Sade Grant is the Fitness Director at Medina (Minnesota) Golf and Country Club.
Sade Grant on the importance of building programming around your new fitness center:
I recently celebrated one year at Medina Golf & Country Club. About six months before I arrived, work began to transform a former ballroom into a state-of-the-art fitness center chock full of the latest and greatest tools and equipment. The decision to pursue this investment was made strategically after an analysis was conducted between the finance team at Invited and the Medina leadership team. Management at Invited and Medina had been trying to implement ways of increasing club usage on a year-round basis since the two came together in 2017. Some ideas were too expensive – others unrealistic. With the 5,000 square foot private event facility underutilized, they teamed up with Technogym to open a stellar fitness facility in May of last year. They built this great new amenity from scratch and created the position I now enjoy every day. We’ve done some good work since opening last spring, and are now a full-service fitness facility with several trainers, each with their own level of experience and expertise. Who’s got a coaching background? Who’s into nutrition? One is even specific to performance training. In staffing our fitness center, I tried to check all the boxes to cater to our members in the very best way possible. Two of our trainers bring a golf-specific point of view that they attained through TPI-certification. And one of them is a physical therapist, additional expertise to share with our members to help them get fit, stay fit and play golf with less pain. We also have four group instructors who teach an array of group classes. All of our trainers are required to take the Technogym Golf Performance Program that is free to us as a Technogym facility.
Sade Grant on the business impact of building programming around your new fitness center:
Membership categories and privileges vary at Medina, with all golf, sport and fitness members being entitled to participation in the group classes, a Peloton subscription and a one-hour complimentary Fit-Start session with a trainer. This helps members get in the right frame of mind and kick starts a new lifestyle that includes health and wellness amenities that we didn’t have before. Building awareness among our membership has been a real team effort. The club’s Member Experience Director, Stephanie Fuoss, did a lot of great work marketing and disseminating fitness center-related information to our members. We came up with some great marketing tools – flyers, emails and social events to engage the members. We wanted to get members into the space to be around each other and to meet me and our staff. It was a great opportunity to socialize and chat with them. We also included a fun workout and food and beverage to make the events even more special. The relationships built during these meet-and-greet sessions became vital to building our programming and increasing facility usage. The cardio equipment overlooks the course through a beautiful glass window. We also have free motion cable machines that are ideal for any golfer looking to expand his or her range of motion. The kinesis is an actual head-turner that allows you to work on a variety of movements – a must-have for any golf club. We have a turf floor area with a sled, stability balls, resistance bands and medicine balls that allow you to work on power and force like you would in most any sport, as well as dumbbells and kettlebells. It’s the full package – new facility, new equipment, new team, new programming and a new outlook on the value of a Medina Golf & Country Club membership.
If you would like to email the author of this Best Practice directly, please email Sade.Grant@invitedclubs.com.
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