Opening your own gym can be rewarding and exciting news and with people working out more than ever, it’s an excellent next step you can take. In your journey to starting a new business.
However, launching a successful gym requires careful planning, investment, and a strategic execution.
In this article, we’ll dive deeper into learning more on the steps you need to take to open your own gym in 2025.
1. Define your gym concept
Before you start, it’s important to determine the type of gym that you want to open. Your gym’s concept will influence everything from location selection to equipment purchases and marketing strategies.
Let’s dive deeper and take a look at the types of gym that exist:
- Traditional gyms: Offers general fitness equipment and membership-based access.
- Boutique fitness studio: Specializes in group classes like yoga, spin, or HIIT.
- Personal training studio: Focuses on one-on-one training and small group sessions.
- CrossFit or functional training gym: Features high-intensity workouts with specialized equipment.
- 24-Hour gym: Provides members with round-the-clock access through biometric entry or keycards.
Understanding your gym concept helps in differentiating it in a competitive market, but at the end of the day, this will depend on what your goals are.
2. Secure your financing
Starting a gym requires some investments in equipment and location you are planning to start your business. There are different ways on how you can secure your financing options:
- Personal savings
- Business loans from banks or credit unions
- Investors or partnerships
- Small business programs or government grants
- Crowdfunding or community support
It’s always important to clarify how you’re going to secure your finances and make sure you are ready to make the necessary investments.
3. Choose the right location
Choosing the right location for your gym is one of the most important decisions that you’ll ever make when it comes to how successful you are. If you want to choose an ideal location for your gym, you’ll need to consider a few important factors:
- Understand your target audience: Your audience strongly impacts your location. Are they young professionals, athletes, students, seniors, or who?
- Analyze the competition in your area: Research existing gyms and avoid choosing a location that is an oversaturated market unless your gym is different from the rest. If by any so, you do choose to be in a competitive area, you need to have a unique pricing strategy as a start to stand out from competitors.
- Space and layout: Plan for workout zones, locker rooms, reception areas, and storage space. It’s always important that you have ceiling height and ventilation installed.
- Check your zone: Choose an area that is visible. Avoid opening a gym in areas that are in corners or far from the city.
Choosing where you’ll start building your own gym is all about balancing everything out, such as visibility, accessibility, competition, and making sure that you have the right pricing model in place and different from your competitors.
4. Acquire the necessary equipment
Investing in the required equipment is always necessary to starting a successful gym. Investing in high-quality, durable equipment ensures member satisfaction and reduces maintenance costs.
You don’t need to purchase the most expensive equipment or have all of them from the beginning, but you can build your way up over time. Many gyms that started didn’t have all of the training machines from the beginning, but started to acquire them over time. However, we’ll give you an overview of all the machines that you can acquire either now or over time:
- Cardio machines: Includes treadmills, elliptical machines, rowing machines, and stationary bikes. You don’t need to have all of these machines, so as a start, you can only use treadmills.
- Strength equipment: Free weights, squat racks, cable machines, and benches. Cable machines and squat racks aren’t necessary to have from the beginning. In this case, people can workout legs only by using free weights and do bench presses for chest and tricep workouts.
- Functional training: Battle ropes, TRX systems, resistance bands, and kettlebells. Keep in mind that not all gyms will have this equipment, so this is gonna be in your hands. If you are on a tight-budget, you don’t need to have them from the beginning.
- Recovery & wellness: Mats, foam rollers, stretching areas, and hydration stations. As a start, you can purchase mats and foam rollers together, people can use them as a stretching area before they start working out.
If you want to have more options at your disposal, you can always consider leasing equipment if upfront costs are too high for you.
5. Acquire the necessary licenses
First and foremost, you’ll need to acquire your business license. Let’s face it, most gyms are either formed as a partnership (one or more people), or sole proprietorship (owned by one person); therefore, you need to clarify this part.
After, if you have personal trainers joining your gym, make sure that they possess accredited certifications such as NASM, ACE, ISSA, etc. Of course, this is better for you since you can distinguish who is an actual personal trainer and let’s face it, they’ll be training people so you’ll need to make sure they are equipped for it.
Furthermore, it’s always a good idea to acquire health & safety permits. This includes complying with emergency exists, local health regulations, and sanitation. If you have more questions about this part, you can always consult with legal experts to make sure you are on the right track.
6. Establish effective membership plans
Membership plans are very important when it comes to attracting customers. Many customers will avoid going to a gym only because it’s too expensive and doesn’t offer discounts. To prevent this from happening, you can set up the following plans:
- Monthly & annual memberships: Offer discounts for all customers that are coming to your gym for some time.
- Day passes & trial periods: Allow potential customers to test your gym.
- Family and group discounts: This encourages more people to make referrals and community engagement.
- Corporate wellness programs: You can partner with local businesses for employee memberships. This will encourage all businesses from local areas to come to your gym. Not something many gyms do so this is your advantage here.
Membership plans heavily influence people's decisions and help them decide if it’s a right choice or not.
7. Build a strong brand and online presence
Building a strong online presence for your gym is necessary if you want to widen your local reach. There are many different ways to do this, and we’ll go through the steps one by one:
- Create a website: If you aren’t in a rush, you can create a website by hiring a web developer, but in case you are, it’s best you use an AI web builder. Web developers might be more experienced when it comes to creating your website, but they will cost more and take months to finish your website. AI web builders cost a monthly subscription and can help you set up your website in under an hour.
- Get active on social media: Social media channels are now becoming more popular than ever and it’s becoming necessary for all businesses to become active on there. Considering workouts are so flexible, you can use any social media channel you think is the best for promoting your gym. For example, use TikTok and Instagram Reels to display how people workout at your gym. After, you can post surveys and collect feedback through social media channels to ask your customers what you can do better.
- Get listed on local listings: Google My Business is a popular platform that promotes local listings. It’s always a good idea to get listed on local listing platforms since it’s easier for people to find you, especially if you are living in bigger cities.
Promoting your gym is necessary in the digital age and it’s becoming easier than ever to make this possible.
You are now closer to opening your own gym
Opening your own gym is an exciting and rewarding journey and it’s definitely for someone like you who is passionate and dedicated. From choosing the right location to designing your facility and building a strong brand with your marketing strategies, every step matters and plays an important role.
As you move forward, it’s important to focus on offering a supportive environment for your members. Provide excellent customer services, start out with equipment you can afford, and offer diverse fitness programs that will help set your gym apart from competitors.
Always remember that success doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s all about being committed and becoming a little better each day. The same strategy goes in business and opening a gym is a great commitment that you’ve already made to helping people achieve their health and wellness goals.