Greetings Outliers!

Today was the first class of 2016 and whoa! You guys blew us away with such awesome attendance. It’s the highest attended day in several months! As many of you know we are in the process of requiring athletes to reserve their class and also to cap classes at 15 members per class. If you didn’t catch it in our latest blog on the website, there is a great reason for the change. On the blog we explain it’s “not only for the obvious reason of making sure we have adequate member-to-coach staffing, but also to begin evaluating our staffing and class needs to add and adjust where needed. Our goal is not only continuous improvement but also anticipating that need ahead of time where we can, and without data/feedback from you all, it’s not possible.”

This is a change that will lead us to one or possibly two options, either of which will benefit and improve the community experience, which I’ll outline below:

1. We increase the cap for classes by adding a 2nd coach to those class times with the highest attendance to make sure that everyone is always receiving plenty of one-on-one attention. As I’ve heard one person put it before, “I don’t need you for the building and equipment, I have that all at home. I need the drive, knowledge base, and support systems.”  What I personally fear is that if we don’t have a member-to-coach ratio of 15:1, or less, then we are doing you a disservice. You are not getting the attention that you need and deserve to become a better athlete. I care too much to allow that to happen, which is exactly why a change is needed.

2. We potentially add a new class time where it would have the greatest impact. We are certainly not opposed to adding another evening class, whether earlier than the 430pm or after the 630pm, but we need to know when most people are attending and where the new class would give the most benefit. At this point our morning classes are flowing well and haven’t seen the growth of the evening classes, but if that ever were to happen it’s another concern we address just the same.

The numbers for classes wasn’t drawn from a hat – when looking at our average attendance over the last quarter, there isn’t a single class that averages more than 13 members. This is based on sign-ins and shows why having accurate data is so important for us. It is also why I believed having the cap of 15 would not be the issue it appeared to be today. For that I apologize, it was definitely underestimated! On the plus side, there was not a single member displaced even though all the classes exceeded the cap today. Our goal is not to turn you away or cause you to miss a workout, it’s to give you the best experience in CrossFit and at CrossFit Fringe that we possibly can. Please, bear with us for a week or two as we fine tune the system and we can guarantee a positive result at the end.

~Tyler