The first step to joining Defy, is to have what we call a No Sweat Intro. Most people think this will be a “gym tour” because that’s what they are accustomed to…
Go to join a big box gym and they will take you around their facility, show you the showers, the line of 15 treadmills and their smoothie bar.
While this can all be impressive, none of that matters when it comes down to getting real results with your fitness.
I’m not interested in touring people when they come to our gym, I want to know their goals, what their previous fitness experience is and how we can best help them right now. Not to mention a tour would take about 3 minutes to walk around my space.
Having a small space is a benefit in my eyes. We can see everyone when they are here, we can interact, build relationships and coach them.
Defy Functional Fitness isn’t really a gym, not in the traditional sense – we are a coaching facility. We have good quality equipment, but most of our space is empty. We want a blank canvas to ‘paint’ our programs on.
Our space isn’t limited by the kinds of machines we have. Pec Decs, leg presses, cable machines… they work for what they were designed for. But they are very limiting. Each machine has its intended use and that’s pretty much all they are good for – as well as taking up a lot of space, costing a lot more than they should and collecting dust.
So, our open space allows us to do our job – coach. We can bring out barbells, dumbbells or sleds. We can use no equipment at all if needed – it all comes down to what each member needs and what our program deems to be useful.
When we started in 2018, all of our life changing equipment was purchased for about the same as 8 commercial treadmills cost. Our smaller space also means we are limited in how many members we can house, which means we want EVERYONE to show up.
Real gyms don’t look like “gyms”. While we keep our space clean, touch it up with paint and have a couple of showers – we can’t rely on it to impress people into joining. Instead we have to get results, build something that people want to be a part of and stick with what works.
We will never sacrifice on quality when it comes to equipment. We will also update things but we usually just end up buying more of the SAME stuff to replace the old or allow us to grow.
Fancy lights, the latest smith machine or the best speakers don’t get results. Lifting, jumping, moving (while having fun) does!