The fitness questionnaire – how to use it for your fitness business

When gym owners read statistics such as engaged gym members have a five times more retention rate – it helps them offer better and more defined services. 

But where do these statistics come from? – surveys. 

We all know that the fitness industry is highly competitive. For you to make a difference and stand out, you need to identify your target audiences, build loyalty, and offer superb services. 

Fitness questionnaires can help you achieve that. 

If you’re a new fitness club owner, then this article will help you understand the different kinds of fitness questionnaires you should be making and what you should include in them. 

Skip ahead to:

• What is a fitness questionnaire and why do you need it?  
• Types of fitness questionnaires you can make 
• Fitness questionnaire templates 
• Tips to remember when designing survey questions 

What is a fitness questionnaire and why do you need it?  

Fitness questionnaires are surveys that your gym members take. Here you can ask the respondents questions about your services, personal trainers, feedback, general information about their lifestyles, their interests, health conditions and anything else you want to know. 

The main reason for making these is to get information from your customers. 

But these also serve other purposes. These questionnaires show your members that you care about their input and are committed to improving your services according to their needs. 

The fitness surveys are a cost-efficient way to conduct market research and develop customer-centric gyms. 

All questionnaires for fitness businesses – much like any other business – are made for specific reasons. It could be that you want to learn more about the type of classes your members are interested in. Or you might want some data on the age groups and the fitness levels of your customers. 

Whatever the reasons, you always have to include concise and directed questions to get clear results. You can distribute these surveys on social media, through emails, on your app or in person at your gym. 

Fitness questionnaires can help you determine the net promoter score (NPS) for your gym. It’s a system that most gym owners use that gives them an idea about general satisfaction amongst the respondents about their services. It can help you improve your business and attract new and more customers. 

Types of fitness questionnaires you can make 

The type of surveys fitness businesses need depend on the services they offer and what they want to know. 

You can create questionnaires for new members to get information about how they found you, what kind of classes they want to join and demographic information. 

Or you can make one-question surveys that help you answer one specific issue. 

Here are five of the most relevant questionnaires most gym owners often need: 

Market research survey 

If you want your gym to stay relevant, then you need to keep a close eye on fitness trends. Market surveys are excellent for just that. 

These questionnaires are also helpful to understand your customers – especially if you’re considering moving to a new location or expanding to a different fitness niche. 

You can ask questions about your fitness classes, equipment, members’ ages, household income, what respondents love or hate about the gyms in your niche, and about their favorite fitness program.

Health and wellness survey 

These can help you understand your audience better and create fitness programs more suited to specific groups. It’s also great for identifying health risk factors amongst your members. 

Here, you can ask about the respondents’ physical activity levels, fitness goals, cholesterol risk factors, history of heart attack, high blood pressure, supplements and related information depending on your fitness gym and the people you cater to. 

Exercise and fitness survey 

These surveys are directed towards your fitness classes. You can use the results to improve the user experience and offer better group classes. 

Here, you can ask about the instructors, if the gym memberships are worth the experience, type of classes, fitness goals, satisfaction with personal trainers and instructors. 

Facility survey 

This type of survey can help you pick the best location for your fitness center, improve the aesthetics of your gym to make it Instagram worthy and most of all – make the facility appealing to your members.

You want your members to come and bring others to your gym. And that’s possible if you design a place that they’d love.  

Here, you can ask questions regarding the parking space, lockers, smoothie bars, music playlists, equipment, ventilation, customer service, management, cleanliness, overall environment and much more. 

You can also use this to gather general feedback about your gym.

New member fitness questionnaire

The biggest advantage of using this type of questionnaire is that it tells you how well – if at all – your marketing campaigns are doing. 

Leveraging the information from these surveys can double your members and help you scale like never before. 

Fitness questionnaire templates 

Now that you know the different types of surveys you can use for your gym, here’s your guide to creating a fitness questionnaire. 

Before we move on to the survey templates, let’s look at some helpful tips that you should always remember when designing your questionnaires: 

Identify the why 

The more targeted your questions are, the better responses you’ll get. Otherwise, your results will be all over the place and it might be difficult to pull valuable data from the surveys. So always identify your key objective for the survey before you sit down to design the questions. 

Decide on your survey questions 

There can be many different ways to ask the same question. But you need to keep your questions to the point and design them in a way that’s simple to understand. For that, identify who your target respondents are and create questions for their level of understanding and the time they can give you. 

Keep it short 

If you’re asking elaborative questions, it’s best to keep the questionnaire short so only add about 3 or 5 questions. The key is to facilitate the user, and taking up too much of their time might result in low response rates or incomplete surveys – and you don’t want that. 

And now – let’s look at the templates. 

1. Market research questionnaire template

You could either ask elaborative questions to get in-depth answers about a specific issue with a market survey questionnaire. Or you could ask questions regarding the members’ age, gender and where they live to understand your growing customer base. 

Here’s the template for a market research survey that you can copy:  

Hey there [member’s name]! We here at [your gym’s name] are always working hard to give you a superior fitness experience. And you can help us in this pursuit of ours by answering a few questions. 

It won’t take longer than 5 minutes – we promise!

1. What is your ideal workout? 
2. Which fitness program do you like the most at our gym? Can you help us understand why?
3. Is there a specific fitness trend that you’d like us to bring to [your gym’s name]? 
4. What is the one thing you would say sets us apart from other local gyms? 
5. Would you recommend our gym to your friends or family? (Yes/No) 

Thank you for participating.

2. Health and wellness questionnaire template

Your goal here is to get general information about your customer’s well-being. Here’s a template you can use.

You can copy the text given below if you want to use this survey template for your fitness center:

Hey there [member’s name]! We would appreciate it if you can spare a few minutes to respond to our health and wellness questionnaire. 

It helps us learn about your medical needs and health risk factors so we can design appropriate fitness programs and offer you a better experience at [your gym’s name]. 

1. Do you have high or borderline cholesterol?  (Yes/no)
2. Do you have diabetes? (Yes/no)
3. Have you ever suffered a heart attack? (Yes/no)
4. Are you currently pregnant? (Yes/no)
5. Do you smoke? (Yes/no)
6. If yes, how often do you smoke? 
7. Do you regularly sleep for 7-8 hours a night? (Yes/no)
8. Do you have asthma? (Yes/no)
9. If yes, do you carry an inhaler with you? 
10. Do you have a balanced diet? (Yes/no)
11. Do you have a diagnosed medical condition that puts you at risk after heavy exercise?  If yes, please specify. 

We value your input. Here’s your voucher for 15% off of our [name a premium class or product]. 

3. Exercise and fitness questionnaire template

These can be highly valuable for your gym if you design them right. Have a look at this template. 

Copy this text so you can use it for your fitness club: 

Hey [member’s name]! You’ve been a member at [your gym’s name] for an entire year today. Happy anniversary! 

We want to know more about your exercise preferences. Please answer a few questions for us if you can: 

1. How many times do you exercise in the gym per week? 
2. Which gym classes do you attend the most?
3. Which exercises do you prefer doing the most? 
4. What are your top three go-to machines in our gym? 
5. What were your top three fitness goals when you started? 
6. Did you achieve your goals at [your gym’s name]?

Thank you for participating. And thank you for being a valued member at [your gym’s name]. 

4. Facility survey questionnaire template

Who better to ask about what you can improve in your gym than the people who pay to use it? Here’s a facility survey template to inspire your questionnaire.

Go ahead and copy the text to use the template as it is: 

Howdy [member’s name]! If you have two minutes, we’d love to get your views about our gym. Please participate in our short 5 question survey: 

1. If you could suggest one big change in the gym, what would it be?  
2. On a scale of 1-5 (1 being the worst), how would you rate the cleanliness of the equipment? 
3. How is our customer service on a scale of 1-5? 
4. What would you rate the expertise of our fitness instructors on a scale of 1-5? 
5. How would you rate our gym management app on a scale of 1-5? 

Thanks for your time! We ask these questions to make [your gym’s name] fitness heaven for you. 

5. New member questionnaire template

New gym members bring in a lot of information that you can use. You just have to know how to ask for it. Have a look at this template.

Here’s the text of the template that you can use: 

Thank you for joining [your gym’s name]! Please consider answering a few questions – it’ll take five minutes we promise. 

These will help us understand your goals and needs better, and allow us to give you an unmatched experience. 

1. How did you find out about [your gym’s name]? (social media/email/billboard ads/influencers/family member/ other) 
2. Do you want to work with personal trainers or in group classes? 
3. If you’re interested in group classes, which ones are you most interested in? (cardio/kickboxing/Zumba/cycling)
4. What time do you prefer to exercise? (AM/PM)
5. Do you have any fitness goals you want to share?
6. Which fitness equipment do you mostly use? 
7. Would you want to join our email list? If yes, please leave your email here. 

Thank you for participating! Have a great day. 

Tips to remember when designing survey questions 

Feel free to modify the fitness survey templates we’ve shared above. But if you do so, just remember these tips: 

Be precise 

Make it easier for your respondents to participate. Use yes or no questions, add a scale of 1-5 scoring, and create questions that require minimum elaboration. 

Ask questions that lead to answers 

Don’t ask questions for the sake of filling the space. Be direct and ask questions that can help you improve your services and get actionable data. 

Give an opt-out option

Not all of your questions will apply to all the respondents. Give your members an option to leave a question if it doesn’t fit. 

An example of that is in the health and wellness questionnaire template above. Before we ask how much you smoke per day, we ask if the respondent smokes at all. And if they don’t, then they can skip the second question. 

In summary 

Creating a fitness questionnaire becomes much easier when you have clear guidelines and templates to follow. Go ahead and use our original templates and then let us know if these helped you in gathering data. 

One of the best ways to share the surveys is through your gym management software. Because then your users don’t have to change platforms to answer the survey as they would if you send them via email. 

Check out how our software can help you communicate with your members and offer them a much better experience.