Adding a mobility program to your centre's program is a great way to prevent injuries within your centre and boost a greater range of motion and overall mobility and enhanced recoveries for your clients.
Mobility, recovery and regeneration is an integral part of our physical wellbeing, and regardless of where we sit on the physical activity spectrum, your participants results, and the benefits they'll experience will keep them coming back for more!
Implementing a Program
Here at Active Nation we've been lucky enough to work along side some of New Zealand's most progressive gyms, physiotherapists and clubs with the award-winning BLACKROLL brand on developing and implementing a wide range of programmed mobility sessions.
We're constantly tweaking how programs are developed and implemented to deliver not only the greatest benefits to your clients, but also add meaningful value with respect to engaging and re-engaging your current clients as well as introducing potentially new clients to your brand.
These are the top 5 questions we get asked when centres look to implement a form of programming:
1. It Starts with a good name
The name offered has to have broad appeal, but lack ambiguity. We've trialled about 20 different names in the past year and Mobility, Performance, or Recovery Session preceded by your company name (e.g. Active Nation Mobility) have all proven successful names for our clients before.
2. CLASS FREQUENCY
Programming your new session once a week has proven the most successful as a base for most clubs and centres.
Following a three month trial most centres report rising demand and add further classes and/or more specialised programming for special populations or for more specific needs from there.
3. Class Time and Length
The most popular classes at the outset are ones you can back onto an already popular program at your centre.
More than 60% of centres find the evening a more popular time to run a program, whilst early morning classes get less engagement.
The beauty of a mobility class also lies in its duration. 15-20 minutes is an excellent amount of time to safely deliver a session, provided participants are warmed up.
4. Content
Here at Active Nation we're really happy to help develop some content for your sessions, and we love the opportunity to work with our BLACKROLL partners on this content (free of charge of course) on developing programs that work for them.
However for a guide we do have a really handy video right here. We also have more free content to use via the download of the BLACKROLL APP. We also have a comprehensive printed guide available right here.
5. Tools
Limiting class sizes eases the requirements for excessive amounts of equipment required and also gives the trainer the ability to work more closely with participants. We recommend capping classes at 15 participants where possible.
Splitting the class into two groups using two different sets of tools not only eases the burden on your equipment needs but allows for some visual learning to take place from your participants.
Most centres have enough BLACKROLL rollers and balls but if you need a top-up or somewhere to start we do have some cool little starter packs available that are fit for this exact purpose.
As a guide we recommend having:
3 x soft rollers
6 x standard density rollers
2 x steps or plyoboxes
6 x massage balls (non-spiky)
An assortment of bands if possible.
Getting started
If we can help get you started in introducing a mobility session to your programming please let us know here, we'd love to help!