It’s something that most coaches can get on board with from an ideological standpoint, but is undeniably a scary concept when speaking to coaches that have been told “retain retain retain” their entire professional coaching careers.

It takes patience, consistency, and time to grow your client load. This is the journey you sign up for when you become a fitness coach, so you have to approach it with a growth mindset.

Quitting your day job and launching your career as a professional coach may sound easy. But, for most new coaches actually finding clients to work with is harder than it seems. With more than 20 years of experience in the coaching industry, we (OPEX Fitness) have learned what works, and what doesn’t. Here are ten steps we use to help coaches get their first clients and your next few as well.

Fitness Coaching is unique, unlike other industries, the customer relationship does not end after the marketed good or service is sold. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Successful coaching businesses are dependent on the long term health of the relationship with the client. The ability to build these long term client relationships is the differentiator between professional coaches and group class instructors.

If you’re a coach, you probably agree that working with a new client requires way more energy than working with a veteran you have been coaching for five years.

The goal of this article is to provide you with some basic tips to improve efficiency within training programs for busy clients. Ideally, every human being should move every day, but in today’s world that is easier said than done. These basic principles are a great starting point for clients who may have a hard time establishing a base of consistency, when it comes to hitting the gym. This can be applied to any type of client looking to improve their overall health and fitness. 

When programming the AirBike for general population clients keep it simple. “For good health, most people need some form of good resistance training and easy aerobic work,” says FitzGerald. That’s where the AirBike comes in, as it does not require skill for a client to get an effective aerobic dose-response. While the fitness industry has popularized training the Pain system, with hard intervals, 99% of clients do not need this type of training. They simply need repeatable aerobic efforts, “easy” aerobic work. Learn what repeatable aerobic efforts look like for three modalities in this blog.

In this episode, James refers to functional fitness as mixed modal. By its definition, functional fitness is a mixture of different fitness modalities aptly referred to as mixed modal. It is also the name of James’ latest course that focuses specifically on the sport of competitive functional fitness. If you are an athlete or a coach of an athlete this is the course for you. Learn more here. 

Before you can begin to write a program you must ask yourself why do we need to move? Asking yourself this question is a great way to center yourself back on the purpose of exercising.

No matter which camp your clients belong to, sticking to their health and fitness goals during the holidays becomes increasingly difficult. Thankfully, there are a few simple things that you can give your clients to help them both enjoy the holidays and continue to progress towards their goals. Here are The Basic Lifestyle Guidelines, holiday edition.

For this to happen, the client needs a solution to his/her problem—to get and stay fit and healthy. The coach needs job fulfillment and an opportunity to make a professional wage so he can have a long-term career in fitness. And the business needs clients and coaches to stick around in order to be profitable.

We live in a world of instant gratification, Amazon packages show up at our door the day after they’re ordered, and meals are delivered to our homes at a click of a button. Clients are hooked on instant gratification and they bring this same mindset to fitness. You as a coach have probably seen the client James is referring to numerous times, clients that love fitness and want to perform intense exercise even though they do not have the prerequisites skills or strengths. You know as a coach they should not be participating in intense exercise but you feel the need to balance what they want with what they need. But, before you go begin to appease the client James prompts you to try to connect the client with their purpose for doing fitness.

Ahh, the elusive task of writing effective programs. As coaches, we are all interested in writing better, more intricate (program) designs as we learn and grow. After all, individual programs are the foundation that keep clients motivated to train–and keep them progressing through their fitness journey. 

At the beginning of the year you had a detailed plan to progress your client towards their goals in the gym. Then COVID-19 spread, and before you knew it the gym was closed and your client’s ability to train was limited. You were forced to adapt and now find yourself coaching your client through home workouts. While this may have forced you to abandon your original program, it does not mean all hope for progress is lost.

Nutrition is fairly simple when your clients are in a good rhythm–following a routine, buying the same food, cooking the same recipes, and going to the same grocery stores week after week. But what happens if something changes to that routine, i.e., they are forced to stay at home for an extended period? While it may seem like all hope for progress is lost, there are several things you can do to keep your clients progressing towards their nutritional goals during an extended time at home. 

Mixed Modal has become a popular style of training for metabolic conditioning workouts. Initially popularized by CrossFit gyms, the high intensity, time-dependant workouts involving multiple modalities can be found inside Globo gyms, athletic centers and fitness franchises around the world. 

It’s 2020, we have an instantaneous internet connection, can order food with the touch of a button, and we have limitless entertainment at our fingertips. So it’s no wonder that clients walk into gyms around the world every day wanting to transform their sedentary existence into athletic prowess in just a matter of weeks.