredibly fit they're great for you know heavy loading they're great for uh you know accessory work putting uh you

Starting point is 00:06:42 know the spine through a full range of motion, amazing, amazing stuff. But if you are sitting there and you're putting three or four GHDs into your cart in a 2000 square foot gym, and then you're not making the decision to buy more rowers to accommodate your class, you should be aware that one, the GHDs are going to take up a ton of space two the opportunities for your members to use them might be fewer and far between than the rower and then three if it's a personal decision that you're buying all these toys and you hey I have my jerk blocks I have my heavy d-balls my stones all this stuff and it takes up a large portion of your gym I think you have to examine whether or not that's the right decision for your business, right? And if you're okay with spending all that

Starting point is 00:07:31 money and having all that equipment, that's fine. But just be aware that the members are more than likely in a GPP style program are not going to touch that stuff nearly at all. Yep. Right? Nearly at all. The case can be made for the GHD if you have a huge, huge, huge facility and you have enough GHDs, yeah, you can get people on them for a whole bunch of stuff. But all that other stuff, man, you're probably not going to touch it more than once a week. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:07:59 Now. Totally. And I think there's a very important distinction between what is good for the business and what is good for you personally. Yeah. And I think there's a very important distinction between what is a good for the business and what is good for you personally. Yeah. And you have to make sure that you separate that because the way I look at business is that this entity is its own entity. It has no emotions, no, it's just, this is the gym and what we do what's best for the business, because that's what's best for our members and for our staff. Now, Jason, personally, I might like, you know, like you and I were talking about this earlier, I would love to set up a coffee shop in here, but is that the best use of the business's space? Probably not. Or I'd like to go out and have, you know, one of these unique type of sleds.

Starting point is 00:08:35 Well, that might be like a special treat for me personally, but I can't get that twisted with the best thing for the business because it can only accommodate one person at a time. So you can't put it into classes. Yeah, for sure. And like when you peel back these types of discussions, like it all comes down to whether or not you're aware of the impact that you might be having on your business and the member experience. And if you're okay with that, if you're okay with saying, Hey, listen, like I want to have all this stuff. I want to have a gym that only has two rowers and I want to have 10 people in my class. And okay, but if you're looking to run, in my opinion, and your opinion, I believe, a really successful GPP style program where you

Starting point is 00:09:20 have members of all shapes and sizes, of walks of life of all experience levels walking through your doors you're going to want to have those people all have a pretty similar experience pretty consistently right yeah and included in that is getting most of those people on a row or at you know the start of the middle of the end of the workout and not have to always stage or stagger or, you know, team up or partner or alter the workouts in a certain way that changes them a little bit, not make the experience bad. It changes the workout though. And every once in a while, if you do that because of outlier type of deals, like, Hey, I plan, I planned for having fifth equipment for 15 people and 25 showed up. That's a good problem to have.

Starting point is 00:10:07 On one-off occasions, partner people up, stagger the workout, stage the start differently. But that shouldn't be the norm every single day when your members are walking into your gym, that you do not have enough equipment, core equipment, to service the class size, right? Yeah, so I want to pause you there. From a core equipment perspective perspective what are we talking about and would you make the argument that if you can't afford the core equipment for the class size you're

Starting point is 00:10:33 looking to accommodate maybe you need to take a step back for a second not even open yet because if you're telling me that you want to open up a gym but you're saying you can't even afford to get four rowers, four bikes, and a set of dumbbells in each size, and maybe a couple of barbells, then maybe it's not the right time to open up your business yet. Might not be. Because if you can't even afford the essentials, then how are you going to be able to afford the first and last month's rent, security deposit, plus your monthly burn rate until you're in a position that you could actually make some profitability. Yeah. You might be biting off something that's too big for you to

Starting point is 00:11:10 chew at that point. Right. And like the, the classic argument there would, or the classic counterpoint there would just be start smaller, right? Start smaller. If you can't afford to buy the amount of equipment that you're looking to service for individuals you have these big dreams i want to run a 20 person class 30 people classes but i only have x number of dollars and i can only afford three rowers start smaller buddy yeah right like you got to just go down the ladder a little bit yeah i mean so using us as an example we're currently sitting in a um what's the six thousand square feet uh yeah close to six thousand yeah and downstairs we have two separate rooms that we run classes in and we have uh 10 bikes on each side 10 rowers on

Starting point is 00:11:53 each side and we have a couple we have 10 and 10 right on each side 10 bikes on each side and uh i think 12 rowers or 14 rows on each side now we've gone to that point over the last 12 years. And so, you know, just in rowers and bikes, we're talking about 50 grand or whatever it is downstairs. I don't recommend that for a first time gym owner at all. No, no way, but you need to be realistic. And so you need to see if your financial models are even going to work out because if you need 10 people people a class to be successful, you can only afford one rower. Well, maybe you shouldn't be getting into it. And so at a minimum, if you want to service 15 people, Adam, forget about how many people you want to service. What type of equipment do you think are foundational to a good class experience? Yeah. If you're looking

Starting point is 00:12:44 to do the style of training that we're doing here, you know, functional style training, GPP, you know, I think that you have to have a rigor pull-up structure. You have to have places where you can rack and on rack barbells, whether or not that's set up on the wall or the rig, or you have the movable squat racks, depending on your space. That's the first thing that I would look at there. You also need to be able to have obviously barbells. You have to have weights. You have to have enough of those weights to a certain extent to accommodate people up to a certain loading. So you got to look at, you know, everything from all the way down your 10s to your 45s and make a decision there. You have to have a distribution of barbells that make sense for your community.

Starting point is 00:13:27 You can't just buy all male 45 pound barbells, but you have to have training bars included in that because especially if you're just opening your doors, the odds are that you're going to have a good amount of people through the door that have never touched the barbell like that. And what's our ratio there. So just to, just to give people an idea, we only buy, we, we, we sometimes, we buy 10s, 15s, 25s, and 45s, really. I mean, there's outliers for sure.

Starting point is 00:13:51 I mean, we have a good amount of 35s floating around the gyms, but some of those are carryovers. But really, we make our money on the 10-pound plates, the 15-pound plates, the 25s, and the 45s. Because we're looking for a best bang for our buck. And what we found is whenever we buy the 55s or the 35s in general more times than not they don't get utilized as much as the 25s and 45s so that's why we go there and we think that plate storage is important because it helps to just keep it super clean from a barbell perspective if you had 10 barbells, would you say that six are 45 pounds, maybe two, or would you say like five or 45 pounds, three are 35 and maybe two are training bars? Would you say, I mean, I'm just giving like

Starting point is 00:14:36 a broad. Yeah, I would probably, you know, if I'm looking at only being able to buy 10 barbells, first of all, I would take a look at the demographic in the area that I'm looking at only being able to buy 10 barbells, first of all, I would take a look at the demographic in the area that I'm trying to serve. And, you know, if I'm, you know, heavily looking at a female population or an older population, or if that's the route that I know I'm going to go, maybe that distribution skews one way a little bit more, right with the training barbells. But I would say, say yeah i think you're in the four to five uh 45 pound barbell range the three to four uh female bars and then the remaining balance being training bars and um probably the the mistake that i see a lot of times is you know

Starting point is 00:15:17 you constantly you add a couple more training bars in there because you you figure you're going to need them but you don't figure you're going to need them as much as you do. Yeah. I don't think the training bars get as – do you think the training bars at like the 15-pound aluminum bars get used more or less than you think? They get used more. More. They get used more than people would initially think. Yeah. It's a great tool, man. I think it's just enough feedback for the athlete to feel some weight on the bar.

Starting point is 00:15:44 You can put 10 pounds on that 15 pound aluminum bar and you have a 35 pound bar. And, you know, that's something that, you know, you could certainly have athletes work with a 35 pound bar, but then they're getting below the knee without any plates on it. It's just a great tool to get people accustomed to moving a bar that's set up off the ground at a lightweight that's uh you know technically the risk of moving that 15 pound bar the 35 pound bar is pretty pretty low so i love them yeah so we talk about plates talk about some bar bills kind of like overall i know you talk about the rig when we think about rigs just so just while we're on the subject when we

Starting point is 00:16:23 look at let's just say a 40 foot rig or a 30 foot rig or even a 20 foot rig what we think about rigs just so just while we're on the subject when we look at let's just say a 40 foot rig or a 30 foot rig or even a 20 foot rig what we think about is optimizing the forefoot sections traditionally rigs are separated four feet for squatting pressing whatever then it's six feet that separates it then four feet then six feet then four feet the reason why that happens is that if you have a squat if you're squatting on the forefoot, the sleeve of the barbell goes off so far, and we need to have enough distance between that sleeve and the next sleeve to put on and off weights. If you have a bunch of people squatting, when we look at it, what we're thinking about, whether it's wall mounted or set, you know, off the wall is we're thinking about how do you

Starting point is 00:17:03 optimize a squat rack? So we would never buy, for example, a 20-foot rig because what that would be would be 4'6", 4'6". Instead, we would prefer to buy a 24-foot rig. And what that does, it gives us the additional squat rack at the end. These are things you could think about that optimize that. Something else you could think about is optimizing the distance between the bars. So traditionally, it's six feet across laterally, right? From the one side to the other. Yeah, yeah. And you could also look at doing four feet.

Starting point is 00:17:35 The disadvantage to four feet is that maybe if you wanna have stuff happen inside, muscle ups, et cetera, you don't have as much space, but it also saves you two feet of additional space that you're gonna save, more gym floor. And for us, what's critical in our, in our, in our business is looking at open gym space is, is the number one. So when you're going out there and you're buying equipment, think about how am I going to store this to optimize space? What we always think about. So let's keep diving in. We've got the rig at this, got that. Where are we going

Starting point is 00:18:03 next? By open gym space, you mean just unencumbered open gym floor, not open gym. Like we're not running classes just to clarify there. Yeah. Yeah. We want as much free space as humanly possible. Yeah. And that means that, you know, back in the day we'd have all this stuff on the floor, but now rogue comes out with these really beautiful shelving products, which I'd highly recommend. Even if your budget is small, I still think having a shelving product of some type is really important because it makes it look so clean and you can stack up, saving space on the floor. Yeah, I agree. The Rogue makes some tremendous products. So I think the next set of equipment I'm looking at is wall balls, boxes, jump ropes,

Starting point is 00:18:45 right? So we had the functional training equipment, the barbells, the plates, the rig, wall balls, boxes, jump ropes are next for me there. Before dumbbells. Yeah, I would go there before dumbbells. That would be my choice. Dumbbells very soon after, for sure. Dumbbells very soon after for sure. Dumbbells very soon after, but I think in a traditional functional training environment, you know, you can get by with, especially if you have a nice distribution of plates and barbells, a nice set of kettlebells, a nice set of wall balls and boxes and jump ropes, you can do a tremendous amount of work. Um, those two buys for me, uh, the kettlebells and the dumbbells are right next to one another and you can make the decision on your own. I, you know, obviously when we came up through CrossFit, the dumbbells were not as popular of a, um, implement, you know,

Starting point is 00:19:39 they did show up. They actually showed up in the first CrossFit.com workout, but they didn't show up as regularly as they now are showing up, similar to things like the bike, right? But I think that there's an argument to be made that a strong distribution of dumbbells is almost as equally as important as a strong distribution of kettlebells. But for me, I would go wall balls, boxes, kettlebells, jump ropes next. And at that point— For the record, I would argue him, and I would go dumbbells before kettlebells, jump ropes next. And at that point... For the record, I would argue him

Starting point is 00:20:05 and I would go dumbbells before kettlebells. But that's the good thing, right? Is that we're at least knowledgeable enough to understand why would we go one way or another? And MDV is going to debate because you could swing the kettlebell. You could do different types of things. You could snatch with it.

Starting point is 00:20:17 You could clean with it. I would say, hey, you could pretty much do the same thing with dumbbells, but you could be a little bit more diverse because you could do single arm. You could also do two dumbbells, but in either case, that's a good, it's, it's good for you to know why you're spending money on what you're spending money on. Yeah. And back it up. I, I, you know, I, I agree with you. Like for me, like I said, it's a very, um, it's one decision is right next to the other. I would probably go kettlebells first,

Starting point is 00:20:42 just because I think the, um, the allure of moving the object, like the kettlebell, same deal with like the rig and stuff like that. You know, you, and you have these people who are walking into your gym to do functional training. I think there is value in them seeing pieces of equipment that they might not normally see in other gyms. Right. And I think that that's the rig is one of those things that's like, it's a really, really big investment, but you know, if you don't put a rig into your functional training facility, I think you lose a little bit of, um, you know, kind of like that, like wow factor when people walk through your doors. And I think people like being on it. They like strapping the bands to it. They like being able to hang from the rope or hang from the rings and all that kind of

Starting point is 00:21:25 stuff. And it is one of those things that kettlebells kind of fall in that same category for me. I think functionally they're very, very close to the dumbbell. You can do all the same stuff, but there is something really cool about seeing that lineup of kettlebells. So that's a, that's a, that's a fair, that's a fair statement. Now to, to, to note what MDV was was saying we have tried not having a rig uh and just doing freestanding squat racks and then having pull-up bars on the wall and we actually found

Starting point is 00:21:51 that to not be successful in one of our locations so now we stay consistent the rig to back up his point about it kind of being a look and a piece and what people are thinking about it gives you that rugged appeal yet you can still keep it very professional. So I would recommend that as well. Now, when you talk about the kettlebells, you talk about the box jumps, you talk about jump ropes, et cetera, big picture owners need to understand where they want to put their budget towards. And I think on kettlebells for us, if you had, let's just say you could buy six kettlebells, what would you buy? I'm buying 53 and below. You know, that's where I'm starting. I think like the mistake that a lot of people make is they buy

Starting point is 00:22:31 too many of the extreme extremes. Yeah. That's a, that's a really good point. So like I would say, start at obviously you know, the one and a half pood and kind of work your way down. And you know, the, the one pood or the half pood being the, work your way down. And, you know, the one pood or the half pood being the bottom end of the range there and having a good amount of kettlebells in that range. You're talking like 25 to 53? Yeah, 25 to 53 is probably where I would spend most of my money and then have some of the ones on the other end. But like, if you're starting off your gym, you don't need to have six 73 pound two foot kettlebells laying around, right? So guys, if you're interested in opening up a gym, this is really important not to place your fitness level on your members fitness

Starting point is 00:23:16 level. And think about the larger demographic, the 99%. Some of you listening are probably like, dude, this guy's telling saying not to get a 72. First off, we're not saying that we think 72 is a very valuable. However, when you're thinking about best bang for your buck budgeting, you really want to be careful about these two extremes. And I think MDV brings a good point. We're on the bottom. When we first opened, I remember distinctly spending a bunch of money on 16 pound kettlebells. And at the time money was really

Starting point is 00:23:45 tight. And I bought, I want to say three of them because I really thought 16 would be the way they never got used. They were just too light. Uh, paperweights, they're paperweights. I mean, maybe they used every blue moon, but just not enough. Whereas I also bought, you know, for example, um, the 88s and those didn't get used instead. What you could think about is how do you optimize what you currently have? So if you have six kettlebells and you have 53s and maybe you have a beast in your room who's really strong, well, maybe give him two of them, right? You can still swing double kettlebells if you really want to load it up, right, versus doing single or add more reps for him. But at least if you're thinking about your budget, you need to think about how is it going to apply to the largest demographic possible and not be aligned with the outliers. Yeah. So you get your, that we've already talked about dumbbells.

Starting point is 00:24:31 I mean, dumbbells, in my opinion, a good sign of a, of a, a good sign of a gym that puts a lot of people through workouts to me is having like a good amount of rowers and bikes. Meaning, I mean, depending on your class size, I'm thinking somewhere between, somewhere around eight, right? Would be good. Yeah, if you're running classes of like 12 to 15 people, I think having eight of each is a good way to go. Six to 10, right?

Starting point is 00:24:59 Let's just say at the most, right? And then the dumbbells though, I think that's a really important thing to talk about too, is that when you're looking at these extremes, you know, people are going to want the then the dumbbells though i think that's a really important thing to talk about too is that when you're looking at these extremes you know people are going to want the 100 pound dumbbells because they've seen at the crossfit games or even the 75s and the reality is very few people are going to be able to pick those up and they're very expensive for the same price i can get a pair of hundreds a pair 200 pounds of, I could get multiple pairs of something else because that one pair, which services one person maybe once every couple of months is the same as me getting maybe the equivalent of three, two or three sets of 35s. Yeah, for sure.

Starting point is 00:25:38 And just when you think about it again, guys, it's how am I going to service the most amount of people? And when you're thinking about equipment, you want to think about it again, guys, it's how am I going to service the most amount of people? And when you're thinking about equipment, you want to think about applying to the masses and utilizing your budget to go farther for you. And that is not investing into things that are going to be for the minority, like a 200 pound D ball. It's just, it's just not going to drive a big ROI for your business. And like, I want to be clear also, like, again, these are fantastic tools, like the hunt, nothing wrong with a hundred pound dumbbell, 150 pound D ball. Nothing wrong with the 100-pound dumbbell, the 150-pound D-ball. They're amazing, amazing training tools. But if you're looking to build your equipment list when you're just starting out to service a general population, those probably should not be on your list if you're taking things off of your list to buy that.

Starting point is 00:26:23 You mentioned something there. We didn't dive into it all too much, but the importance of having bikes in your facility and, uh, you know, the bike, although has come around more recently as being very popular within this space has been around for ages and ages and ages. Right. But it's such an awesome training tool. Yeah. And it's such a low barrier to entry for very, very new and highly deconditioned people. And it's a tremendous nightmare training tool on the opposite side of the equation for your fittest athletes.

Starting point is 00:27:00 But it's, you know, and for everybody, hopping on a bike takes almost zero instruction, right? And there's, you know, a lifetime to learn on pacing and how to use it and work on stuff like that. But versus the rower, which is an awesome, fantastic training tool, there's a bit more technique and things to learn there in nuance. But having those bikes is an awesome option. And, you know, I strongly consider if you have the space and you have the budget, those bikes need to be on your list fairly soon too.

Starting point is 00:27:27 I 100% agree. I remember years ago before a salt bike came around, I used to try and get those old school Schwinn Airdynes. And I remember I bought a shipping container full of old ones. I'm talking like the gold gangster ones. And man, we used the hell out of those things. They all ended up breaking. They always did. Right.

Starting point is 00:27:46 But once the salt bike came around, the reason why is that when your members come in the door, it's something that's familiar enough, but not the same. You know what I mean? It's familiar enough in the sense of like, I know it's a bike. I can see that. Wait, but the arms move and the legs move. That's different. And then when they think about kind of like old school wrestling videos or something like that, maybe they've seen this type of air bike before.

Starting point is 00:28:07 It kind of reminds me of hard work. I'd make the debate that, you know, they're just as important as rowers. Yeah. I think it's getting darn close to it. I think you could do a flip a coin and get, you know, if you're going to either get bikes or get rowers, it's kind of up to you. I think the long and short of it is it's becoming a standard in programming. You know, for us at the collective, we use bikes a good amount in the programming. And for good reason, I believe, you know, like I said, awesome training stimulus, super low barrier to entry, takes the load almost completely off the body. It's a great recovery tool. You can flush out the legs. You can get a tremendous cardiovascular stimulus from it. The list goes on and on and on, but let's just be real. The industry has evolved to a point where these are now standard and they

Starting point is 00:28:58 got introduced on the floor at regionals. You know, you saw them pop up there and then they're standard in programming for competitions and all that kind of stuff. They are now on your list. Yeah. Well, they're not just a Santa cause they're at the CrossFit games. It's not their Santa because they're so effective. They're a highly effective tool that we believe is a staple. If you look at my garage, for example, I got, you know, you got it. I, I, I, I wouldn't have a complete garage gym without having a bike for sure. And because it's effective. And so if you're a gym owner out there and you're looking to own a, if you're, if you're

Starting point is 00:29:31 a gym owner, you don't have bikes, you got to start asking yourself, man, how do I not have the financial means to go out and buy a few bikes? And if you don't, that's a much, much bigger question. Yeah. And I, like I. And like you said, I don't think it's just because they showed up at regionals or the games that they are now a standard, but like it's not just us sitting here,

Starting point is 00:29:51 two guys on a microphone saying, hey, you guys got to go out and spend all this money on bikes. These are everywhere now, everywhere. And if you are opening your doors for your gym and you don't have staple equipment that everybody else down the road has. I do think you put yourself at a professional disadvantage when compared to other people. And you know, this is a really big holistic conversation is that if you're on, you know, the CrossFit affiliate page saying that you have to go borrow rowers to go perform

Starting point is 00:30:22 something or borrow bikes, you have to take a deep, hard look at your business and start asking yourself, man, you know, where did I go wrong? Right. Is the question. Did I not make the initial investment required or was I unrealistic at the initial investment required to put me in a position to have the gear necessary to perform the classes I need to, Or, you know, am I not making enough money today to go out and make those investments? In regardless, you have to take a hard look in the mirror and say, man, the industry has evolved. The requirement are these things. These are not nice to have. These are the requirements. Whereas, for example, a nice to have might be, for example, an Olympic lifting platform.

Starting point is 00:31:05 And I wouldn't even recommend against that because you can't optimize the space during all times. But a nice to have might be a $1,000 Eliko bar. That's a nice to have. We would never sit here and recommend to start off a gym with $1,000 Eliko bars, right? You can go with the traditional Rogue bar. They're perfect. But I cannot urge you enough guys, if you're out there and you're, you're borrowing equipment or you're having to,

Starting point is 00:31:32 you know, what that shows me is it's a hobby and not a business. And if it's a hobby, then that's tough. You're taking on all this risk and liability. You got to treat it like a business. Yeah. And like we were saying kind of earlier, like you don't have to have one for one a piece of equipment for every person in every single class that you have you don't you can make like take the averages of what your class sizes are look at what your budget is and you buy the amount of equipment that you need to get most of those classes through the workouts most of the time without having to stage, to stagger, to start and all that kind of stuff. People are very understanding and they understand that there are certain situations that are outliers, right? They walk through the door,

Starting point is 00:32:14 they see 40 people, they know that they're going to have to partner up and share. But when you are running your gym, you shouldn't be doing that every single day because you have not purchased the requisite amount of equipment to run these people through the workouts that you're programming for them, right? And if you're constantly seeing that, hey, I have a class of 12 people and three rowers, how do I run this workout? At some point you don't. I think that that's the ultimate point. You don't. You have to buy the equipment to service these people. Yeah. You can only fight, combat it, and do every minute on the minute for so long, which is fine. But, you know, it's a revolving door. It's a revolving door in the sense if you don't have the equipment to service people effectively, are you ever going to be able to service people effectively?

Starting point is 00:32:59 Right? So it's like a prerequisite, meaning if you don't have the equipment, you could have an exceptional coach with no equipment and they can get away with it for quite a while, right? If you're an exceptional coach with no equipment, we can still provide somebody great value. But over time, people want to have diversity. People want to have some complexity, some variance in their programs. And over time, the industry says, hey, these are the industry norms and you need to get up with the times. Yeah. They understand to a certain point. Yeah. And then at one point they go, this is, this is not the right decision for me anymore. I can spend my money elsewhere and

Starting point is 00:33:36 have the equipment that I want to use more often. Right. And as an owner, you need to look at your equipment list and really look at your gym and say, I, in my heart, in my mind, truly believe the equipment that we have purchased is going to provide the best value and the best impact for our members. And if you could say that, then hell yeah. But if you're looking at your equipment and you're saying, man, we don't have some of the foundational pieces that we need to really provide a best stimulus, right? We don't have dumbbells. Well, dumbbells are pretty standard. Like you got to kind of use them, right? And if you haven't used them for a year,

Starting point is 00:34:10 you know, I think your members are missing out on a tool that can make them more fit. Standard, easily scalable, very approachable, multiple different ways, different ways to use them, different types of loading, odd object loading, all this kind of stuff. The tremendous value in the dumbbell. And that's why really it's got as much, if not the same bang for its buck as the kettlebells, right? Yeah. I mean, look, we're putting out programming right now. We've been doing programming for the last 12 years. We're putting out programming for, at this point, hundreds and hundreds of gyms,

Starting point is 00:34:40 thousands and thousands of members. And we're getting feedback of what people like, what they don't like, what's effective. And members. And we're getting feedback of what people like, they don't like what's effective and the tools that we're providing. What we're seeing is that they're providing a very powerful stimulus for our members and they're getting great results. And if there's a certain set of required tools that we're using, like the bikes, the rowers, the dumbbells, the kettlebells, even introducing the slam ball is a very useful tool, right? And I think as an owner, you're saying, hey, why do we like the sand bowl? Well, it's inclusive.

Starting point is 00:35:11 It's low-barrier to entry. It has this hip-closing movement that we don't see as often. And I think that as owners or as entrepreneurs, we have a duty to think about how to provide the best experience. Yeah. The slam ball is another one. It's probably toward the bottom of my list, but it's on my list. And for all the reasons you just said, an amazing stimulus, highly approachable, really lower risk for putting load onto the body and it hurting somebody because of how it's structured and built. Rogue has done a tremendous job of making them more and more durable, right? The ones that we have now almost never bust. And if they do bust, Rogue is

Starting point is 00:35:59 fantastic about servicing them with us. And you know the the slam ball guys that ballistic closing of the hip it's just not only is it tremendous training stimulus it's fun it's fun and in this training environment we don't get to do that as much with some of the other more rigid hard objects you know the the slam ball has a lot of value um and it's on my list before all the other stuff that we talked about earlier reverse hypers, chains, GHDs, jerk blocks, all that stuff, only platforms, illegal bars. I would look at a good distribution of either 10 or 15 pound up to 30 pound slam balls. And that's going to worth its weight in gold to me. And the reality is, guys, we're just trying to place a practical application of everything in our gyms. When we think about all this stuff, we're just trying to apply it to the

Starting point is 00:36:50 masses. And we're talking about, you know, large quantities of members, and we're thinking about equipment that's going to help them. And so before you go out there and open a business, ask yourself, do I have the financial means to invest in equipment? That's going to set me up for the best position to be successful. We're not saying you have to go get 10 rowers 10 bikes 10 whatever but we are saying is do you have the budget to get three or four of each how many people do you want to accommodate and when you are purchasing equipment be critical on outliers and be focused on the the 99 yeah check your own own self-interest, I think, is one of the good ones. It's very easy when you're on these websites. There's a tremendous amount of sexy

Starting point is 00:37:35 product out there. Oh, yeah. And you look at your budget and you're like, oh, man, it'd be awesome. And you don't have a lot of downtime at the gym. I'll be able to use this. Probably not the right decision. If that's your thought process, probably not the right decision if you want to have a successful business out the gate. Yeah. I want to have 10 members of the class. My average age is going to be 45. I'm going to have some outliers. What type of loading are they going to incorporate? How am I going to program it in? And this is this. That's what needs to go through your head. If you haven't checked out the NC Fit Collective, we've been putting out session plans programming for our coaches worldwide. We have maybe a little over 100 of our own coaches that provide us feedback on a regular

Starting point is 00:38:11 basis, and now we now sell that product to other gym owners. If you're a gym owner out there and you haven't checked it out, I would really, really recommend it. We have a core list of equipment that we use. You can always scale it and change it, but we would highly recommend at least have some of those tools. And, you know, we really appreciate you taking the time to listen to what we have to say about equipment. MDV, anything else to add on to this? No, maybe the last thing is the, we didn't get into talking about rope climbs, but I think rope

Starting point is 00:38:39 climbs or climbing ropes are on my list towards the end by the slam ball. And that's one of those things that because of the allure of having it in your gym and people seeing it, I would try to get one or two of those if you do have space to hang them. And then the way to incorporate those when you are starting your gym out, obviously putting them into four-time workouts or AMRAPs and stuff like that can be challenging. So EMOMs, skill sessions, warmups, cool down, stuff like that. It's something that we use maybe once every two or three weeks in our programming, but they do have value in a similar way that, you know, somebody walks in, they see this climbing rope and they want to, they want to get on. Yeah. We had a group of people yesterday who want to do a tough mudder and they came in specifically to learn how to climb

Starting point is 00:39:27 a rope but you know that also goes in line with the rings there's so many different pieces of equipment that we can incorporate what i think is important what mdv said there's staples that are incorporated in the gym and then there's ways to incorporate maybe pieces of equipment you don't have as many of we would never recommend for you to have 10 or 15 ropes. It's just, it's too much. It's too much rig space. It's just too much. But there's a way that you can be creative on the programming

Starting point is 00:39:51 to get in these complex skills for sure. And as a coach, it makes it a little bit easier for you to walk around the room and only have three people working on it. But when you're talking about, for most people, most of the time, for AMRAPs, for whatever you're incorporating, you need to have enough equipment to at least accommodate those classes. You don't need one

Starting point is 00:40:08 for one. We've already said that being at least enough that you could stagger it, you could do whatever. And if you have two rowers and 20 people, you basically can't do it. Yeah. That was more of the focus for this conversation and less about what you were just saying. And, um, you know, the other thing that we didn't touch on too much, but you just mentioned is the rings, but the rings are a lower cost item. You know, when Rogue Fitness first started, uh, selling rings, they were like a couple of hundred bucks per pair. And now they're much, much cheaper. And I think having a good amount of rings, whether or not you're going to have them up all the time or not, right. Is, is a strong options, great scaling, uh, option for pull-ups.

Starting point is 00:40:46 You know, the ring row, obviously, really amazing to have athletes support their own body weight, either in a static hold or with their feet on the ground, learn some body awareness there. You can do some really cool stuff with single ring rows if you have larger classes and not a ton of rings. And then, obviously, they're easily transitioned up the rig or down the rig. If you have to put them up for people who have muscle ups or, or it just takes, you know, on, on, on a ravel in the nylon. And they don't take up much space. No. Yeah. So if you have the budget

Starting point is 00:41:13 and it doesn't take up much space, that's the thing that you can gather, right? Um, look, bands, hip circles. I mean, there's a, so many areas we can go into, but as an owner evaluate what is going to provide the biggest impact for your members. Sit there and think about the 99% and then go out there and purchase it and make it happen. If there's anything we could ever do, please let us know. You can hit up MDV. Where do you hit up MDV at? You hit me up in the, if you're a member of the collective, definitely in the Facebook group. Facebook group has been amazing lately. But you can email me at mdv at nc.fit. If you're a member of the collective, definitely in the Facebook group. Facebook group has been amazing lately.

Starting point is 00:41:46 But you can email me at mdv at nc.fit if you have any questions on coaching, development, anything like that. mdv at nc.fit. And then go check us out in the private Facebook group if you're a collective member. Hope everybody keeps rising the tides, getting after it. And have a good day, everybody. Let's do it.

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Barbell Shrugged - Last Episode on Shrugged Collective: Essential Equipment - Business of Fitness #77

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