Designing a Strength Studio.
The Studio Gay BUILD method applied in practice: turning a new strength-studio idea into something a team could actually teach and run.
A new room is not yet a fitness product.
SHA-LA was developing a dedicated strength-training space in Berlin. The physical studio was taking shape, but the product behind it still needed to be designed.
The challenge was to connect concept, programming, equipment, coaching and team education into one experience that felt coherent in the room and could be delivered by more than one person.
What should strength at SHA-LA actually be?
The work started by clarifying the role strength training should play inside the wider SHA-LA world: who the class was for, how accessible it needed to be, how many people it had to serve and what should make the experience recognisable.
Turn a broad ambition into a product direction strong enough to guide the decisions that follow.
Connect the experience to the training logic.
The goal was not to write a pile of workouts. It was to design the logic that would hold the product together.
Define what the training experience is for, what makes it recognisable and how different class formats relate to one another.
Create a repeatable framework coaches can work inside, rather than a collection of fixed one-off sessions.
Connect programming to equipment, capacity, timing and studio flow so the concept can actually function in the room.
Make quality teachable.
Once the product logic was clear, it had to leave one person's head. Studio Gay translated the concept into usable systems for coaches: exercise guidance, coaching standards, onboarding documentation and practical teaching tools.
The point was not to make every coach identical. It was to create enough shared structure that the experience stayed recognisable across the team.
The onboarding was also product testing.
The system was tested with real coaches in the actual space. That exposed the things a spreadsheet cannot: transitions, equipment friction, memory load, timing and how different people interpreted the concept.
Observation and practical teaching fed directly back into the system.
Built to be taught, repeated and handed over.
The system had to work without Studio Gay.
The final stage was transfer of ownership: documentation, responsibilities and onboarding knowledge moved to an internal lead coach who could continue running and developing the system.
The deliverable wasn't a workout. It was a system for delivering one.
How Studio Gay Builds
The methodology behind this project — and the kinds of systems Studio Gay can build for gyms, studios and organisations.
Have a fitness concept that needs to become real?
Studio Gay helps gyms, studios and organisations define what makes them different — then builds the systems that allow other people to deliver it consistently.
- Fitness concept design
- Programming systems
- Coaching standards
- Coach education
- Operational implementation
- Handover & scale