How to Become a Successful Online Personal Trainer
Some of most of the successful people in the world have spoken highly of working with their coach, you’ll find everything from online marketing, sales and of course life coaching as more and more people look for guidance. Coaches can get the best out of you, and this is the key thing to remember when first moving online as a trainer. Results matter with the normal face to face trainer setting but even more so when moving online, you need to ensure you really are creating value.
There are many advantages to becoming an online trainer and the most obvious one being the removal of geographical and locational. barriers to getting new PT clients to train. The days for clients only having the trainer that’s in their local gym guiding their health and fitness success are gone and you truey can train with anyone you want in the world and more importantly with someone who specializes in what you need.
Online personal training is not anything new and if you’re reading this then you’ve taken some time to think about your next steps in earnming more money from your PT business, but also I am guessing you’ve thought of how to save more time for your own personal life.
Always remember though that online training is not going to be for everyone and their will be niche markets that you’ll need to focus on and cater too on their terms and their conditions. For those living in small towns with a limited number of gyms and personal trainers, online training could be the best option and for you the trainer could as an example be a first point to focus on if looking at a niche place to start marketing.
Clients may still prefer the face-to-face training, this will never change (until technology catches up), however other clients do better with online training or prepackaged online workouts because it gives them more flexibility in scheduling workouts, rather than trying to work around a trainer’s schedule.
Ok, so let’s deep dive into the do’s, don’ts and what the differences are in personal training online…
What is online personal training?
Online personal training is the capability to train (or guide) clients specificall online using everything from social media, email or other recent applications. Basically you are not seeing your clients face to face, unless you are on a video call. To date you’ll notice many trainers call them selves ‘online coaches’ rather than trainers to differentiate the difference between training them – being their and showing exercises and coaching them – creating a guide for the client to follow. Luckily for you, you can infact do both. Tools such as MyPTHub enable you to create guides for clients whilst applications such as Remotecoach.fit enable you to also train them in live time In a specific live online training session.
Which ever route you take you’ll be expected to offer 1–2–1 contact time to your client – just as you get at the gym – except all conversations are done online. Exercise check ins with updates are generally done either once per week or once per month but you can create your own custom packages.
The marketplace and offerings for cients are a dime a dozen with apps offering ondemand fitness more than ever before, but as you know from your training clients on the gym floor, clients don’t need more offerings they need guidance and accountability.
For a cient It offers many of the same benefits live trainers offer – tips on good form, coaching, encouragement – without the expense or trouble of heading to a gym.
What are the con’s?
If you are moving your business online, don’t think you’re suddenly one week in going to be sat on a beach somewhere sipping on pina coladas. As with any business it’s going to take time, effort and clear vision of what you will be offering.
If you’re not using a tool like RemoteCoach.fit and moving more into the sending of online programs, then ensure the exercises are easy to follow and ensure you have set the clients expectations from the start – people expect results!
Clients will need your attention, be ready for this. It’s a natural reaction for more questions to be thrown at you and you should be prepared for this on a daily basis. The usual questions that would have been answered in the hour long session you had with them will be on the tip of their tongue a personal tip I always recommend is to set time parameters on having feedback with clients, if you don’t want to be messaged by 7pm then make that known from the start.
References:
Catherine SL. A personal trainer, right in your iPod. New York Times. Jan 19 2006. Available from: https://search.proquest.com/docview/433253376?accountid=167112.
Enfield L. The personal computer personal trainer FITNESS: Busy professionals are hoping to get in shape using the internet, says liz enfield: LONDON 1ST EDITION]. Financial Times. Sep 03 2005:5. Available from: https://search.proquest.com/docview/249483125?accountid=167112.
Gondo N. Step up your workout with online trainers. Investor’s Business Daily. Oct 18 2000:1. Available from: https://search.proquest.com/docview/1026809121?accountid=167112.
Parker-Pope T. The online personal trainer: A guide to getting workout advice via email. Wall Street Journal. Jul 26 2005. Available from: https://search.proquest.com/docview/398944078?accountid=167112.
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