The Importance of Maintaining your Fitness Equipment

The Importance of Maintaining your Fitness Equipment

Snapped cables, consoles that do not work when you press the keypad, smoking treadmills, weight stacks where the weights cannot be changed – Sounds familiar?

A lack of a maintenance regime in the fitness facility leads to unhappy customers and disgruntled gym staff alike. But so easy to avoid by simplifying investing in a decent preventative maintenance plan.

Why is preventative maintenance important?

Well-maintained equipment lasts longer and runs longer without problems. Equipment that is inspected regularly and supported before problems occur, has a better chance of lasting the life of the fitness facility or its full-estimated lifespan. It is analogous to owning a car. Regularly scheduled maintenance keeps small issues from building into full-blown, expensive problems. Cost savings aside, maintained equipment is safer and easy to use.

What makes gym equipment so complicated?

Every piece of cardio equipment includes electrical circuit boards, drive motors, and moving parts made of degradable materials. Additionally, each piece of cardio and strength equipment has frames which are welded.  steel parts rotate, and the machines’ stability is dependent on maintaining absolute level surfaces. This intricate balance easily unravels with neglect or improper repairs.

What can a preventative maintenance program offer me?

An initiative-taking fitness facility will:

• Inspect electrical and mechanical equipment for dirty, loose, worn, cracked, or damaged parts.
• Replace items such as drive motors and electronic circuit boards.
• Replace torn and worn pads.
• Clean, vacuum, and sanitize equipment to reduce corrosion.
• Reset back-end software and respond to error messages.
• Check welding, pins, bolts, and more for wear.
• Use the correct lubricant for each machine.
• Replace cables.

Why shouldn’t I maintain my own fitness equipment?

• You do not know what you do not know. You might be missing something big that can result in a significant injury and create widespread liability for your fitness facility.
• The equipment is sophisticated. Every computer board has both a front-end display and back-end code. This underlayer of information is where the diagnostic menu lies. A manufacturer authorised technician will access this tool to evaluate equipment piece by piece.
• Incorrect maintenance can wear on motors and mechanical parts.
• You might actually badly injure someone.

How to find the best engineer to support you.

Always speak to either the manufacturer or specialist parts provider for help. They will have either their own or a network of qualified engineers to call on and are always happy to help.