Which Type of Facility Are You?
Which Type of Facility Are You?
Four Facility Types, Not One
The same four-category model built for ASF's Hospital standard applies here, with one deliberate change: Small is anchored to service-providing staff count — trainers, instructors, and specialists, not administrative or cleaning staff. A facility with a swimming pool, multiple floors, or on-site medical staff is Standard regardless of this count, since physical scale genuinely changes the risk profile in ways staff count alone doesn't capture.
Standard (ST)
A fully resourced, functioning fitness and wellness facility — a full team of qualified instructors, complete equipment and amenities, no adaptation needed.
Small (SM) — where staffing depth, not crisis or poverty, is the defining constraint
3 or fewer service-providing staff is the confirmed anchor. No single external standard sets this number for the fitness industry the way one exists for hospitals or nursing homes — this reflects the genuine, real-world structure of a small studio or solo trainer, otherwise stable, genuinely limited by team size alone, not by the safety floor.
Transitional (TR)
Real national resource or infrastructure limitation, no active conflict — the same World Bank-anchored logic used throughout ASF's standards.
Crisis (CR)
Active conflict or humanitarian emergency — overrides every other consideration, exactly as in the Hospital standard.
The Universal Floor
A small number of criteria apply in full, in every one of the four types, with no exceptions, regardless of facility size: basic hygiene facilities genuinely available and clean, exercise equipment genuinely calibrated and maintained, fire safety, real consideration of disability access, and a clear smoking policy. Small does not mean a lower safety floor — it means a narrower scope of services on top of the same, unchanged floor.
Which Type of Fitness & Wellness Facility Are You?
Answer these questions in order, top to bottom. The moment you answer YES, stop — that is your answer. If you reach the end still answering NO, you are Standard.
| WORK DOWN THIS LIST. STOP AT YOUR FIRST YES. | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Is your country in an active war, armed conflict, or a declared humanitarian emergency right now? This means fighting, displacement, or a declared emergency is actually happening now — not that things are generally difficult. |
☐ YES → CR CRISIS |
☐ NO → next question |
| 2 | Does your national government struggle badly to fund healthcare, or is national power or medicine supply unreliable — even though there is no war or crisis? This is about your country as a whole, not just your own facility. |
☐ YES → TR TRANSITIONAL |
☐ NO → next question |
| 3 | Do you have 3 or fewer service-providing staff — trainers, instructors, specialists, not administrative or cleaning staff — and is that the main reason you cannot offer certain services? A facility with a swimming pool, multiple floors, or on-site medical staff is Standard regardless of this count. This applies even in a stable, well-funded country. The limit here is genuine staffing scale, not the safety floor, which stays the same. |
☐ YES → SM SMALL |
☐ NO → next question |
| If you answered NO to all three questions above: You are STANDARD (ST) — no crisis, no national constraint, and staffing depth is not holding you back. |
|||
THIS IS ME
| My type: ☐ CR ☐ TR ☐ SM ☐ ST |
Example: A three-person Pilates studio in rural Moldova — no active conflict, so NO to question 1. National healthcare funding is genuinely unreliable, so YES to question 2. Stop there. This studio is TR.

Fitness & Wellness Standards — overviewFacility Classification — Which Type of Facility Are You?Standard 1 — Pre-Participation Screening & Risk AssessmentStandard 2 — Exercise Supervision & Instructor QualificationStandard 3 — Emergency Preparedness & Cardiac Event ResponseStandard 4 — Equipment Safety & Facility EnvironmentStandard 5 — Program Design & IndividualizationStandard 6 — Member Rights & Informed ConsentStandard 7 — Governance & StaffingStandard 8 — Medical TourismReferences & Index
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