How to build a gym class timetable

The hours belong to the people who train

People who train in a group fit training in between two commitments. There are three windows: before work, at lunchtime, and after work.

The evening window is the most contested and the shortest. Between the end of the working day and dinner time, there is room for two classes.

A 15:00 class in a place where nobody works shifts will not fill up just because it is a good class.

Start with the peak hour, then the rest of the day

The peak hour decides everything else: how many coaches you need, what equipment has to be available, and whether the room is big enough. Build it first and the rest of the day falls into place around it.

1. 1.Pick the peak hour and fill it. If 18:30 fills up, the next question is whether 19:30 fills up too, and not whether to open 15:00.
2. 2.Double up before spreading out. Two back-to-back classes in the evening window are worth more than a new class in the middle of the afternoon.
3. 3.Only then deal with the quiet hours. And deal with them with a different kind of class, rather than the same class at a worse time.

What to do with the quiet hours

Between 10:00 and 16:00 there is a room, a coach could be available, and the same people are not asking for classes. The answer is to change who the class serves.

• Shift workers, people who work from home and retired people train at hours when nobody else does.
• A cheaper plan that only opens the quiet hours fills them without taking a spot from anyone. And without lowering the price of the peak hour.
• An open session without a coach, with the room open and spots counted, costs you the room and nothing else.

The typical week, and what breaks it

A timetable that repeats is written once and generates the following weeks. What breaks the idea is the exceptions, and three of them always turn up:

• Public holidays. A holiday is one day that drops out of the week, and that day's classes have to drop out with it.
• The holidays of the coaches. A class with no coach assigned still exists, and it is better to see it unassigned than to find out on the day.
• Summer. If the week changes shape in August, that is a timetable with a start date and an end date, which beats twenty exceptions.

When to move a class

A class with three people for two months is unlikely to be slowly growing. With the attendance numbers in front of you, the decision to move it takes three minutes. Without them, it gets put off for a year.

Before cutting it, try moving it by half an hour. An empty class may be thirty minutes from a time that works, and the people who go can tell you which.

And when you move it, tell the people who used to book that class, by name. A class that vanishes from the timetable without notice is the easiest way to lose the three people still going.

What to do on Monday morning

Before you touch any hour, spend fifteen minutes with last week's numbers.

1. 1.Write down the attendance for every class last week, by hour. Leave capacity and bookings aside: count who was in the room.
2. 2.Mark the three classes with the fewest people. For each one, ask whether the problem is the time or the class.
3. 3.Before cutting any of them, ask the people who go what time they could make. There are three of them and they will all answer.