How Many Clients CAn You Work with As a Fitness Coach?

As a new coach getting your first couple of clients can be exciting and scary at the same time. While you may want to jump right into the deep end and work with as many clients as possible OPEX Fitness Founder, James FitzGerald, urges coaches to only work with the number of clients their business model can support.

In this week’s Ask Me Anything (AMA) sneak peek James FitzGerald gives new coaches advice on how many clients they should start working with.If you’re currently enrolled in the OPEX Coaching Certificate Program (CCP) you can submit your question for James to answer in next week’s AMA here. New to OPEX Fitness? Get a free introduction to our coaching methodologies here.

The Number of Clients and Business Model

Before beginning to work with clients a coach must think about their business model—the service that the coach is offering. Different business models work better with different numbers of clients. What does this mean? Think about what the coach is offering. If it’s 24/7 availability then they will have to work with fewer clients. If it is access to a large group class in a large facility then they can work with more clients.  

Haven’t defined your business model yet? Get an introduction to the business of coaching when you sign up for this free coaching course.

General Guidelines for Client Numbers Based on Business Model

Personal Training – In this model a coach can work with around 16 clients. Say each client works out 3 days a week and the coach works 10 hour days 5 days a week. That’s 16 clients.

Group Fitness – Let’s say a coach teaches 5 classes a day with 15 clients per class and works 5 days per week. In this model, a coach could work with 75-100 clients assuming the clients do multiple classes per week. Learn the downsides to the group fitness model in this blog series.

OPEX Gym –  New coaches and gym-owner coaches can work successfully with 20-30 clients, sustainably and profitably. If a coach is only a coach and has no other responsibilities in the business they could coach up to 50 people. Gym-owner coaches (solopreneurs) should limit themselves to 30 clients as they will need time for administrative work. Learn more about the OPEX Gym model here.

Remote Coaches – These are coaches that only work with clients online. These coaches can work with anywhere from 50-80 clients. These coaches can work with so many clients because they are not spending any time on the gym floor.

Measure Retention and Churn

The number of clients a coach has is only as good as the number of clients they can keep. That is why we teach coaches the importance of calculating retention rate (the number of clients they are keeping each month) and their churn (the number of clients they are losing each month). Get introduced to the concept of retention and churn and how it impacts the number of clients you can coach when you download this free coaching course.