Xinhua News Agency, Taiyuan, April 12th Title: The chaos at the bottom of the gym: hairdressers and chefs turned into coaches. The male coach recognized more than a dozen students as "dry sisters"
Xinhua News Agency "Xinhua Viewpoint" reporters Ma Xiaoyuan, Liu Yangtao and Gao Jianfei
Levis Yang, born in 1980s, was taken to the gym by a friend, and a coach took the initiative to pull him to do a set of high-intensity "physical fitness tests". Levis Yang felt very uncomfortable. The coach added fuel to the fire by saying that he was in poor health, worse than a 50-year-old man, and must start fitness at once. Levis Yang was fooled into buying a 5000-yuan private education course.
"Xinhua Viewpoint" reporters visited first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai and found that in order to attract consumers to buy classes with cards, some gyms are full of routines, which is hard to prevent; The annual card fee is thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan, and the price of private education is higher.
The male coach recognized a dozen students as "dry sisters" and was fined for eating Chili peppers if he failed to finish his performance.
"Beauty, handsome boy, get to know about fitness!" Walking in the city street, many people have met the staff in the gym to distribute advertising leaflets. With the popularity of fitness, the price of some gyms has also risen.
Song Mingchao, born in 1990s, started his fitness journey two years ago. "Suddenly, I feel that people around me are starting to exercise. When we meet, we don’t meet and talk about how many times we have practiced this week, what actions we practice, and what supplements we eat." On social platforms such as Weibo and Tik Tok, there are not a few fitness "online celebrity" with more than one million fans.
In recent ten years, the number of gymnasiums in China has exploded. Statistics from the State Sports General Administration show that the total number of gymnasiums in China has exceeded 100,000 in 2019.
With the increasingly fierce competition, gyms try their best to attract people. A fitness instructor told an example he had witnessed: when a coach promoted a course, a female student refused on the grounds of "no money, I will buy it next time". The coach insisted that "it doesn’t matter if you don’t have money, you can bet something". Finally, the female student’s wedding ring was put down, which provoked the female student’s husband to make a big scene.
On platforms such as Dianping.com, many netizens described the experience of "being forced to order": "I was forced to buy a course by the coach, and two muscular men blocked the aisle, which made me afraid to leave, and my attitude was extremely bad." "Being sandwiched between two coaches, two people with a red face and a white face, and finally spending two months’ salary to buy classes."
The reporter learned that most gym coaches are responsible for sales tasks, and sales performance is directly related to the coach’s income. Some gyms will also charge the coach a "deposit", which will be confiscated if the performance is not completed. There are also gym regulations, and those who fail to achieve performance will be punished for eating peppers, mustard, lemons, and even being insulted and shaved.
"In the past, the training for coaches only taught technology, but now the sales skills have been put in." Liu Jin, a senior practitioner, said, "From reception to transaction, what to say and do is a set of assembly-line operations, just to make customers unable to refuse and increase sales."
Insiders confide that in order to retain customers, gyms will also use some "hidden rules". For example, male members are arranged for female coaches, and female members are arranged for young male coaches. Some gyms even encourage coaches to "play emotional cards" and "protect students like falling in love".
A coach told reporters: "A male coach recognized a dozen students as ‘ Dry sister ’ There are also coaches who are responsive to customers, chatting, eating and shopping … …”
Hairdressers and chefs become coaches, and fitness becomes harmful.
Zhang Xiaochao, who once hired a personal trainer in a gym in Shijiazhuang, said that when the card was handled, the coach talked nonsense and arranged a detailed training plan. After the card was handled, it was perfunctory.
"At first, the coach took the initiative to ask you for a class appointment. Later, you have to take the initiative to find him. If you don’t find him, you don’t care about you. It gives people the feeling that you can’t come." "I said that every time I finished practicing, I would relax myself. Later, every time I finished practicing, I said that the next member came, no matter what."
In the current fitness market, private education is popular. However, the reporter found that the entry threshold of fitness coaches is low, and quite a few coaches are employed after two or three months of training, and some even "crash in one week".
"Seeing that fitness instructors earn more money, many people have entered the stadium." Li Xingran, an insider in the fitness industry, said that some coaches may have been hairdressers and chefs a month or two ago, while others were selling in gyms and handing out leaflets on the street. Once there is a shortage of people in the store, they will "catch ducks on the shelves" and change clothes after simple training to serve as coaches to bring customers.
A gym operator admits that there are 11 coaches in his gym, only 4 of them have received relatively professional training, and the rest are non-professional. After a simple training, they will be employed for one or two months. "Now more than half of the people in the industry can be said to be crash coaches. There are very few truly professional fitness coaches, and quality coaches are even more scarce."
The reporter consulted some gyms as candidates. Some gyms have made it clear that even if they have no foundation, they can apply for membership consultants first, and learn research while accumulating customers. "There are many qualification certificates in the market, which are very easy to test."
The reporter found that there are a large number of coach training institutions in the market, and they can win multiple qualification certificates by paying one or two thousand yuan and focusing on training for two or three months. The quality of these trainings is uneven. A gym operator said that he gave a written test to job seekers with qualification certificates, and took the most basic fitness knowledge, but most of them couldn’t even reach the passing mark. "The training is relatively watery."
According to insiders, the lack of professionalism of coaches will bring hidden dangers to the safety of bodybuilders, which may cause knee meniscus injury, muscle strain, lumbar disc herniation and other injuries.
Chloe Wang, a citizen of Taiyuan, told the reporter that he had trained bench press under the guidance of a private tutor before. "It’s 10 kilograms heavier than what I usually practice. After practicing for a while, my arm feels uncomfortable. I didn’t care at the time, but this place will still hurt intermittently after two or three years. The doctor said it was probably a sports injury at that time. "
There are also individual fitness instructors with low quality who personally infringe on consumers. Last year, an employee of a fitness club in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, cut the crotch of her pants while stretching the muscles of Ms. Wang, a customer, and was finally sentenced to administrative detention on the 15th on suspicion of indecency.
Make the fitness industry more "healthy"
"In recent years, the fitness industry has achieved explosive growth, and various chaos has also appeared." Yan Sihai, general manager of fitness platform company CHINAFIT, said, "At present, the industry has shown signs of entering an adjustment period, and more and more people are beginning to realize that if they want to develop for a long time, they must change their living methods."
Some experts believe that in order to ensure the healthy and orderly development of the fitness industry and safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of consumers, it is necessary to improve relevant laws and regulations, strengthen supervision and strengthen industry self-discipline.
In order to promote the healthy development of the fitness industry, some places began to explore relevant practices. Since the beginning of this year, Shanghai, Beijing and other places have successively issued model texts of service contracts in the fitness industry, among which the "7-day cooling-off period for fitness membership cards" has attracted much attention.
Zhao Zhanling, a lawyer of Beijing Zhilin Law Firm, and other experts said that overall, the relevant norms still lag behind the current development of the fitness industry, and the legislature and relevant functional departments should improve them as soon as possible.
Strengthening industry self-discipline has also become the consensus of many people in the industry. Mao Zhenming, a professor at the School of Physical Education and Sports of Beijing Normal University, suggested that the relevant departments should encourage the establishment and development of fitness industry associations, build industry consensus through industry associations, and formulate industry rules, such as setting standards and thresholds for employment, clarifying industry service norms, and establishing a "blacklist" of employees and institutions, so as to standardize corporate behavior and create a healthy competitive environment and consumption environment.
In view of the low industry threshold and the shortage of talents, people in the industry suggest that relevant departments and industry associations should accelerate the establishment of more professional and effective fitness instructor training standards and coach qualification certification system to ensure that fitness instructors have corresponding professional qualities. In addition, physical education colleges should increase the training of special talents in the field of social fitness, and consider setting up social fitness majors to meet the needs of people in the fitness industry.
Yan Sihai and other people in the industry said that in order to overcome the current shortcomings, traditional gymnasiums must change their business concepts and business models, strengthen their service awareness, create excellent course content and continuously enhance their core competitiveness.
In addition, industry insiders and experts also remind consumers to stay awake and spend rationally in the face of dazzling courses and possible sales routines in the gym; When one’s own rights and interests are infringed, one should enhance the awareness of rights protection and learn to use legal weapons to safeguard one’s legitimate rights and interests.
