Since 2009, Stone Creek Club & Spa has established itself as a pillar of the Covington Community. The club has received recognition for its outstanding customer service and philanthropic efforts. To date, the club has received awards in a wide range of categories including “Best Club”, “Best Day Spa”, “Best Tennis Courts”, “Best Personal Trainer”, and “Business of the Year”.

Larry Conner is the general manager of Stone Creek Club & Spa. He has over 30 years of experience in the fitness and hospitality industry. Conner brought in the InBody to try it out with the club’s weight loss challenge. After an enthusiastic response, he bought the device and implemented InBody testing into various club programs. After delivering incredible results for his club members, Conner took his InBody out into the community to help people learn more about their body compositions.  

Developing an Everyday Getaway

In 2009, Stone Creek Club & Spa faced great challenges. The Great Recession was in full swing, and they were trying to break into a market that had two established health clubs that catered to 40% of the local population.

Conner and the leadership team had to commit to a clear vision that would help their club stand out. The established health clubs focused on large group events like summer camps, swim teams, and daytime birthday parties. Stone Creek differentiated itself by catering to the individual. That meant sacrificing lucrative secondary sources of revenue, such as summer camps and parties because those would detract from the individual experience.

Another point of differentiation was memberships and contracts. Stone Creek capped memberships – and potentially miss out on income – to create a more welcoming club experience. They also offered flexible month-to-month payment plans because they didn’t want to trap people in long contracts. It was all part of their vision to create an “everyday getaway” for their members through individual attention and service.  

When you are trying to establish a unique business model in a competitive market during tough economic times, the chance for failure is high. But after ten years it’s clear that their vision is working. Today, Stone Creek has a loyal active membership base, boasts annual revenues that exceed $7.4 million, and is beloved by the Covington Community. But that’s only where this story begins.

The ongoing challenge you have as a health club is that once you build something out, you have to keep updating it. You can’t sit with the same product you had years ago. You have to keep your facility fresh, innovative, and make sure you have the latest and greatest equipment.

It was this pursuit to keep Stone Creek on the forefront and up-to-date that led Conner to InBody.

Starting Off On the Right Foot

After seeing the InBody device at a networking event, Conner felt that the body composition analyzer would be a valuable addition to their weight loss contests by providing accurate measurements of body fat percentage. That hunch turned out to be right.

It was such a big hit in our weight loss contest that I bought it immediately. Within 3 months we were able to pay for that unit from simply charging per test.

The pay-per-test program was a successful new revenue stream. A member would pay a fee, take an InBody test, and then receive a comprehensive review of the InBody Result Sheet from a trainer. The InBody Result Sheet allowed members to only see their body fat percentage, but they received other key metrics like muscle distribution, metabolic rate, and visceral fat. The success of the program encouraged Conner to incorporate testing into a variety of programs, from weight loss competitions to tennis lessons, because he knew that every person at the club had something to gain from taking an InBody Test. Today, every new member gets an InBody Test with a consultation to help them start off on the right foot. The consultation has also proven to be a great way to introduce members to different services the club offers.

Sample Result Sheet Provided by InBody USA

In our business, we need to be able to respond to members’ needs quickly and the InBody provides that. The average user does not know much about themselves…by giving access to the InBody to more people it’s become a common part of our business, and the results have just helped change people’s lives.

Taking Programs to the Next Level

Incorporating InBody into different areas of the club has helped delivered results for both members and the program. InBody helps Stone Creek’s personal training clients visualize progress and find areas of improvement that they may have missed by using a mirror or a weight scale.

You can tell people the importance of staying balanced and show them techniques, but when you show them a test result that shows it, that helps the client to focus on following the exercise plan.

Conner has a unique story that highlights both the accuracy and precision of the InBody device. One of Stone Creek’s trainers had a client that suffered from shoulder pain. The InBody Test revealed that one side of her body was stronger than the other, resulting in muscle imbalance and pain. After learning more about her day-to-day activities, the trainer and the client figured out that the way she walked her dogs was the cause of her imbalance. She had three large dogs she always walked with the same arm. The yanking and pulling caused her to develop shoulder imbalance and pain. The trainer made adjustments to her personal training, and she adjusted her dog walking, and together they tracked the progress on the InBody Result Sheet. Today the client is in balance and pain-free.

It’s unique insights like this that have helped Stone Creek enhance their personal training.

Our personal training has grown drastically, says Larry Conner. Now can I say it’s solely due to the InBody? No, it is a combination of having great trainers and things you offer. But I believe the InBody has been an important part of that growth—and it’s helped us get to that next level in our personal training program.

Another program that saw a significant boost was the weight loss program. The program was already using InBody, but after they increased the frequency of InBody testing to every week, they saw a 50% increase in enrollment.

There were skeptics that did not believe in the accuracy of the results, but once they tested on the device, they became believers.

We had a local doctor that did not believe in it. She did tests that cost hundreds and hundreds of dollars. When we compared the InBody versus those results, it was very close to exactly the same results. She was immediately a fan of the InBody.

The positive response and impact they were seeing within the club were so tremendous that Conner knew he could use the device to make a positive impact in the surrounding community.

Sharing the Gift of Knowledge  

From day one, Stone Creek focused on being an active participant in their community. Every year, Stone Creek raises between $300,000 to $500,000 in direct contributions to local and national charities. That doesn’t include giveaways for auctions and member donations to the community. Notable highlights include providing Christmas presents to 180 needy children, donating around 300 teddy bears to pediatric patients in local hospitals, and purchasing PE equipment for all 27 elementary schools in their parish. True to its spirit of giving, Stone Creek shared its InBody device with the community.

We realized that the InBody helps bring your whole community together—inside and outside the club. The InBody helps us reach out in a way that is beyond fundraising. We can answer the questions that people want to know about themselves in a quick snapshot. The portability of the device allows us to reach out to people, give them their results, and help change their lives.

Stone Creek brought its InBody to different organizations that could benefit from body composition analysis, from local high school wrestling teams and employees of local companies. The goal wasn’t to recruit new members. They saw a great opportunity to provide important health information that would help improve people’s lives.

Stone Creek’s mission is to help everyone, both inside and outside of the club, become the healthiest version of themselves. InBody is one of the indispensable tools to help advance Stone Creek’s mission.

I welcome all the health clubs in our area to get the InBody. I think it’s important that we all have this kind of tool for our members because they’re not going to be able to do this on their own. When they come to the health club, they can do one of these tests really quickly and learn that much more about their body. That’s one of the best gifts that you can give anybody.

This is part 2 of a two-part case study with the executive team at OPEX Fitness. In the first part, James Fitzgerald, OPEX Fitness founder, discussed his assessment-focused approach to coaching and how InBody became a tool that helps him achieve that. In this case study, Crowell expands on why he recommends InBody to his licensees and shared strategies that have helped them convert, retain, and delight their clients.

It’s a common story for many owners: you are sick of your dead-end job and decide to turn your passion into a business by opening your own facility. The place has just the bare essentials and only offers group training classes. But the model works. You aren’t rich, but you’re able to keep the lights on.

This may have been good enough before, but things are rapidly evolving in the group fitness space. Today, there is more competition than ever. Your core offering may have been enough to get people through the door, but it’s getting harder and harder to get them to stay. Remember how easy it was to open your own facility? Now there are three similar facilities that opened on your street.

Most owners start their facility because they want to coach–not necessarily because they think it is a great business opportunity. But to keep doing that, owners must rethink their business model in a changing industry. That’s why OPEX Fitness started their coaching education platform and facility licensing program. Their mission is to become the go-to resource for fitness coaching and business education. They want to help the owner/coach who has a strong passion for coaching but may not have all the necessary skills and knowledge. As part of their program, coaches can learn or improve the skills they need to successfully run a facility, from consultation and program design to marketing and business strategies.

Jim Crowell, CEO of OPEX Fitness, personally mentors individuals in the business of coaching and gives them the framework to build a fulfilling, successful career. Coaching is the foundation for any successful facility, but Crowell understands that it can be difficult to communicate that value. That is why he recommends that licensees incorporate InBody to provide validation to their programming and coaching.

“We are really excited about how we use the InBody with our licensees because it allows them to actually take a piece of tangible material, a piece of paper and give it to a potential client, or one of their own clients and say, ‘This is where you are.'”

That starting point helps a coach turn a potential lead into a long-term client.

A Conversation Starter

If you ask a coach about the benefits of a clean and press, he or she will have no issues convincing you to incorporate this workout into your routine. But ask a coach for their elevator pitch on why you should sign up for membership, and they may come off a little bit awkward.

“For coaches who aren’t natural salespeople, InBody is really beneficial because it helps them start the conversation, and they are great once they have conversations about health and wellness.”

InBody has been such a great recruitment tool that some of Crowell’s licensees have taken their InBody out to the community. They find that once they can get one person testing on the device, it starts attracting other’s people attention and creates a crowd.

Crowell shares a story about Carl, a licensee, who took his InBody out with his team to a local organic supermarket and an athletic apparel store. Just in a couple of hours, they were able to get more than 20 consultation requests. Of those 20 clients, they were able to close 10 memberships. This success wasn’t unique to just Carl. Crowell has seen multiple licensees achieve the same success with this strategy.

They found that their InBody device dramatically helps coaches because the coaches don’t have to “sell”. They can just have a conversation about a potential client’s unique needs based on what the coach sees on the InBody Result Sheet. The conversation will then organically flow to what the coach can do for that client and what the client’s next step should be – whether it be a follow-up phone call or hopefully coming in and touring the facility.

Trust and Credibility Create Retention

Once the coaches get their clients in the facility, the coaches can then begin to work their specialty. Following OPEX’s methodology, coaches can show clients how they can design an individualized program that encompasses both fitness and nutrition.

During the program, coaches continually monitor and track client progress to show improvement through body composition data, not opinion.  The ability to give tangible data regarding a person’s health is what really helps OPEX Fitness and their licensees stand out from other facilities.

Sample InBody 570 Result Sheet of an overweight individual

The other benefit is that a fitness record is formed, and it helps coaches spot factors that may be impeding progress, in and out of the gym. For even the most committed fitness clients, the amount of time spent outside the gym is ten times more than time spent in the gym. To ignore how life may affect fitness is to ignore a significant factor when it comes to program design. For example, say a client is going through a very stressful six-month period. With regular testing, the client and coach can actually see the impact that stress had on their body composition. The coach can then make adjustments to respond to that stress and help the client get back on the path to reaching their fitness goals.

“This is a tool that actually gives them more credibility with each of their clients, which actually helps the longevity of retention. It’s a great tool from an ongoing basis”

Deliver More Value, Receive More Revenue

Building trust and credibility and go hand-in-hand with InBody testing. Every individual’s body responds differently. Clients can see that the program you designed for them is improving their body composition (even if they can see it visually) and understand how their body responds to different programs. Together, coach and client can start exploring new areas to improve and set new goals.

“From a marketing standpoint, that’s invaluable to a coach because all of a sudden, you take all of the emotion out of it and you give somebody truth. When people start to get aware about where they really are, they are much more willing to have a conversation about how they might be able to improve.”

In the beginning, the focus may have been generic like losing body fat or gaining more muscle mass. As the relationship grows, the conversation can grow more advanced into improving structural balance, expanding mobility, and increasing work capacity,

Each licensee may use the InBody slightly differently, but in general, Crowell wants coaches to use the device to deliver more value to their clients and ultimately generate more revenue.

“What we want is quality in coaching and longevity in the coaches in these facilities… Essentially, at the end of the day, we want the coach, the client and the owner to win. That’s the mantra of the entire program.”

Truth in Measurement is the Recipe for a Successful Business

Whether its program design or client retention, the overall philosophy for OPEX Fitness is truth in measurement. Accurate measurements create accountability for the owner, coach, and client. Coaches receive the feedback they need to adjust a program to make sure clients are always trending in the right direction. Clients receive that constant touchpoint so they leave confident after every session that the work and effort they are putting in is translating to results.

While measurement can be a positive tool, Crowell knows that it’s easy for clients to become obsessed with numbers. It’s the coaches job’s to make sure that the client doesn’t stress themselves out and become overwhelmed. When an owner can create an environment where individuals can use body composition measurements like InBody results to positively impact their lives both in and outside the facility is when you have the recipe for a successful, long-lasting business.

“InBody is a tool that allows that consistent truth for those clients who ultimately want to live more successful lives, in and outside of the gym. Once clients get into that sweet spot, it’s about maintenance and finding other goals that they can enjoy just as much as the health and wellness markers. That, to me, is real coaching.”

Michael Johnson Performance (MJP) is a total-solution training center, founded by their namesake, for the athlete that wants to achieve their dreams. Whether that’s an Olympian that’s getting ready for the Tokyo Olympics, or it’s the nine-year-old down the street that just wants to get off the bench.

Lance Walker, VP and Global Performance Director for MJP, focuses on implementing the best practices and technologies to help athletes reach their dreams. His challenge was finding a body composition solution that was efficient enough to test athletes regularly and accurate enough to provide trustworthy results. Frustrated with the time and resources it took to conduct gold standard tests, Walker found InBody to be a solution that could efficiently test the large number of athletes that daily came through their facility with highly correlated accuracy. After careful vetting, Walker has fully integrated InBody into MJP methodologies to help MJP achieve its mission of helping every athlete reach their athletic potential.

Seeking Innovation in Body Composition Analysis

Before Michael Johnson was a 4-time gold medalist and 8-time world champion, he was just a kid from North Texas who ran differently. He ran with an upright “choppy” running style that was drastically different from his competitors. Growing up, all the kids made fun of him for how it looked. Almost every college coach that recruited him wanted to change his form. When he turned professional, track commentators said he had the talent to be a world champion… if he changed his running style.

Even though he experienced tremendous success at every level, people doubted his ability to continue to succeed in his style. Whenever Johnson questioned why he needed to change it if he kept winning, most just pointed to history and said every past champion at this level ran this way, not your way.

How did Johnson defy the critics? It was only later in Johnson’s career that researchers, conducting a study on his biomechanics, found that his upright style was much more efficient and effective at generating power than the “proper” form. If he listened to his critics as a child and conformed, we might not know him as one the fastest men in history. People found that just because something is different, it doesn’t always mean it’s wrong. It could be an innovation.

Today, trainers at Michael Johnson Performance embody that innovative mindset by using state-of-the-art technologies to study every athlete’s movement before they begin training. After analyzing the data and finding areas of opportunities to improve, trainers at MJP then create a personalized training program for each athlete. Instead of trying to fit every athlete into a mold of what they should look like, MJP looks to create individualized training paths for each athlete to maximize their performance.

Walker believes that technological monitoring is the backbone to that freethinking and innovative approach. Transitioning from the eleven years as a coach, physiologist, and researcher to more of a top-level, down approach, Lance Walker, Global Performance Director, thinks about how to innovate and how to bring best practices to MJP to leverage against the results that their athletes come to expect.

Trainers at MJP optimize athletic performance by gathering data that shows how the athlete is responding through different markers so that they know exactly what is working and what isn’t so they can quickly pivot to a better solution. A key marker for Walker and MJP is body composition.

“We truly believe that a lot of performance and function is built on structure.  And, part of that structure is body composition. We know that if we don’t measure [body composition], if we don’t monitor that, and we don’t train that or somehow augment that… they may not realize their full potential.”

Walker understood the need for body composition analysis to be done for MJP athletes. The challenge was finding the time to test a professional athlete using established body composition methods, like DEXA or hydrostatic weighing. These methods were not designed to handle the volume of testing that a modern performance training center would require. Athletes would have to sacrifice an entire day to test, and most trainers could fit in only one or two tests during a training program period. Instead of using body composition analysis as a monitoring tool to continually evaluate the progress, it became instead just a series of data points to hit.

“I think that’s something we’ve done in the past wrong… We have this one point and this other point way off here in the distance, and what we haven’t done is monitor the trends along the way.”

They tried solutions that were easier to implement like skinfold analysis, but the trainers knew these weren’t the best practices. A former colleague in sports science suggested Walker consider Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) devices. But Walker was skeptical because it seemed to good to be true– how could a BIA device analyze body composition in sixty seconds and be accurate?

Because MJP leverages the best practices globally in performance training to ensure that athletes realize their fullest potential for their sport, Walker sought to thoroughly understand and see if InBody had truly innovated BIA technology.

Turning from a Skeptic to a Supporter

After taking the time to learn more about InBody technology, Walker began to realize how different the technology was to the BIA he learned in his textbooks.

“The technology has gotten…so much better that now they’re making some claims that this is validated against some of the gold standards that I do have faith in that but are too time-intensive and too cumbersome.”

If what InBody was claiming was true, that meant that its body composition analyzer was accurate enough to be validated against DEXA but at the fraction of the time and resources it would have taken to operate a DEXA full time at MJP.

Walker invited a world-renown nutritional Ph.D. to help run trials with the InBody against methods they were currently using during MJP’s most critical time period: NFL Combine training season. This is when prospective NFL athletes look to MJP to help them prepare for the most important job interview of their lives. From the end of the collegiate seasons to the NFL Combine, these high-level athletes have a limited time period to get even better. Even small improvements could mean millions of dollars more in their contract. The challenge for MJP trainers was trying to convince an athlete to give up a day to test on the DEXA when they much rather train.

Going into the trial, Walker and the Ph.D. knew how quick and easy the InBody test was, but they had the same “I don’t think it’s going to be accurate” mindset. After reviewing the results, they had an, ”Oh wow!” moment.  

“We really don’t need to do anything else, except the InBody. We got all the information we needed. It was reliable. It was effective. It was efficient, and it was something that the athletes began to trust and look to do every week to note their improvements.”

Walker continued to consult with different PhD clinicians that were experts in body composition testing. As a group, these clinicians were pessimistic about BIA technology and many of them would not have considered exploring this topic until Walker brought it to their attention. He shared the results he was getting, and the approach InBody took to develop those results. He posed a simple question to them. “Tell me why I shouldn’t trust this technology?”

This what they told him:

“Based on the multifrequency model they’re using, based on some of the results we’re seeing from some of the Whitepaper, there’s a strong possibility that these guys are right – that [InBody] is going to be validated against DEXA.” It’s absolutely better than anything we’ve ever seen from the previous technology.”

Just like Michael Johnson pushed the limits of speed with his record-breaking form,  Walker found that InBody had pushed the field of BIA to levels of efficiency and accuracy that other professionals didn’t think was possible.

Consistent, Quick, and Easy Monitoring Throughout The Training Season

The validation from his colleagues helped Walker trust the technology. What ultimately sold InBody was the functionality. Very quickly, InBody testing became a vital piece of weekly monitoring for athletics improvement because it showed trainers and athletes what was working and what was not.

In any given day, three, four, or even give hundreds of athletes to go through their facility. From major league baseball players to the NFL off-season program to even the youth training, MJP trainers are able to get body composition results quickly and accurately for all of these athlete with InBody.

“….the efficiency of being able to get this information very quickly and accurately, and having it not choke the throughput down of what is three, or four, or five hundred athletes a day circling through this space… Now, suddenly, you’ve ticked two very, very important boxes for us. And, when it’s both effective and efficient, now it’s something that not only do we need to consider it, we need to make sure that this is integrated into our programming.”

MJP has thrown out all the old school methods they used in the past to get their numbers, and they can monitor key metrics over the course of six, eight, twelve, or twenty-four-week program. Athletes can get instead feedback–positive, negative, neutral–on the impact of their work the previous week through the Body Composition History Chart. They get more motivated and more invested to get their body composition tests every week because they’re getting feedback on what they did the previous week to take care of their bodies.

All data is supplied from InBody USA. Learn more about the InBody Result Sheet here.

For trainers, they can analyze InBody data in real-time- whether it be for nutrition, resistance training, etc – and then make on-the-spot recommendations. They can sell this solution back to the athlete by pointing to their body composition results as evidence of what is working, what isn’t working, and where they need to pivot in their training.

“[The InBody Test] opens an entirely more expansive dialogue around why body composition is being measured, how it impacts your performance, and how what we’re doing in training impacts the body comp. And, suddenly, it really ties the practitioner together with the data, and it makes sense, and it becomes actionable for the athlete.”

As any coach will tell you, you can have the best program in the world but if the athlete doesn’t buy in, it’s not going to help the coach or the athlete to improve. And that is the power of the InBody– athletes trust the results they are getting and that helps validate the training. Sometimes too well for Walker’s taste as he found that the athletes began to place their trust in the InBody machine more than the exercise physiologist.

Using Body Water Analysis for Athletic Recovery

The more MJP used InBody, the more they realized that they could go beyond monitoring program performance and use outputs such as extracellular water and total body water to assist in the functionality of recovery. The focus shifted away from monitoring water for the sake of lean body mass to looking at these things and asking, “How are they adapting to the training that we’re proving them and/or the recovery processes that are going on?”

Walker and his staff always suspected that not all athletes recovered the same way from training. Using InBody has helped in their efforts to shift their regeneration protocols from one-size-fits-all to a targeted and personal approach.

“Body water ratio became a real metric now for our coaches, and for our athletes, as a recovery metric. And, being able to then use that with these other biometric markers has really enabled us to get sharp on this concept of individualized recovery, and regeneration, and early signs of overreaching. We’ve really been able to cut that back tremendously with more sensitive tools like InBody. ”

With the ECW/TBW ratio, trainers started to see when athletes that were going into an overreaching period, or an overstressed period of time. They even saw some interesting changes with athletes that were probably not recovering with their diet correctly, or in some cases were doing the opposite.

During periods of intense training, Walker and his staff saw the effect of that extra workload on segmental extracellular/total body water ratio. The physical therapy staff could then prescribe more in-facility treatments to bring the inflammation and swelling down.

Of course, most of the recovery occurs outside of the facility. Sleep, diet, and extracurricular activities all have a significant impact on recovery. The InBody device is so sensitive and powerful, it can pick up on these disruptions to any of these factors.

Half serious Walker says, “Alcohol consumption and the ratio of extracellular water to total body water.  I think that would be a great, great study to do, because I know we’re seeing it anecdotally here.”

With InBody, Walker doesn’t have to rely on questionnaires to see how well the athlete is following the recovery and nutrition recommendations.

Building Trust by Providing Actionable Results

To help athletes reach their fullest potential, Walker found himself turning his skepticism into support for the InBody body composition analyzer. The body composition testing fueled the MJP mission. It forced everybody to be better versions of themselves. And it also built stronger relationships between trainers and athletes because of the individualization.

“With the advent of technologies like InBody, I really don’t think there’s any reason to why you wouldn’t want to do more monitoring over the course of time. …  It’s going to get you ultimately better results. And, it’s also going to demand of your training program and your trainer better results. It’s going to help force everybody to be better versions of themselves.”

With the help of accurate machines like InBody, MJP has become very sharp in the space of body composition and can monitor their athletes in any season. The more they could monitor body composition, the better they were able to use those data points as true diagnostics of what’s going on. And, that’s how MJP is using body composition now: one more piece of critical metric data to monitor the training process all along the way.

Body composition allows MJP trainers to not only benchmark athletes but also monitor their training and influence with those athletes and the effectiveness of those systems. Trainers build better relationships with their athletes because they’re able to gain insight into how well an athlete is performing and recovering for constant and accurate analysis.  MJP athletes continue to stay ahead of the curve, now with the help of InBody.

“What we’re all about is the end of the day results. Day to day, week to week, month to month; “Are you better than you were yesterday? If so, we’re winning. And, if not, why not? We need to come up with some solutions for that.” And, that’s what InBody helps us do.”

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