Gym Biz by Lou Ravelle is a short, but comprehensive guide to starting up your own gym. It includes advice on: choosing premises; equipment selection and purchasing; sales; advertising; the opening day; business cards and newspaper advertisements. It also includes advice on how to layout a gym, complete with suggested floor plans and an introduction the providing training schedules with accompanying sample progress charts.

Lou Ravelle has been in the health and fitness industry for over 40 years and opened his first gym in London, before the growth in the public interest in health and fitness really took off.

Gym Biz is a fairly short book, weighing in at just 94 pages, as a result it’s been criticised for being too full of pictures and short on detail. Unjust criticism in my view as it keeps the content brief and easy to read and digest. Sure there aren’t lots of detailed facts and figures, nor is there any guidance on: writing a business plan; raising finance; or business strategy – but then again it’s a book about opening a gym, which is after all a relatively simple business, so you don’t need masses of detail or a degree in business to open one.

The chapter on advertising is by far the largest at ten pages and is particularly impressive as it covers everything you need to know to successfully advertise a gym without going over the top and making marketing sound more complex than it actually is. Littered throughout the book you’ll also find some real gems of industry knowledge.

For anyone interested in starting a gym, buying this book will be £5 well spent and while you’re waiting for it to arrive check out my article: opening a gym. For those that want more in depth facts and figures I’m told that Thomas Plummer’s book Making Money in the Fitness Business is well worth buying too.

You can buy it from Amazon UK or Amazon USA.

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