The intramural Open is a two brain business original. Chris Cooper's been doing this event at his gym since the early 2010s, and we publish a guide about it. Every single year is, without a doubt, the best way to make competition fun. At your gym, there are three goals. You want to give your clients a party.
You wanna show them that they're winning, and you want to ensure that they're fired up to keep training with you long term . The goal is not to find the fittest person in the universe. It's to ensure your clients smile and you wanna generate some revenue while you do it because you're running a business.
If you use our 2025 guide to run this event in late February or early March, you can approve retention and generate revenue for your business. Chris Cooper's ebook on the 2025 intramural Open is out. Now you can get it by sending him a dm. You gotta go to gym owners united.com . Look, coop up . He's all over the place there with placed with pinned posts.
Send him a dm, gym owners united.com, the short version of the intramural Open. You divide your gym up into teams. You run a fun multi-week competition. The emphasis is on fun and smiles. Now you can sync this up with a CrossFit open or not. It's your choice if you're not a CrossFit gym, no problem. Coops made it even easier this year to run the event because he's programmed workouts for you for the very first time.
You don't have to wait for event announcements or worry about gear. You just have the events you can plant around them right now. So get that book today. An A plus gym owner is gonna tell us how he runs the intramural open at his gym, and give us some tips for success. He's gonna talk about revenue retention , so stick around. This is rather profitable. Jim , I'm Mike Warden . Hit subscribe.
You do not wanna miss more episodes like this. In the new year of 2025, Brian Foley runs Activate in Ireland. I had the pleasure of hanging out with him in Columbus, Ohio a couple months ago and hanging in person. He's a great guy and he crushes the intramural open every year. So we're gonna talk about how you listener can do the exact same thing. Brian , it's Irish afternoon. Canadian Morning. How are you ?
I'm great, Mike. How are you?
I'm great too. We were just talking about how, you know, later on today, and then we're gonna taste some fine Irish whiskey to celebrate the season, but first we're gonna make revenue and re for gym owners, and then we're going to boost their retention. So Brian, I'm bringing it in right off the top. How do you get revenue into your business through the internal open? What do you do?
Absolutely. So we don't charge for the opens, but we do gain revenue indirectly from the opens. So from the very get go in 2017 when we picked up this intramural guide, we were like, okay, how are we gonna weigh this up and figure out how we do it? What we do is between six and eight weeks prior to the opens.
So around this time of year we launch gymnastics , uh, programs and Olympic weightlifting programs because typically they are the two things that people will struggle with most running up to the CrossFit open. Um, so yeah, we've always got a big boost from signups for those programs prior to the open.
Okay . And I'm just gonna , as Brian chats a little bit about some of the stuff I'm gonna share some screen grabs from , uh, the , uh, intramural open guide. Again , you can DM Chris Cooper to get this thing off . If you go on Facebook, this is one thing you can do.
So before the open skill work , we all know if you're doing, like, if you're in a CrossFit gym, for example, everyone needs kipping handstand or kipping handstand pushups, muscle ups , pull-ups, all sorts of gymnastics stuff. The snatch clean and jerk overhead squat, all that stuff always shows up, you know that people wanna work on it. These are also areas of passion for a ton of people.
Gymnastics and Olympic weightlifting stuff is good anytime of year, but especially when people have an emotional attachment to it before a competition. So Brian will charge in advance for that. Do you have any details? Like what is your basic structure for that? Is it like, you know, 10 people, 250 bucks for a six weeks, or what do you do there?
Exactly. So typically 10 to 12 people , uh, in and around that 200 bucks for that period of time. Coach makes some good revenue from it, coach makes some good income from it, and the business makes some some income from it as well. And we typically use the goal setting, so our member check-ins and goal setting sessions as as the guiding , uh, light for that.
So if a lot of people are struggling with one particular movement, we will emphasize that as part of the program. So if it's a handstand pushup, for example , um, we will look at a six week block of handstand handstand work and we, we typically use what our members are telling us to, you know, bring them what they want essentially. And
That's wise anytime of the year, right? Like you're just having these goal review sessions with your clients and if seven of them say, Hey, I I really wanna get better at running, or I'm gonna do this 5K run that's coming up in my area. You're like, I should run a running prep group, right? And you just tack on some additional revenue through a specialty program. That's good policy at any time of the year.
It's even better right now when you tying this to an event, which is a really, really big deal. Now, Brian, you said you don't charge. We have gyms that do charge, and so obviously if people do the CrossFit open, they're gonna pay a registration fee that goes to CrossFitting, not to your gym, but we recommend that gyms charge a fee if they run this thing. And here's why. This is not membership.
This is an additional thing that you can do to, and it it's a lot of work. Like we found ways to streamline this over the years, but I remember when I first started doing the open, I think I put in like 60 or 80 hours, and I think that year was like six weeks or something like that. And we were destroyed. Like by the end of it, we were done.
Eventually the openness changed and uh , uh, you know, it's evolved a little bit and it's a little bit less stressful and so forth. But still, if you're gonna put on this, you know, four week , month long party for your , that , for your members and you're gonna score at ad value, you can charge like 40, 30, $50. You don't have to, but it is a way to recoup some of the costs. We have some gyms that do this.
We have some gyms that don't do this. It depends on you. The thing that I'll tell you is that it's in the guide. Don't charge more than 50 bucks. People start to get a little eh , about that because they don't want , then it's like, especially, you know , a bad one to say charging 50 bucks and then tacking on a t-shirt and saying it's 70 bucks. Charge a maximum 50 bucks or less.
And if you sell retail, do that completely separately, but stay clear of those like larger numbers for this. But you can charge a fee. We do have some people that do that. The key is to build the value. So people aren't saying, what did I pay 50 bucks for? They need to walk out and say, I can't believe I paid only 50 bucks for this party. It was incredible.
You know, and you can use that money, that revenue to like buy some prizes, do some extra stuff, bring in a photographer if you want, give people photos, have a meal, whatever. There's all sorts of ways to make this work. But the thing that I really like with Brian, what you said before, the open prep work, how about this? Do you sell retail?
Do you sell t-shirts and things like that around, around , uh, the interim open?
Yeah, so we typically do the device, the whole gym into four teams, and each of the teams designs their own t-shirt. And then we use that as a retail opportunity. So typically see sales of t-shirts, sales of things like chalk tape, all that kind of stuff boosts just before the open. Um, so yeah, absolutely. Yeah,
And it's not like huge, we're not talking huge money. You're not gonna make $20,000 on retail items, but every dollar counts. And if you're gonna sell the stuff, sell the stuff during the Open Forever. Fierce is our preferred vendor for that stuff. Uh, they can print stuff up for you very regularly.
Other things that , uh, Brian mentioned that are critical, and this is not, maybe you don't look at it and say, ah , this is a ton of money right now, but post competition , goal setting and prescription. So we recommend that gyms do goal review sessions all the time. Brian just talked about that. He does that regularly.
It's not just a once in a year or once in lifetime thing, but after the open meet with your participants and you say, Hey, in that last workout I saw you were frustrated with your pull-ups with some personal training over the next eight weeks, I think we can get you to that goal of five kipping pull-ups in a row.
What do you think that works like a charm and all you're doing is helping clients accomplish goals, which they now have have because they have an emotional attachment to this thing in the open. So technically Brian , in in , in your, like when you talk to clients after your intermural open, how do those goal setting sessions go for you?
Yeah, so that they're usually the , the best goal setting sessions of the year because someone's achieved something that they previously were not able to do, or they've probably just fallen a little bit short of something that they've wanted to do.
So it's a perfect opportunity to sit someone down, chat them about what they've just accomplished, and give them a big kudos for that, obviously, you know, put them on a platform for that.
And we're, that's one of the main things we do with the intramural open every year is give people a platform to celebrate their wins, but then obviously as well, anything that they want to achieve for the next year, it just sets their sights and it pushes the horizon out for 12 months. What are we doing for the next open? So people aren't just thinking about a quick short term fix.
And it's an , it's really an amazing goal setting session. That one's straight after the open. So what we do is we open up the calendar after the open for more goal setting sessions than we normally do.
I love it because, and this is like, this is what I wanna lead in . So this is revenue stuff. Retention is also revenue. You don't see it right away, but every month that a client stays at your gym, it's more revenue. So Brian just said like, what are we working on for the next open that client's thinking 12 months in advance and 12 months of training at your gym to accomplish goals? What a huge retention tool.
Brian, before the show, you told me an incredible stat from your business about what the intramural open does for retention. What is it?
Yeah, exactly. So we mentioned that we don't charge for it, but we do make money from the open indirectly. So if someone does the intramural open at my gym, they are three times more likely to stay another year in the gym.
Wow. Now that is like, that is an earth chattering stat because that's exactly , that's basically boosting your length of engagement by 12 months just by doing this event and talking to 'em about it .
Exactly. Exactly. So yeah, we, we absolutely like the , the whole team gets bought into recruitment. It's a big recruitment drive from Christmas to, to the Open every year.
I wanna hear about how you do that, but first tell me a little bit about how you make retention such an important part of this. Like you said, podiums and celebrating, like, talk to me about how you make your clients feel like superheroes during this event. So they wanna stay all year.
So, Mike, I , I know people can't really see on the podcast, but I'm holding up a giant Silver Cup. It's large , and so you gotta go to YouTube. Yeah. .
So
You gotta go to YouTube to see that. But yeah, we , we , we make it like we're not the most competitive gym in the world, right? It's , it's not about competition and intramural sports is not a thing in Ireland. It's just not done. But like, when we saw this, the novelty factor of people competing for fun for points, it's absolutely huge.
So we make them feel, you know, like people, a lot of people, a lot of our members might have stopped playing sports, you know, in their teens, maybe into their twenties, and they haven't experienced the thrill of winning or competing at something that they could potentially win in decades. So it's huge.
It gives them an opportunity to celebrate with the people that they work out with every day , to see people that they work out with every day in a different environment, in a different light. And it gives us the opportunity to put them doing a workout alone where their peers are watching them.
Not so much alone, but like, you know, where people are actually watching them and celebrating what they can do and , and really, you know, putting 'em on that pedestal and making them feel special and giving them extra high fives and, you know, calling their name out, you know, making them feel like they're, they're part of something bigger.
Yeah. And there are ways to do this. Like you can set up different divisions where you have like a scale division and a , uh, um, an RX division or s prescribed division.
You can set up masters , you set up kids, you can set up all these different divisions, and then you can work in points point scoring opportunities, not just for the top three, but also for like spirit of the open or coolest things that are happening. Like when I was running the Intermental Open in my gym, we would give people points for , uh, booking a goal review session that was a big one.
Or doing a client testimonial. I'd sit people down with a microphone and say, why do you love my gym? And if they did that, I'd give them an extra five points or leaving a Google review, I would do that Facebook review. There are all these different ways that you can in , you can incentivize people to do the , the stuff that you want, which is reviews and stuff.
But also I would give away just prizes just for being awesome. Like, you know what, Tim, you are cheering so loudly. When Cynthia was trying to finish her workout, I just thought it was the coolest thing ever. I'm gonna award you a bonus point.
And then from there, you start celebrating your clients in all these different ways where I would always take pictures and we would make trading cards outta them , put banners on them, and we would just celebrate our clients accomplishing amazing things. Now, I'll tell you a mistake I made one year during the Open, we used to be very competitive, Jim , and this was in the early days. We had , uh, a ton of competitors.
We had a team that was gonna go to regionals. We had a bunch of individual competitors that went to regionals. We focused way too much on the competitors. And after the open, I lost about 30 or 35 members, and they were just burned out by the whole thing. They didn't feel special because all the attention was on the superstars. And I thought, what have I done to my business?
When we changed it to the intramural open concept and made it fun and celebrated everyone and didn't emphasize competition, everything got better, retention was better. We made some money, the smiles were there. I didn't lose members, I actually held onto them. So you can do it wrong. You can also do it right. Tell me a little bit about how many people you get to participate in your gym.
Is it like, do you get all of 'em draft all into teams, or what do you do?
Pretty much, yeah , . So we typically get about 150 people signed up to our endur open . Um, and we're aiming for more than that this year. Wow . And something you said , uh, a second ago, Mike, like, you know, it is a lot of work for the team, but if you share that and you split your gym into four teams mm-hmm . You can give every team a week of, you know, doing food.
And that's actually the most competitive division in our gym is the cooking. So we do like a potluck and people are like, you know , try to outdo each other's brownies or , you know, every year. So like, it takes a lot of the, the load off the team and like, there's a week where everyone's gotta judge . There's a week where everyone's gotta set out the floor and clean up. So, you know, it's a big community event.
But yeah, we get, we try to get like 150 plus people participating every year. Wow . Mm-hmm .
That is amazing. And I'm gonna show you, this is what your captains should look like. It should look like something like this. You're not looking for the super stud, you know, elite athlete, super serious . You want fun, fun people. You want your captains should be the people in your gym that people just gravitate toward.
They're the lead , they're kind of the leaders, but they're also just the , like, the very social people who are, who have a good time. And I had one teacher in my gym for example, and I said, you know, do you wanna be one of our intramural open captains? And she looks at me and says, Mike, I was born for this . And she just destroyed it.
Like, you know, the whole, she had the gear for a team, they had hats, we had another team , uh, they named themselves the Breakfast Club after the movie, and they all had themed gear around that movie with like the hand in the air from the famous scene at the end. They had chants and apparel and, you know, songs like , it was just an incredible thing. And this thing will take over your gym.
Like, we had another team that , uh, decided they would bring in a bag, a bagpiper. And so when they, we announced them, they came in with bagpipes playing, and they marched around the gym to a ba to a set of bagpipes. We had another guy, and he was a , he was a financial wizard, and so he, he didn't wanna do the fun stuff. He was just like, I'm gonna use money to make this happen.
And so he had like, people come into the gym and start singing like the , you know, join, join his gym , join his team, kind of stuff. Like he would just do t-shirts and all these other things. The ca captains will make or break this event. And the best part is they will take the stress off your coaches and you, because they carry the load and they get to have this position of honor, which is a really cool thing.
We also have in a Chris Cooper's guide, ways to not stress out about the open, because we've all done it there . We have a survival tips section where it'll help you figure out exactly how to reduce the load . Brian , do you have a number one tip?
Like do you, do, do you delegate to your staff or what , how do you avoid getting sucked into this as the owner and just like losing every Friday for the rest of your life?
Yeah, so, so me and my wife Roe , we , uh, we learned that lesson hard the first two years. Like , it is , it , it can , you can burn out so hard doing this. It's a lot of fun, but you don't actually realize until it's all over. Man, that was so tough. So yeah, we, we produce, so I produce like an in-house open guide for my team every year I delegate.
So each of my coaches is managing essentially one of the teams to make sure that they've got everything they need. They've done their t-shirts, they've got all their orders in , all that stuff is done. And then the team captains, like you mentioned, we always have a running joke every year. You could pick the team captain at our Christmas party because they're usually the person that's working the room. Yeah .
Um , so , so it's always, it's always that social butterfly. Uh , they're the best team captains. But yeah, if you pick the right people and your coaches are very clear on what is going to happen and what the timelines are, it takes so much of that cognitive load off the owner before the open and every week just having really clear who's doing what, when does it happen.
Just have very clear timelines and communicate everything. It takes so much of the pressure off.
Yeah . And I'm gonna show you this exactly what Brian said. So I'll show you this one more time here. This is a tentative schedule. You can run this however you want. So in our guide, we have this thing here . You've got now to 20 February 27th, you can launch pre-open programs, advertise, registration, select scoring system, captains, draft day recruiting period. Then we've got the workouts, 1, 2, 3, 4.
You can coordinate this with the CrossFit open, or you don't have to. And then you've got March 31st launch open program. So you can use, all this stuff is laid out, how to do it in this guide. So you can take this calendar and use this stuff to stay on track exactly like Brian said. And like I was telling you guys, there are, we have workouts programmed for you. So we've got, you know, pre-op activities.
This is the stuff that Chris has laid out. This is exactly what you should do. And then you've got workouts. Chris has programmed some very simple workouts that are gonna be easy for you. You're gonna have the gear and you can just run this stuff. We took space in mind, we took time in mind. You don't have to wait for an announcement and say, Ooh , I don't have a 72 pound dumbbell.
You know, you can just be like, ah , I have this, we're good. Or sub it out or program your own stuff. It all works really, really well. So get this guide . Chris Cooper DM him on Facebook. Gym Owners United. You can do that. Brian , what are your top tips? Do you have anything? We've covered a bunch of 'em .
Do you have any additional stuff that can help someone who's out there thinking about maybe they haven't run it for the first time, what would you tell them to make this a success?
Definitely get the guide. Um, like follow, follow what's in the guide. I've seen, I've, I've seen and heard of people doing stuff their own kind of way, but this is tried and tested, it works. We don't really do it any, any differently to what's in that guide every year. Like we pick maybe something new each year to add, but we don't really change it that much.
Top tips are like, make it fun, make it inclusive, that like, if you just make it elitist and it's all about, you know, muscle ups and the stuff that most people can't do, then it's gonna be, it's gonna be very exclusive . Uh , there's gonna , it's gonna be very exclusive and, and like, you just want this thing to be as inclusive as possible. You want it to be fun.
You wanna make sure that the intimidation levels are as low as possible. So pitch it to everybody. So like you said, if you're doing the CrossFit open, it's three weeks at a four week and make it something fun. You know, make it something that everybody can do. If there's a Rx a scaled and a foundations division, if people are doing foundations, they're not gonna be going to the CrossFit games.
So cut them some slack, give it, give them a foundations, you know, another level that everybody can participate. Everyone can do something. Make it about spirit, make it about fun. Make sure you award points for things like spirit. And that's a huge one every year. You know, the team who has the best colors, the team who supports the best, you know, the person who spurred of the open.
It's typically a big honor to be that person, you know, and, and just make it a real inclusive and fun event. Try to make sure that it aligns with your gym's values and that it is, you know, something that people feel that they can be part of and that they look forward to next year.
Make it fun and, and make sure that your team are bought into it as well, because the , your coaches, if you have coaches make up such a huge part of this and if they enjoy it, make sure that, you know, that bleeds into the rest of the community. If they're burnt out from it and you put too much on them and they don't find it fun, well then it's not gonna be fun for everyone either. Mm-hmm
. And a tip I'll give you , I'll piggyback on what you said. If you do this and make it super fun, take some pictures, do some interviews when people are smiling and happy, and use that to promote your gym the entire year and then promote your entrepreneurial open in 2026.
And some of the best marketing materials I ever got came from our intramural open events because you had these like pictures of people doing cool stuff in crazy costumes or smiling one night we had people show up in , uh, formal wear and then we had them do their workouts and we did before and after pictures.
They come and dress to the nines makeup done, then they leave in the mascara is like bleeding off their faces and everything. And we did these like, but they were still happy, right? We , these great marketing pictures, you can definitely do this. The thing that I like what you said , Brian , is make it inclusive.
And so what we did with the workouts that we programmed here in this guide, Chris tried to make it just stuff that people can do. Again, we're not trying to find the fittest person in the world, right? We're doing like a super meet , which is Chris's thing where he is got six or seven different lifts and they're just like, you're gonna do your best squat. Everyone has a best squat and they can feel good about it.
You're gonna see some prs. That's incredible. Uh, high rocks , Brian , that is big out in Europe I , isn't it?
Yes, absolutely. So yeah, you could include a high rocks workout .
We theme one like that. Yeah , yeah. We themed one. We just took some of the pieces that high rocks , like you can't do all the stuff with the sled push and stuff necessarily with whatever, but we put in a couple of things where you could like do some farmer carries and just some of the stuff that you see in that event that people love that you can do in a small space in your gym.
So the idea is maximum participation. I love the idea of a final event. Chris has talked about doing an escape room sometimes, or like he had biathlon Olympics where you're shooting like Nerf guns at , uh, paper plates or something like that and doing penalty loops on the row or things like that. Like there's, I've seen flip cop Olympics, like all sorts of really, really cool ideas.
The goal is to make it a party as we seal this up. I'm gonna go back to say, Brian, you you've got, what was your revenue, your prime revenue generator for the open is
Retention. Yep . It's , it's definitely retention. So like if, if , if you want to calculate that out, it's for every month that someone stays extra multiplied by your average revenue per member. Yeah .
And you , it's a no brainer. Yeah. You said your people are what, three times more likely to stay for another year if they, if they do this?
Yeah. That's, that's worth far more than any new marketing fad that's gonna bring 30 new members into my gym if I can just hold onto 30 more members. It's, it makes complete other sense. Yeah. I mean, something, something else you said there, Mike, like about making it inclusive is we run a master's division. Mm-hmm . So like we've got a big master's program and a kids program, so like get the whole family involved.
If people bring their kids and people bring their parents, I mean, it just, it , it creates an even an even better event and then obviously making sure that people are sharing this thing and that it is, you know, something that you can use to leverage your own social media. We're lucky in Ireland because it falls on Patty's Day, normally one of the weekends of the CrossFit open.
So we usually leverage off that and have a lot of fun with that weekend.
No beer of all at all.
Absolutely not. We have at 8:00 AM in the morning, so no one can have any alcohol on board .
I understand Exactly. . But that's, you bring up a great point. If you're , you can make this an event, make your gym spectator friendly. Get some kids, do run a kid's heat. Like that's something Chris has done at his gym. Run a Masters heat, bring your friends and family. If someone comes to watch one of your members participate in this thing, they're very likely to join your gym.
Chris once said that he ran a kid's heat that and right after that they ran their most successful program of all time simply because parents brought kids who weren't clients into the gym for this fun event and they gave them medals and all sorts of other stuff and then all of a sudden their kids' program exploded. Not a coincidence. Right? You can, there's all sorts of ways.
And Brian also did another thing that his revenue, a lot of it comes from, I won't say a lot of it because retention is his main driver, but he does generate revenue by doing pretty open skill sessions and skill work . It's very easy for you to do that, especially if you know the workouts in advance. You can say, Hey, we're doing this thing. We're doing thrusters in this workout coming up.
Let's work on your thruster technique so that you don't feel intimidated about it. Let's book some pt. There's tons of ways to do this. Brian , thank you so much for laying this out for us. I love it. I hope we , uh, I hope to see some media come out here . Jim, where can people follow your antics if they wanna see what you do? Yeah,
Absolutely. So it's at Activate ie on Instagram. It's probably the easiest place to find us, check
'em out and see what's up. And I would highly recommend exact what Brian said. Go get Chris Cooper's guide , DM him on Facebook or go to gym owners united.com. Brian , thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Thanks Mike.
That was Brian Foley . This is Run a Profitable Gym. Thank you for listening on your way out the door door. Please hit subscribe so you don't miss a single show like this. We will help you build your business every week. Can't help ask you enough. Hit subscribe. Hit a like, come back and see us. And now here's Chris Cooper with a final message.
Hey, it's two Brain founder Chris Cooper. With a quick note . We created the Gym Owners United Facebook group to help you run a profitable gym. Thousands of gym owners, just like you have already joined in the group. We share sound advice about the business of fitness every day I answer questions, I run free webinars and I give away all kinds of great resources to help you grow your gym.
I'd love to have you in that group. It's Gym Owners United on Facebook, or go to gym owners united.com to join. Do it today.