Fitness is BS.

I use behavioural science to fix the decisions that cost gyms members.

Humans don’t behave the way they say they do. It’s called the intention-action gap, and it’s where most gym problems start.

The acquisition problem

Ads and search buy you attention but can’t make the decision. Deciding to join requires a behaviour, and I architect the conditions for that behaviour to happen.

The retention problem

Members don’t leave because they’re unhappy, and they don’t stay because they’re satisfied. In between sit dozens of behaviours that decide it. My job is finding which ones matter and showing you what to change.

What this looks like in a gym

A gym runs an eight-week body-composition challenge and attendance climbs every week of it. Once it finishes, attendance doesn’t settle back to normal. It drops below where it began.

Furman and Volz tracked the real check-in records of 88 members across three studios. During the challenge, the prize became the reason people came in. It didn’t sit on top of their old reason, it replaced it, and when the challenge ended there was nothing to fall back on.

This one is the overjustification effect. Reward something a person was already doing for their own reasons and they start doing it for the reward instead. Take the reward away and their original reason has gone with it. So a second prize won’t fix it. Before the challenge ends, book them into a class they’re already choosing, to maintain their attendance levels.

Furman & Volz · Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being

A gym runs two ads on the same budget to the same audience, but the one that gets more clicks brings in fewer members.

Jung and Mitchell ran two ads for the same organisation on matched budgets and search terms, pointing at the same landing page. One was factual, the other inspirational. More people clicked the factual one, but the inspirational one converted nearly three times better and returned nineteen times its cost, while the factual one lost money. The click decided who arrived. The feeling on the page decided who acted.

This one is the affect heuristic. People judge the value of a thing by how it makes them feel at the time, rather than by what it tells them, so an ad full of facts gets weighed up while an ad that makes someone feel something gets acted on. More information won’t fix that. Before you write the ad, work out what you want the reader feeling when they land, then write backwards from that.

Jung & Mitchell · European Journal of Marketing

A gym runs its member survey and the satisfaction scores come back high. Cancellations keep climbing anyway, and nothing in the feedback explains why.

Kuo and Chao surveyed 577 Netflix subscribers to work out what kept them paying, and satisfaction wasn’t the answer. What predicted retention was how much it would cost to leave. A subscriber going to cancel sees their watchlist and the series they’re halfway through, and has to weigh that up. A gym member going to cancel sees a form and a date, with nothing on the screen to show what the last eight months added up to.

This one is the sunk cost effect. People stay with something because of what they have already put into it rather than because of what it will give them next, but that only works if they can see what they have put in. Netflix makes it visible at the point of cancellation. Most gyms leave it invisible, so there is nothing to weigh against leaving. Put the sunk cost in front of them at the point of cancellation.

Kuo & Chao · 577 Netflix subscribers

Where this gets applied

Pricing

The Joining Fee Paradox: What Partitioned Pricing Research Says Gyms Are Getting Wrong

Marketing

What 31,812 Marketing Emails Reveal About Why Your Gym Newsletter Gets Ignored

Motivation

Hyperbolic Discounting Isn’t About Willpower: Why Gym Members Quit Long-Term Goals

All 70 posts → · 78 biases, explained in gym terms →

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Gym Hacks

Every fortnight I take one gym problem, find the research behind it, and work out what to change. 77 so far. Five minutes each, and nothing you’d have to be a psychologist to use.

The Cognitive Bias Library

78 biases, each one written up in gym terms. What it is, the research behind it, and where it shows up in a gym. Free, no sign-up.

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