The newest trend for certified fitness professionals is to take their skills, hard work, and effort and throw it all on the world wide web – that’s right, online personal training and online fitness coaching are taking the personal training world by storm.
Personally, we love this trend.
We think it’s incredibly helpful for accessibility, reaching new audiences, and helping you to branch out and become even more profitable. If you’re a little bit unsure of what online fitness coaching really entails, let us break it down for you.
Online fitness coaching is a growing phenomenon that’s leading certified personal trainers away from the gym and onto computer screens. It’s a way to reach clients without them ever having to step foot into your gym with you to be coached by you.
Online fitness coaching gifts you with the opportunity to maintain clients, add new ones, and totally revitalize your brand of fitness coaching.
The best part? You’ll never be affected by a location (yours or your clients).
This type of coaching gives you tons of flexibility, versatility, and accessibility.
That being said, online personal training or online fitness coaching can look really different for everyone depending on the goals they want to accomplish, what they want to offer online, and how they want to coach their clients online.
Some personal trainers have taken their fitness coaching entirely online while others simply have a hybrid business. Either way, moving your personal training business online (in any capacity) can be hugely beneficial in a number of ways.
Here’s what we think about online personal training.
How to Get Your Online Fitness Coaching Business Going
Check On Your Certification
If you’re already a certified personal trainer, then you’re on the fast track to getting your online fitness coaching business up and running. If you’re looking to become an online fitness coach but don’t have your certification, that’s your first step.
Find Your Niche
Online fitness coaching is sort of a niche all its own, and you really don’t have to limit yourself. But, it does help to establish yourself and your brand if you find a niche. Perhaps you already have one thanks to your social media presence or in-the-gym personal training. But if not, take some time to figure out what your niche is, who your target audience is, and how and why you want to help them.
Market Yourself & Let Your Clients Know
This might seem super overwhelming, but guess what, we can help with this, too. Check out our article about marketing 101 for certified personal trainers. You can thank us later. Make sure you’re hitting your clients and prospective clients from all marketing angles. Consider email marketing, e-books, social media marketing, the whole shebang.
The Top Three Benefits of Online Fitness Coaching
Moving your personal training business over to online fitness coaching (either entirely or partially) can be incredibly beneficial to both you and the clients you get to serve in a bunch of different ways.
Flexibility
For starters, the biggest benefit (we think) of online fitness coaching is the dramatic increase in flexibility. You don’t always (or ever) have to be in a gym meeting up with a client — you can conduct your session live or send them over a pre-recorded session that they can play when they’re ready to exercise. You’re never going to be pigeonholed because of a location (yours or your clients), so you can work with people who live across the state, the country, even the globe. Further, you’re better able to control your own schedule.
If you’re working your online fitness coaching business with the goal to build a schedule that you determine, you’re able to accomplish work when you want, schedule time with clients when you want, and record sessions or do live sessions when you want.
More Clients (More Money)
Typically, online fitness coaching gives you the ability to take on more clients. You’re not trying to fit a dozen clients into the physical gym in a single day, and often, you’re pre-recording sessions that might be beneficial to several different clients at once. More clients typically means more money, so you’re opening yourself up to the opportunity to take on more clients and make a bigger profit. But more seriously, you’re also able to help more people and more diverse audiences without overdoing it for yourself.
Adaptable Plans with Customizable Options
When you’re running an online fitness coaching business, it’s usually easier to offer a few different services and tiers to several different clients. Maybe you want to offer meal-planning guides, general workouts, and specific, custom workouts tailored to a specific client —you can do all that and more with an online fitness coaching business. Allowing clients to pay certain prices for certain services is much easier online because the delivery is easier.
If you’re looking to write up a complete fitness nutrition guide, you can do that and deliver it all via email. If you want to customize a pre-recorded workout for clients with specific goals, you can do that on your own time instead of having to meet with them (at their convenience) at the gym. If you want to have a live session with clients, you can do that, too.
