I’m about to tell you something new about yourself.
You’re on a Spectrum — and, until now, you weren’t aware it existed.
I know I sound crazy, but hear me out, because what I’m going to tell you could alter the course of your career.
I developed The Personal Training Spectrum while trying to define online personal training to fitness professionals.
In those conversations,I noticed that, when talking about online personal training, many fitness coaches assumed online personal training meant completely giving up in-person training and switching to 100% online training.
But that’s not what I meant.
I knew I had to describe online training differently if I wanted trainers to be able to take advantage of it and increase their freedom, impact, and account balances.
Enter The Spectrum, also known as “The Personal Training Spectrum.”
The Spectrum is two things:
- A range of of business and coaching aspects that all fitness professionals should consider
- A scaling model for fitness professionals.
Let’s talk about what The Spectrum actually looks like. Imagine with me for a second.
The far left is 100% in person face to face training services.The far right is 100% online personal training products. In the middle is a 50/50 combination of online and in-person training services and products. (I call this the Hybrid Model. More on that later.)
This might surprise you, but the truth is, all of us are doing “online” training in some form.
Do you use your phone or computer to text, email, schedule, or bill clients?
After over 10 years in the fitness industry, I’ve yet to meet a coach who doesn’t.
Mention online training to another fitness professional and watch what happens.
They’ll likely jump to the far right of The Spectrum and assume you’re talking about 100% online training, where you never interact face-to-face with clients.
While that’s not a bad place to be (You can work whenever, wherever you want and live your ideal lifestyle.), that’s not what I mean when I say “online personal training.”
We all use technology to help our coaching businesses. The real training method the majority of us use is closer to a Hybrid Training Model.
By that, I mean we use a combination of in-person and online training. Tech is very important for streamlining your workflow and scaling your workload.
It lets us stay connected to our clients, so we can provide the support, engagement, accountability, and motivation they need to succeed.
As our business needs grow and we need to scale to balance our time and increase profits, we begin moving to the right of the spectrum. Technology becomes a larger and more dominant part of our business.
“So — what the hell is online personal training then?”
Online personal training includes any technology you add to your business to help interact with or train clients.
For example, that means text, calls, emails, billing or scheduling software, and online training software like GymCloud.
You get to decide where you’d like to be on the spectrum, but there are benefits and drawbacks to each extreme you should be aware of.
Benefits and Drawbacks of In-Person Training (Left side of The Spectrum)
Again, the far left of the spectrum is in-person training.
The benefits of in-person training are that you can provide hands-on guidance and run in-person drills to help clients understand difficult techniques.
Beyond that, there’s a certain element of in-person, human connection that can’t be matched by any video chat software, no matter how clear the picture is.
There are two main drawbacks to training mostly on the left side of the spectrum..
- It has an income ceiling. There’s a limit to how much money you can make.
And guess what?
It’s directly tied to how many clients you can train in a day, week, month, quarter, year etc.
- A high volume of personal training sessions eventually takes a toll on your body, causing burnout, which might force you to slow down or stop altogether.
This typically happens when you’re training clients between 20-30 hours per week.
Benefits and Drawbacks of Online Training (Right side of The Spectrum)
One of the main benefits of online training is that it enables you to train more people. Anyone you encounter becomes a potential client.
Beyond that, it lets you work wherever you want — whenever you want, which is great for anyone who travels (or wants to travel) regularly or who works at home.
Now let’s talk about the disadvantages of online training. There’s one main problem here.
Online training sounds enticing to many trainers who want to be more efficient with their businesses, but most of them have no idea where to begin or how to progress.
The path to success isn’t clear. There are so many questions to answer.
What technologies should you use? How do you actually sell your programs? How do you get your current clients online?
And that’s where software like GymCloud really helps. We’ve streamlined the online training process for you so you can focus on training your clients and not setting up business processes etc.
Benefits and Drawbacks of the Hybrid Model
This is where most of us are. We use some online training practices, but we’re not 100% online yet.
The benefit to the Hybrid model is that it lets you take advantage of the positive aspects of both sides of The Spectrum.
You get the benefits of training clients in-person with the convenience of some of the streamlining aspects of online training. And as you move further to the right of The Spectrum, you may begin training some clients online, which means anyone you meet is a potential client.
Sounds good, right?
It is. But it’s not without drawbacks.
With the Hybrid model, you’re still training clients in-person, which means you’re still tied to those clients’ schedule and location. You have to be available when and where they need you. That means you have less control of your business and your lifestyle.
Some trainers prefer to stay within the Hybrid Model, because it provides a lot of flexibility. And other trainers work to move as far to the right of The Spectrum as possible, so they can enjoy a new level of freedom and impact with as many clients as they want, in any location they choose.
The best part? You get to choose.
Where are you on The Spectrum?
Where do you want to be?
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