How to become an online personal trainer

What is online training?

First things first, what are the key differences between face-to-face and online personal training?

Traditional personal training

In a traditional personal training model, coaches work either 1:1 or in groups with their clients, either from a single or multiple locations. This can be time consuming, limiting in terms of the number of clients you can take on, and, frankly, very hard work.

Remote coaching

Online personal training is exactly as the title suggests. You take elements of your existing personal training business and you offer it up to a (much bigger) online market.

The internet’s not a new thing, so if you’re a personal trainer, chances are there’s already an online element to your business. Do you send out post coaching session follow-up emails? Do you communicate with your clients via WhatsApp or a Facebook group to offer tips and additional help with training when you’re not there? These are both ways of offering online personal training services. But what if you wanted to operate entirely online?

What are the benefits of being a remote fitness coach?

This isn’t an exhaustive list but these are what we consider to be the main benefits of operating your personal training business online.

Work with more clients

One of the issues with personal training in the traditional sense is that it doesn’t allow you to reach your true potential for success as a trainer. Firstly, it limits the pool of people you’re able to offer your services to. For instance, if you live in Manchester, you couldn’t be training someone in Brighton in the morning and someone in Aberdeen in the afternoon, unless you’ve also invented a teleportation machine in your spare time. Secondly, you only have a limited amount of time, and once you’re already working as many hours a week as you physically can, the potential for growth stops.

Online personal training is a whole different ball game - the minute you start training online, your potential market expands dramatically and once you’re all set up, the time you have to spend on each client reduces.

More money, more free time

This is what it’s all about, right? You want to grow your business but can’t work 90 hours a week in order to do so. Online personal training and coaching can help you reduce the amount of time you’re putting into your business whilst simultaneously boosting your earning potential.

Work from anywhere

Fancy travelling the world for a year? Or moving to the city? Or do you simply not want to travel to work every day? Move your personal training business online and you can do it from anywhere; from Bali to Birmingham to your own backyard, the choice is yours.

Make your fitness programs work harder for you

One of the joys of online training is that you can create bespoke or universal workout plans then use the content again and again for new clients. Even with bespoke plans, some of your content can be reused, cutting down the time you have to spend on each of your clients.

Give your clients more flexibility

What if one of your clients usually trains with you on a Tuesday morning but they really want to work out on Friday this week? If your schedule is already jam-packed then chances are this isn’t going to be possible. With online personal training you can deliver the content to the client whenever they need it, and they can work with you at a time that’s convenient for them.

Make money while you sleep

This is the holy grail of running your own business. What could be better than going to bed, and waking up to find you’ve enrolled and trained a load of new clients overnight, and the money for the sessions has already arrived in your account? Online personal training allows people to access your plans even when you’re in the land of nod, so if you fancy a lie-in, no problem!

How to start a remote coaching business

It might seem daunting, but it’s really very easy to set everything up, especially if you’ve got the power of FITR Training behind you.

Find your niche

Online personal training works best when you’ve identified the type of person you want to work with, or the issues they’re looking to address, so you can build targeted plans. This doesn’t mean you can’t build completely bespoke plans for some people, but it does allow you to focus on an area you’re good at or that particularly interests you, whilst appealing to a targeted group of people who are likely to use your plans.

Create your online brand/persona

It’s very easy to get your personality and style across when you’re working face-to-face and there’s no reason why working online should be any different. Because you can create video-based content, it’s easy to do it in a style that appeals to the type of people you want to train with.

Doing it the FITR Training way

Why are we the best choice to start or grow your online personal training business? We’ll tell you why!

Create your plans

Once you have an outline of the training plan you want to create, all you need to do is make that plan available electronically. You could consider using written plans with pictures for your clients to follow but by far the most popular way to train is via video tutorials. FITR Training makes this easy, providing all the tools you need to create professional automated and bespoke plans, tailored to your business and your clients.

Promote and deliver your plans

Now for the exciting bit! Start shouting about your training plans via your social media, your website, to existing clients and within FITR Training. You can sign clients up to automated plans, or create and schedule bespoke training to individuals using FITR Training's live 1:1 coaching mechanism. Just because you’re not there in person doesn’t mean your training can’t be personal.

Feedback and progress

Once you’re using FITR Training we allow you to track your clients’ progress and PBs, adjust their plans to suit any changing needs (or if you just fancy working them a bit harder for a few sessions) and sell follow-on training after they’ve completed a plan. You can also use our chat function, giving your clients the personal experience they expect from a coach. All of these features are designed to build and maintain the relationships between you and your athletes and ultimately grow your business way beyond anything you could imagine when you were training the traditional way.

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