Many luxury apartment complexes offer amenities like pools, fitness centers, and pet-friendly spaces, but how often are they utilized? Amenities are excellent ways to attract prospective tenants and increase property value, but there’s more to be mined with an optimized space.

Wellness is a fast-growing focus in real estate. Cultivating a community that cares about health and wellness is attractive to prospects and harmonizes the existing population. Prospects and residents aren’t impressed with a tiny, vacant space with sparse fitness equipment. This article discusses how to maximize apartment fitness center use by transforming the room from an obsolete amenity to a valuable space that creates wellness opportunities.

5 Ways to Add Value to Apartment Fitness Centers

In this post:

1. Invest in Quality Equipment

2. Personal Training

3. Fitness Classes

4. Wellness Features

5. Market Your Apartment Fitness Center

6. Strive Fitness Classes & Multifamily Fitness Center Management

Invest in Quality Equipment

Equipment is the most important element of a fitness center. Invest in durable, commercial-grade equipment that won’t break down or become a liability. Routine preventive maintenance is necessary primarily for the safety of the users, but also to contribute to its longevity. Efficient fitness centers require a variety of cardio equipment and weights.

Even high quality equipment often isn’t enough to get people through the door. Spend time selecting the proper amount of equipment for the space. Too few options is a deterrent, and too many pieces of equipment crowds the space and impacts utilization. Consider how the fitness center is organized, and create an organic flow from one set of equipment to another. Designated spaces set clear intentions and boundaries.

It’s best practice to do some market research before selecting your equipment. There may be new or trendy machines that attract residents, or other popular equipment that doesn’t fit neatly into a category.

Personal Training

Hiring a personal trainer is a valuable addition to apartment fitness centers. It’s likely that residents that avidly work out will continue to utilize their pre-existing gym membership. This means the group interested in the apartment fitness center are likely less experienced and may not be well-versed in navigating the equipment. They need more than a room furnished with machines — they need training and instruction.

Personal trainers teach residents proper equipment use and technique for stretching, lifting weights, or other forms of exercise. This instruction boosts the confidence and abilities of residents while also creating a safer environment.

Property managers or resident coordinators that don’t have the bandwidth to recruit, screen, hire, or schedule personal trainers can leverage Strive to execute the administration. Strive has 15 years of industry-expertise to guide the selection of a professional personal trainer.

Fitness Classes

The most engaging solution to maximizing residential fitness center use is through onsite group fitness classes. Leveraging fitness instructors to lead weekly classes encourages residents to form connections, be accountable and consistent, and exert more effort than they would in a solo workout.

Residents also benefit from the instruction component provided by a fitness specialist. A lack of experience can quickly lead to injuries or ineffective exercise. Fitness instructors show residents what each piece of equipment is intended for, how to properly use it, and how to maintain proper body form to work the targeted muscle and prevent injury.

Strive offers fully administered onsite and virtual fitness classes for apartment or residential fitness centers. Some of our most popular multifamily weekly fitness classes are:

• HIIT
• Core conditioning
• Quick Core
• Fun Bootcamp
• Zumba
• Body Sculpt

Find out how to decide between on-demand and live fitness classes.

Wellness Features

Luxury multifamily complexes experience the benefits of investing in wellness for their residents. In addition to being great for sales and resident retention, wellness amenities foster a healthier, happier community. Fitness centers can showcase green walls, include saunas or meditation rooms, or provide a healthy snack and beverage station to demonstrate a commitment to resident well-being.

Other wellness factors to prioritize in apartment fitness centers are soft lighting, air purifiers, ceiling fans, ample disinfectant, and other sanitary procedures.

Market Your Apartment Fitness Center

Many people love the idea of a fitness center when touring the grounds, but don’t take the time to lace up and go due to intimidation or the lack of an established routine. There are engagement strategies that simultaneously add value and market your residential fitness center. To supplement traditional marketing techniques like social media, apartments can host events in the fitness center such as tenant appreciation days with healthy cooking demos or nutritionists.

Walking, running, or biking groups can be advertised with the fitness center as the meet-up point to create a pressure-free way for residents to get their eyes on the space. Having a friendly face staffing the fitness center also supports engagement efforts.

Strive Fitness Classes & Multifamily Apartment Fitness Center Management

Property managers or resident coordinators often have incredible ideas, but not the time necessary to implement. Introducing personal trainers or fitness classes to apartment fitness centers is often a burden on top of competing responsibilities and priorities. Strive provides turnkey implementation that fully relieves the burden of the property management team by recruiting, screening, and hiring instructors.

Strive’s technology platform makes liability waivers and registration seamless. Every client is assigned an account manager that quarterbacks engagement communications (like reminders or cancellations), data collection, and analysis to evolve the classes for the population.

Fitness Center Design, Staffing, & Management

Strive’s roots are in fitness! Our team can fully design and develop, or renovate, residential fitness centers. We can also staff and/or manage multifamily gyms with safety, sanitization, injury prevention, and cleaning standards as our utmost priority.

Book a discovery call to explore how Strive can help maximize the use of your apartment, residential, or multifamily fitness center.