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Gym Culture: An Owners Responsibility
By Markos Markopoulos - PTC Frankston
I have worked in, as well as owned gyms since 1979; in 35 years, I have seen and experienced a lot. when I didn’t like how things were done, I simply left. At the first gym I worked at, I was chastised by the owner for doing medicine ball sit ups with a member who was in there alone. I left. At my next gym, I was told to keep the squat stands locked up in a small room and I had to supervise anyone that used them, then put them away when they finished. I left, and on it went.
So when I finally had my own place in 2008, after a false start earlier in 1988, it was going to be run the way I thought a gym should be run. As far as all the gyms I had trained at were concerned, the best was ‘Tarzan & Jane’ in Seaford, Victoria. The owner, Tom, was there full time. He made sure the place ran properly. The biggest issue I see with gyms today is they are run by employees and managers; never by the owner. When I opened PTC in 2008, there were no garage-type gyms anywhere else that I knew of. Now there are plenty, and most are run by the owner.
So I spend 60 hours a week in my gym; I’m here for every minute that it’s open. The culture in our gym is exactly how I want it, and the gym is doing great. We get a lot of comments about how great it is; everyone loves the equipment and the space. But the culture for PTC was not set here. It was set in a cold, dark garage, six years ago. That’s where everybody learnt the PTC way. Everything is put back when you’re finished, no bar is ever left loaded; we have not experienced one single bent bar or damaged anything. That’s incredible for a gym that has so many strong lifters.
Now, there are many people who have trained at PTC, but they’re not all entrenched in the PTC culture. All the original guys, most of who still train here, are. Then we get the odd one who just ‘gets it’ straight away. These are the guys and girls who make sure the culture is passed along. They started in a garage that had no power rack, no calibrated plates, no specialist bars or competition benches, no platforms, not much of anything really, except for a work ethic and sense of ownership that couldn’t help but produce excellent lifters. My sons Max and Jack for instance, have never trained at another gym. They fully expect that all gyms are like ours.
I know that sometimes I piss people off because what I believe is important, they feel is trivial. Its a collection of trivial things that upset members, so I, and my ‘cultured’ friends, make sure the standards we expect are maintained. No plates are ever mixed up, no bars are ever left loaded, no one has to wait to use equipment, we all work in together. We only have 13 squat racks, 8 bench presses and 8 platforms, so we train as a team. Every
lifter doesn’t get his own mono lift or bench press. The word team is very important in here. We have a power lifting team, with 30+ competing lifters and a coach, everyone knows everyone and everyone helps everyone. Try that in a commercial gym.
When new members first start here, they are dazzled by our equipment, they say its the best set-up they’ve ever seen, and it probably is, but we had champion power lifters before we even had a power rack. They soon discover the “secret” here is not the mono lifts or Eleiko bars or the Forza benches: it’s the culture; the team environment that we have spent 6 years developing.
If you’re a gym owner, put the members ahead of the dollar. That’s right, I’m a crap businessman! Ask yourself: would you be happy having to wait for the only power rack because some clown needs it to rest his curl bar, or for some other mundane exercise, other than squatting? Do you need 15 treadmills and only 1 platform, or 18 cycles and no bumper plates? Do you allow spandex but not chalk? Are your members only allowed to do ineffective exercises, to keep them fat and weak, so they stay longer, or do you encourage deadlifts by providing platforms, bumper plates and specialist barbells?
With society being ‘softer’ than ever, it’s very easy to make money from the gym game by catering to the masses; people that drive to your gym to run on a treadmill. Then fill the place with trainers that have never squatted or dead lifted, ban chalk, heavy lifting and loud music and the weak will flock to you. Or you could set up a gym culture where lifters will travel across the world to simply lift in your gym.
If you own a gym, you should know where it is and how to drive there, and you should spend some time there as well. This is going full circle. You will be found out.