Guest author: HSN Mentoring
Have you struggled to keep engagement throughout your gym’s nutrition challenge?
Have your clients seen great results only to fall back into old habits a few weeks after the challenge was over?
You know what happens next: Clients wait for you to run another nutrition challenge so they can get back on track. But what they really need is ongoing nutrition support. I refer to this as the “challenge trap“!
If this sounds familiar, keep reading. I want to help you increase engagement with your nutrition challenge to avoid this all-too-common pitfall.
The Benefits of Running a Nutrition Challenge at Your Gym
At Healthy Steps Nutrition, we recommend nutrition challenges as a great way to:
- Kickstart someone’s journey with nutrition.
- Boost awareness about your nutrition coaching program.
- Increase staff buy-in to grow an ongoing nutrition coaching program after the challenge is over.
To do this, you must avoid the common mistakes most gym owners make when running nutrition challenges inside their gyms.
Avoid These 3 Nutrition Challenge No-Nos
1. Your Nutrition Challenge Is Too Complicated
If you want to increase challenge compliance and member results, your nutrition challenge should be simple.
Take away the food rules, macros, and meal plans, and focus on 1 small habit at a time. If you keep your nutrition challenge simple, your clients will be more consistent. And consistency is the driver of results.
Instead of focusing on 1 prize at the end of the challenge, keep the challenge participants engaged with weekly mini challenges and prizes. Reward completion of daily habits and challenge engagement instead of weight loss/gains.
In the Healthy Steps Nutrition Challenge + SugarWOD integration, your clients will receive short education videos, daily habits, and tons of healthy recipes. Everything is laid out for you. Simply sign up and add your clients to the program on your challenge start date.
2. Your Nutrition Challenge Is Too Cheap
Let’s pretend you execute an amazing challenge. There was great engagement throughout, and people saw incredible results. There was only 1 problem — you practically gave the challenge away for free.
The coach or owner who executed this challenge put time and energy into ensuring an exceptional service was delivered. Were they valued for their time?
The bigger issue comes into play when you talk to your challenge participants about continuing to work with you through ongoing nutrition coaching. They just received so much value for free. Why would they pay for ongoing coaching?
Price your challenge higher than your ongoing nutrition coaching rate. The average gym partnered with Healthy Steps Nutrition Mentoring charges $129 per month for ongoing nutrition coaching.
3. Your Nutrition Challenge Is Too Group-Focused
We’ve all been there! We launch a challenge and tell participants to come between 8 and 11 a.m. (or whatever time slot) to do their measurements.
It’s like a conveyor belt of people getting their scans and measurements. The initial weigh-in is busy, but by the ending weigh-in, only a few people come in.
There are a few vital mistakes with the nutrition challenge conveyor belt.
Let me explain.
Once someone gets their measurements, they immediately think about what they want to lose. If you aren’t there to sit down with them and find out their short- and long-term goals, they will only think about what they’ll lose during the challenge. You, as a coach, won’t understand what they really want and the emotion behind their “why.”
Because you didn’t discover their individual goals and help them understand why their goals are important to them, they won’t include you in their long-term plan to reach those goals. After all, you are just there to help them start their challenge.
The Fix? Meet With Clients Individually
Most people don’t understand the value of individual accountability with nutrition coaching. Individual meetings at the beginning and the end of a challenge let participants see what this could and would look like long-term.
Lastly, individual meetings at the end of a challenge are vital to ensure clients understand how you can continue to help them reach their long-term goals. You can talk about the wins, the struggles, and where you go next to help them.
Pro tip: Bookend meetings during the initial meetings stage. It’s like having a competition!
How To Improve Your Gym Nutrition Challenge for Next Time
If you’ve made 1 — or all 3 — of these mistakes, I understand!
As a gym owner and registered dietitian, I made them all (and more). That’s why we created the Healthy Steps Nutrition Challenge Intensive Training and partnered with SugarWOD, making it easy to help you launch a successful nutrition challenge in your gym.
Are you planning to run a nutrition challenge in the coming month or new year?
Let me help you save time while running a nutrition challenge in your gym with the Healthy Steps Nutrition Challenge Intensive!
Here’s How It Works:
- Sign up HERE to gain immediate access to the on-demand training. You can watch the training recordings or join us for an upcoming live virtual training. To see upcoming training dates, click HERE.
- Complete your training and mentoring call with an expert on the Healthy Steps Nutrition Mentoring team to dial in the details and ensure you feel confident before launching.
- Once you complete the training and choose a start date, the HSN Mentoring team will add the Healthy Steps Nutrition Challenge to your SugarWOD account.
- Launch your nutrition challenge in your gym, and build an ongoing nutrition coaching program to support your clients long after the challenge is over!
Next live training is December 8th, 2022! Only 40 Spots left!