IHRSA: Brain Fitness Offerings to Attract and Retain Baby Boomers

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logoThis week the Inter­na­tion­al Health, Rac­quet and Sports­club Asso­ci­a­tion (IHRSA), the main asso­ci­a­tion of health clubs world­wide, is hold­ing its annu­al con­ven­tion in San Diego. Infor­ma­tion Here.

I will be pre­sent­ing a ses­sion on Wednes­day titled Brain Fit­ness Offer­ings to Attract and Retain Baby Boomers, to help participants…

  • Under­stand the impli­ca­tions from emerg­ing research, tools and trends that will affect how health clubs attract and retain baby boomers
  • Learn about the 4 lifestyle pil­lars for life­long brain health, includ­ing phys­i­cal and men­tal exercise
  • Review a proven check­list to build a sol­id busi­ness case and nav­i­gate through the grow­ing array of options
  • Find the best mix of brain health prod­ucts and prac­tices by dis­cussing best prac­tices and case studies
  • Iden­ti­fy low-cost and easy-to-imple­ment options that your clubs can use to start engag­ing baby boomers

I assume most of you won’t be able to attend, so let me share an arti­cle that Dr. Elkhonon Gold­berg and I wrote for their main mag­a­zine in 2006 (progress does hap­pen, but slow­ly), titled Are you sure your mem­bers are work­ing out ALL their muscles?

“Sure, they come to the gym every day. They lift more weights, do more pushups, and run fur­ther dur­ing every work­out. They eat right. They watch their weight. They’re in good shape. What could your mem­bers pos­si­bly be miss­ing? Their men­tal mus­cles.

While liv­ing an active life and par­tic­i­pat­ing in stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties such as cross­word puz­zles, music lessons and read­ing cer­tain­ly do use one’s brain, they do not pro­vide a con­sis­tent, com­pre­hen­sive brain work­out with mea­sur­able results. Brains need nov­el­ty, vari­ety and stretch­ing prac­tice in order to get fit!”

You can keep read­ing arti­cle Here.

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Comments

  1. Jenny Brockis says

    This is great Alvaro.
    I shall be very inter­est­ed to hear how the pre­sen­ta­tion goes.
    The con­cept of intro­duc­ing brain fit­ness into health clubs is very much in an embry­on­ic stage here in West­ern Aus­tralia. I have spo­ken to one such club and while they can under­stand there are def­i­nite health ben­e­fits, they are yet to work out for them­selves how to imple­ment it effectively.

    • Alvaro Fernandez says

      Here in the US it is pret­ty embry­on­ic as well among main­stream clubs (much more com­mon among com­mu­ni­ties tar­get­ing old­er adults). Orga­ni­za­tions like Nifty after Fifty, Brain­Savers and ASFA are start­ing to lead very inter­est­ing pilots, which hope­ful­ly will show the way.