The retention challenge every aerial studio faces — and what actually helps
If you own or manage an aerial arts studio, you already know this intuitively: some students walk through your door and never leave. They progress from beginner to intermediate, they sign up for workshops, they perform in your showcases, they bring their friends. And then there are the students who try a few classes, disappear, and you never quite know why.
The gap between those two groups is where the financial health of your studio lives. Understanding it (and doing something about it) is one of the best things you can do for your business.
What the fitness industry data tells us
There is almost no published data specific to aerial arts studios. What we do have is broad fitness industry research, and it paints a clear picture of the challenge.
Half of new gym members quit within the first six months. Most, in fact, are gone within 90 days. This pattern holds across the fitness industry, and there is no reason to believe aerial studios are any different. In fact, it seems very likely that without intentional intervention, the pattern repeats itself in your beginner classes all the time.
The 90-day window is the most critical period in a student’s relationship with your studio. Students who achieve early skill milestones within their first 90 days are 60% more likely to continue training. And 85% of members who attend at least one class per week remain active a year later. Consistency of attendance in the early weeks is the single strongest predictor of long-term retention — which means the most important thing you can do for a new student is help them show up.
“Studios with structured onboarding programmes see up to 75% higher retention rates than those without one. That number is striking. ”
A structured onboarding programme doesn’t mean paperwork. It simply means intentional contact, celebrating student milestones, and helping students become part of the community in the first weeks of their training.
The aerial-specific challenge: the beginner cliff
Aerial arts has a special dynamic that most other fitness disciplines don’t have: the gap between what students imagine and what the first few classes actually feel like.
New students often arrive with images from Cirque du Soleil or Instagram in their heads. What they encounter in their first class is sore hands, bruised hips, a body that won’t do what they’re asking it to do, and skills that feel impossibly far away. For many students, that gap — between the vision and the reality of the early learning curve — is where they leave.
This is not a failure of instruction. It’s a structural feature of skill-based disciplines, and climbing gyms face exactly the same challenge. There are two solutions. Make sure your beginner classes give students an early win. For example, the Intro to Hoop classes at Body & Pole in New York City focus on Man on the Moon. Students can do it with or without holding on to the lyra and it looks beautiful regardless. They can take a video and feel like they achieved something, even if it was hard and even if they didn’t do it perfectly. It gives them a taste of what’s to come, while getting them excited to face that challenge. The second part of the solution is to make the beginning feel meaningful by helping students understand that soreness and struggle are evidence of progress, not evidence that aerial isn’t for them.
What actually helps: stage by stage
Beginner students (weeks 1–8)
The goal at this stage is not skill acquisition. The goal is habit formation and belonging.
Contact students personally within 48 hours of their first class. Not an automated email — a real message from an instructor or studio manager that references something specific from their session. Ask how their hands are feeling. Tell them it gets better. Mean it.
Celebrate small wins loudly. The first time a lyra student gets into the hoop without a spot. The first time they exit any apparatus even somewhat gracefully. These moments feel enormous to a beginner and often go unacknowledged. Acknowledge them — in class, in a message, on your studio’s social media with their permission.
Track attendance actively. A student who misses two consecutive classes is at risk. A student who misses three is probably gone. Build a simple system — a spreadsheet or even just a notepad — that flags when a regular student disappears, and reach out before they’ve mentally checked out.
Consider what your intro offer converts to. Many studios offer a trial period or intro class pack. What happens at the end of it? If the answer is “we hope they sign up for a membership,” you’re leaving the conversion to chance. Have a clear, personal conversation with every intro student before their trial ends — about what they enjoyed, what they want to work on, and what the next step looks like.
Intermediate students (months 3–12)
This is the stage most retention guides ignore, and it’s where aerial studios lose students who were engaged beginners. The intermediate plateau is real: students have moved past the excitement of first learning but haven’t yet built the skill set that makes training feel fluid and creative. Progress feels slower. The novelty has worn off. And if community hasn’t been built, there’s nothing holding them.
“The most effective interventions at this stage are performance opportunities and cross-training.”
Showcases and in-studio performances — even informal ones — transform the intermediate experience. A student working toward a performance has a reason to attend every class, a concrete goal to structure their training around, and an experience that creates a memory they’ll associate with your studio for years. Showcases don’t need to be elaborate. A quarterly in-studio performance night with an audience of friends, family, and fellow students is enough. The act of performing publicly changes a student’s relationship to their training.
Cross-training across apparatus also helps significantly. A student who trains only silks will plateau faster than one who supplements with conditioning, flexibility work, or a second apparatus like lyra or straps. Encouraging — and structuring — cross-training keeps training feeling fresh and builds a more complete skill set that makes progression visible again.
Advanced students and long-term members
Members who stay past the two-year mark are 90% less likely to cancel. Advanced students who have been with you for two or more years are, in many ways, your most stable revenue. But they also have needs that beginner-focused studios often fail to meet: access to open training time, exposure to new techniques through guest instructors and workshops, and a sense of being valued as experienced members of the community rather than just paying customers.
Private and semi-private sessions are particularly valuable at this stage — both for the student’s development and for your revenue. Advanced students who are working toward specific goals (a competition piece, a performance act, a particular skill sequence) will often pay premium rates for focused one-on-one instruction that group classes can’t provide.
Revenue beyond the membership
Student retention and revenue diversification are two sides of the same coin. The activities that most effectively retain students also tend to generate additional income.
Showcases and performances. A well-produced showcase charges admission, sells tickets to family and friends, and creates content that markets your studio organically for months. Many studios charge student participation fees that help offset production costs. A twice-yearly showcase that 30 students perform in generates revenue, creates retention, and produces your best marketing material simultaneously.
Workshops with guest instructors. Bringing in guest instructors — whether local performers or travelling specialists — gives advanced and intermediate students access to new techniques and creative perspectives that routine classes can’t provide. Workshops carry a premium price point, typically $40–$80 for a two-hour session, and attract both existing members and new prospective students.
Private and semi-private sessions. One-on-one and small group instruction commands significantly higher per-hour rates than group classes and builds the kind of individual instructor-student relationship that makes leaving a studio feel almost impossible. Offering structured private session packages — rather than ad hoc bookings — makes this revenue stream predictable.
Photo and video sessions. Aerial arts produces some of the most visually striking content of any fitness discipline. Partnering with a photographer to offer in-studio photo sessions for students generates revenue, creates content students are proud to share publicly, and markets your studio to their entire social network. Sessions can be offered monthly or quarterly, with packages starting at $50–$100 per student.
Conditioning and flexibility classes. Supporting classes — strength conditioning, flexibility, body awareness — serve your existing students’ training needs while filling scheduling gaps with lower-cost-to-deliver programming. They also provide an accessible entry point for prospective students who aren’t ready to commit to apparatus classes.
A note on data
Everything in this post is grounded in what the broader fitness industry research tells us, applied to what experienced aerial educators observe in practice. The honest truth is that retention data for aerial arts doesn’t yet exist in any published form. We don’t know, with any statistical certainty, what the average beginner dropout rate is for aerial silks compared to lyra, or how retention varies across studio models and markets.
That’s precisely what the Aerial Arts Index is working to find out. If you own or operate an aerial studio and want to contribute to the first benchmarking study of its kind, we’d welcome your participation when we conduct our survey.
