I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: what separates a good gym from a great one is culture.
There are plenty of gyms with top trainers, every gadget you could want, competitive prices, and bells-and-whistles like juice bars, WiFi, cafes, group classes, yoga, pools, massage, and steam rooms. If I were you, I’d skip those places. Trust me.
But many of them struggle to keep members because they lack culture and community.
Gyms like CSP, Mark Fisher Fitness in NYC, IFAST in Indianapolis, Tuff Girl Fitness in New Haven, Movement Minneapolis, Results Fitness in Newhall, and even CrossFit, are tiny in comparison to other sprawling, pricey facilities that leave out basic amenities. Yet they thrive and boast the most loyal members you could ask for. As Simon Sinek wrote in Start With Why: there’s a big difference between repeat business and loyalty. Repeat business means people come back; loyalty means they turn down a better product or a lower price to stay with you.
WHY THE LOYALTY? Because each of these gyms, in its own way, puts building a culture first—where people want to train, want to spend their time, and feel supported by staff and fellow members.
Training with like-minded people not only boosts performance but also deepens the overall experience.
Take last Saturday at CSP. I’ve long argued that women should focus on performance goals in the weight room rather than chasing scale weight, mimicking celebrities, or letting mainstream media shape views on women and fitness. Much of that messaging is unrealistic, toxic, and holds women back for years. I firmly believe strength training is the key to almost any goal, including aesthetics. Think of strength training as a glass: most people’s glass is too small to hold other abilities—sprinting, jumping, hitting a golf ball far, deadlifting heavy, carrying groceries, fighting crime, or simply being athletic.
Strength training makes the glass bigger, letting you fit more into it. It also frees you to stay healthy while pursuing bigger feats.
This is what happened: I recorded a video last Saturday of four CSP members who train there (the first, Nancy, is currently an intern), the youngest being 15. I challenged one of them to try a one-arm chin-up, and soon several others lined up to give it a go. How ballsy is that?
None of them showed up thinking, “I want to do a one-arm chin-up.” But because we’ve built a culture where people (men and women) love lifting heavy and commit to hard work, all four embraced the approach and achieved things like this. Because, why not?
