Being able to offer personal training sessions online has never been more crucial. Whether this is a side hustle for a personal trainer or you make your living as an online fitness professional, online sessions offer trainers and clients greater flexibility than ever before. 

As an online personal trainer, you should still employ the same routine as a regular in-person session. This starts with the very first client conversations where you help clients get honest with their health histories, expound on illnesses or injuries, and set realistic goals based on their baseline data. Online sessions should never skip this important step and require trainers to be all the more vigilant during the session to keep a watchful eye over their client. 

With a solid program and steady participation, you can achieve great fitness results for clients and never even have a face to face interaction. This drastically improves your ability to target specific segments – wherever they may be across the nation or even around the world. For example, you may cater to student-athletes or perhaps you prefer geriatric fitness, but in any case, you can tailor your services and your marketing to match these demographics.

There are hundreds of thousands of accidents that occur each year that are fitness related but for the most part statistics on accidents with personal trainers usually focus on traditional, in-person training sessions. However, even as an online personal trainer, you will still face many of the same liabilities as your in-person counterparts.

Insurance is your protection against liabilities and other forms of loss that can befall you at some point during a career. The areas with the highest risk are given the highest limits. For online personal trainer insurance, this pertains to general and professional liability. These two forms of insurance cover claims related to the services you provide, as well as the general act of you conducting business.

Let’s look over why our virtual trainer liability insurance coverages offer the greatest level of protection for professionals offering live online personal training: 

• General liability insurance: coverage for third party claims for injuries or damage to property that occurred simply from you offering services. As the “slip and fall” insurance this typically relates to a physical space but consider this example – a client with a health condition that didn’t come up in their pre-session questionnaire suddenly passes out during your session and hits their head on the floor. Since they were in your online session at the time, they decide to file a lawsuit for all of their doctors bills.
• Professional liability insurance: coverage for injuries or property damage that come as a result of you specifically providing your service. Often called ‘malpractice insurance’ which literally means bad practice. These claims are related to a client that alleges your online fitness instruction hurt them or damaged their property in some way. A client may say that your fitness program left them with a hurt back which has required rehab. They may then make a demand that you pay for their bills and other costs like lost wages. When the client decides to file suit, now legal defense fees are necessary. Without professional liability insurance, all of these costs could be coming directly from your pocket.
• Product liability insurance: in fitness, gear and accessories are often vital components of the routine. If an accident occurs on a piece of equipment you instructed a client to use or with a product you recommended, you could face a claim related to product liability. That’s why our program provides all the way up to $1 million in total for these types of claims.
• Rental damages coverage: if damage were to occur to a space you were renting to provide your live, online training sessions, you would be covered up to $100,000 to cover the cost of repairs.
• Stolen equipment coverage: if a robbery by force were to take your vital fitness gear or even your camera and other video streaming equipment, you get up to $1,000 less a $250 deductible to help cover the costs to replace the items.
• Identity protection plan: by offering services as an online personal trainer, your increased online activity may also increase the risk of an identity theft taking place. If this were to occur, members get up to $25,000 to help restore their identity.

If you are considering getting your online personal training services covered by insurance, chances are good you are probably shopping around a little to see what your options are. Well, we hope we’ve saved you a little legwork by putting up a comparison of all our program has to offer right alongside the other leading names in online fitness insurance. Check out this side-by-side comparison and see how IFG stacks the weights when it comes to online personal trainer insurance.