How Thrive Fitness Built an Average LEG of 5+ Years

About Thrive Fitness

Abby Graham opened Thrive Fitness in Mickleton, NJ in December 2015, but her athletic story starts long before that. She was an athlete her whole life, earned a degree in exercise science, and started her career working with athletes at a sports performance facility.

Then she found CrossFit in 2012. It aligned well with her inner competitor initially, but after three years, what pulled her toward the idea of gym ownership wasn’t competition. It was the people who weren’t sure they belonged.

“I loved being able to work with everyday people,” she said. “I always kind of envisioned my gym as a place for the outcasts, the ones that are like, ‘Hey, I don’t know if I fit in here. Everyday people that just want to get in shape, just want to be fit, just want to change their lives, and not be judged by other people.”

That inclusive culture is still at the heart of Thrive. What sets the gym apart today is how everyone trains. Abby writes all of Thrive’s programming herself, and over the years she’s shifted the gym toward strength training, with plenty of full-body strength days built into group classes.

The goal is programming that Abby says “will get you stronger, will get you more fit, but won’t necessarily crush you every day.”

Thrive runs on three revenue streams:

• Group classes, the original offering
• Personal training
• Semi-private training, where groups of under six people each get their own workout and one coach guides everyone through it

These days, Abby spends most of her time overseeing the business. A head coach handles most of the coaching along with plenty of other responsibilities around the gym, supported by part-time coaches. Abby still coaches a few personal clients because she likes staying connected to the OGs of her gym.

The Win: Members That Stay for 5+ Years

Ask Abby what she’s most proud of after nearly 11 years, and she doesn’t point to a big expansion or a membership milestone. She points to the evolution of her program.

“When I started as a young person, you get kind of excited by all this intensity, and we had so much fun, and I don’t regret any of that,” she says. “But what we’re able to offer people right now is something that they can do for the rest of their lives, and be happy, and see results.”

Don’t confuse that with taking it easy on the gym floor.

“People hear ‘programming for longevity’ and think, ‘Oh, don’t train hard.’ That’s not true,” Abby says. “We still train hard, but we dose it in a different way.”

Thrive keeps a weekly capacity day, the traditional high-intensity workout, once a week instead of five. Intensity also shows up in shorter doses, like at the end of a session.

“You do need to train hard, but you also need to recover hard. That’s part of the equation.”

It’s working and her numbers since then tell the story:

• 3 to 5% MRR growth every year for roughly the past five years since making the change
• An average length of engagement (LEG) of around five years, with a good chunk of members who’ve been with Abby since day one

In an industry where plenty of gyms would celebrate a 12-month LEG, five years is a big deal. And it comes down to how Thrive brings people in.

“Once we get people onboarded and really put them in the frame of mind of what our training is about, we typically get a pretty long stay with them,” Abby says.

Want to stretch your own LEG? Here’s how to put Abby’s approach to work in your CrossFit affiliate or functional fitness gym:

• Always be coaching. Abby borrows this from an industry leader she follows, and it’s her number one tip. People come for the environment, but they stay because they get better. Invest in educating yourself and your coaches on movement so everyone on your floor can explain what you’re doing and why.
• Always be connecting. Say every member’s name. Check in on the floor. Dot your i’s and cross your t’s. “People want to feel connected,” Abby says. “They want to feel like they’re not just another number.” Then lead by example so your whole team does it too.
• Dose intensity, don’t drop it. Look at your weekly programming. If every day is a max-effort day, try one dedicated high-intensity day and build the rest of the week around strength and recovery. Members will still work hard, and they’ll be able to keep showing up for years.
• Onboard people into your “why.” Thrive’s long LEG starts in the first weeks. Use your intro and onboarding process to explain your training philosophy so new members know what results to expect and why the program is built the way it is.
• Make progress visible. Results keep people around, but only if members can see them. Get your members logging scores and lifts so you can pull up their numbers and show them exactly how far they’ve come.

Wodify’s Role: Simplification and Bringing Back the Leaderboard

Abby’s history with Wodify goes way back. She was one of the earliest gyms to use it, and Thrive ran on Wodify for its first several years. Then she switched to PushPress and stayed for about five years before coming back to Wodify in January 2026.

What she remembered most from the early days was the community Wodify created.

“It does a really good job at bringing community, just in the leaderboards and how easy it is to log people’s numbers,” she says. Her members always wanted to put in their scores and check the leaderboard. She said it’s not about competition but accountability.

“As a gym owner, when clients are like, ‘I don’t know if I’m getting any better,’ you pull up their stats and you’re like, ‘Yo, look, you came from this, and this is what we’re doing now,'” Abby says. “It’s so few times in life that we get to say, ‘This is a great thing that I’m doing. I’ve accomplished something.'”

At PushPress, that feeling faded. Logging wasn’t easy, so members stopped logging. Programming workouts wasn’t as fluid as she wanted. And the tech stack kept growing.

“At one point, I had like five apps on my phone and on my coaches’ phones,” she says. “I was like, I do not want another app on my phone, I don’t want to tell my coaches to download another app, and I don’t want to tell my clients to download another app.”

For a strength and conditioning gym, that tracking gap can be detrimental. “Strength-wise, you do have to log those things,” Abby says. “You want it to be easily implemented in what you’re giving your members. Like, ‘Hey, simply just put your number in here.'”

She’s honest that switching software can seem overwhelming on the front end.

“I had to get to a point where I was ready for it and had the capacity to make the change.” Her theme for 2026 made the decision for her: “My theme is to simplify everything.”

Here’s what that looks like with Wodify:

• One app for everyone. Owners, coaches, and members are all in one place, instead of five apps on every phone.
• Easy score logging and leaderboards. Members log their numbers, see their progress, and get that sense of accomplishment back.
• Member management and CRM together. Leads, sales, marketing, and retention live in one spot, so Abby and her coaches can all see what’s going on. “When you have coaches working for you on different things, having it all in one spot makes your life a lot easier,” she says.
• Systems that run themselves. In addition to seamless billing and scheduling, Abby builds workflows so tasks just get done. “I’m gonna set up this workflow so it’s just done,” she says. “It’s in our system.”

That simplicity is setting Thrive up for what’s next. Abby wants steady growth, continued refinement of the program, and more opportunities to educate members. Her biggest goal is adding a second full-time coach. Coaching is a tough career path with a lot of part-time roles, and Abby has lived that.

“Being able to provide an opportunity for somebody to have a life, and also provide this awesome product for people to see results,” she says. “That combination is a good motivating factor.”

To learn more about Thrive Fitness, visit the website here.

To book a demo with the Wodify team, click here.