BUSINESS MIGHT BE ON HOLD, BUT EDUCATION DOESN’T NEED TO BE
Sacha Lucas signed up for the OPEX Coach Certificate Program (CCP) last summer with the intention of making her way through the modules quickly.
But, because her days had her leaving her house at 5 a.m. to coach and not returning until the evening, getting through the course that she knew would make her a way better coach, always got bumped to the weekends. And often she needed time to recharge on the weekends, so she’d bump the education to the next week.
Her story is a familiar one: Sign up for an online course and then find ourselves with “no time” to finish it. Or at the very least, optional studying is the first thing we bump.
Then a global pandemic happened: Two months later, Lucas has finished the CCP, minus the final project, which she will resume once she can begin in-person training again in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where the UK-native is currently living and coaching.
With life still largely on hold, and many gyms still closed, now is the perfect time for education, said Lucas, whose clients include some members of the Saudi royal family.
“The minute I went on lockdown (two months ago), I made myself a little office and committed to it. I got through the program design portion quickly, and then went through it a second time to really solidify the information. I even did some further studying on the topic, and watched so many videos. There couldn’t be a better time for (education),” she said.
The same is true for Audrey Eaker. She signed up for the CCP basically right when lockdown began in March, and she has spent the last two months fully immersing herself in the course.
Eaker, who has her own personal training studio in Indiana where she had been training her 20 clients, agrees now is the best time to devote time to educating yourself so you’re a better coach when you are back up and running.
“I didn’t have a lot of extra time prior to the lockdown,” Eaker said. “So it worked out perfectly and I have been able to finish (all of the modules) early even.”
Both Lucas and Eaker both say they are way more confident in their knowledge and ability to help clients now than prior to the CCP.
“Before, I wasn’t really that confident in how to coach people remotely because I have always worked in a gym, so I kind of devalued the remote idea because so many people are online selling programs,” she said.
“But it’s not just a program I am selling. It’s a coach. It’s someone who keeps you aligned with what you actually want, and the CCP is helping me see how to do that with my clients. I feel a lot more confident now that I can really make a difference with the people I work with,” Eaker added.
For Lucas, the biggest takeaway from the CCP has been solidifying the concept that everyone is different, not just physically, but also mentally and emotionally.
“I always knew there wasn’t this one size fits all approach to fitness, but it has cemented in my head that everyone has completely different needs and needs to be approached in different ways. From the way you do a consultation to the assessment pieces, people will react in different ways and you need to be giving people what they need,” she said.
“The CCP has really prepared me. The consultation modules and the individual design stuff really teaches you how to program for different populations,” she said.
Eaker agrees.
“There is so much value in the individualizing of clients, and the CCP really gives you systems to follow that help you do this,” said Eaker, who has had experience coaching in the group model and as a personal trainer.
Best of all, Eaker is convinced the CCP will help her get what she has always wanted: A roadmap to becoming a professional coach. This means a full-time career coach, who is respected for her knowledge, and who can earn a professional wage for a lifelong career. This is something Eaker could never do as a personal trainer, who had to hold her dependent clients’ hands day-after-day.
“I want to be a professional in the industry,” she said. “And to do this, you can’t just continue to pour more and more time in without growing your business. You can only personal train so many people when they’re so dependent on you and require all this (in-person) time each week,” she said.
She added: “But understanding how to properly coach a client—that it’s not just a template, and that you have to individually design programs and build relationships with clients to help them be more independent—frees up your time and lets you build your business. And then you can actually impact more people.”
An investment in yourself is always money well spent. Sign up for our free coaching course today and get introduced to the same principles taught in our flagship course, The OPEX Coaching Certificate Program (CCP).
