How Your Fitness Center Can Save Long Term Expenses Through Preventative Maintenance

Most of us would agree that when you buy a new car you could anticipate many years of enjoyment and a lot of miles. However the question is would you have the same enjoyment and mileage if you did not take it in for regular service, oil changes, tire alignments, replacements, air filters, oil filters, and so on… you get the idea.

Fitness Equipment runs in the same fashion, by being proactive and selecting top quality commercial equipment with good warranties and adding preventative maintenance or regular servicing to that you can extend the life of the equipment for many years. Preventative Maintenance pertains to tightening belts, bolts, calibrating tension, adding lube, insuring no sticking or worn parts, cleaning the inside of the machine that gets clogged with dust and dirt around the mechanical drive system. This is particularly important if you have a gym without any staff, preventative maintenance should be on the minds of everyone who operates the facility but is so much more than wiping down the outside of the equipment, which is actually also important in preventing rust and moisture accumulation which can greatly have an effect on the appearance of your fitness equipment.

Prevention is the key to extended Use of Fitness Equipment

You know the old saying “an ounce of prevention goes a long way” well the saying is true when you consider most gym owners are oblivious to the condition of the fitness equipment until the gym user reports that its not working or one of the trainers realizes that smoke is coming from the motor. While it’s understandable that the owner cannot monitor all the equipment all the time it goes to show that it only make sense to use prevention to keep the equipment in good working order for the members benefit, to prevent liability issues and to reduce overall cost of the equipments downtime. Downtime deters new members from joining, upsets current members, and more importantly cost more to have a service technician make a special rush trip to analyze the problem, order parts and get the equipment back in working order.

A Routine Maintenance Program For Every Type of Facility

Regardless of what type of fitness facility you operate there is a preventative maintenance agreement that will work for you. This really depends on what type of volume of membership you have and usage of the fitness equipment. Your authorized service technician can help you at the time of the initial PM quote to determine how often the service calls should be scheduled. PM agreements can be set up monthly for high traffic facilities like large scale health clubs, YMCA’s, school athletic centers or quarterly or semiannually for smaller facilities like personal trainer studios, corporate gyms, and apartments and condominium fitness centers.

Long term Planning Equates to Long Term Savings

Proper planning will reduce the cost associated with downtime, injuries that can result in enormous liability lawsuits. When you overlook a plan for maintaining the fitness equipment you deplete the profits and selling points of the facility. You can save a tremendous amount of money by extending the life of the gym equipment and taking full advantage of the warranties for parts and labor before they expire. Once expired your left not only paying service but also the parts, labor and neglect expense. This often results in being forced to replace the equipment well before you should have to. Preventative maintenance should not be overlooked and can save you more money by implementing it early in the life of your fitness facility.