UPROOTING FROM LONDON TO BECOME AN OPEX COACH
Mark Brockhurst: Uprooting from London to become an OPEX coach
Mark Brockhurst’s entire life changed when he took the OPEX Coach Certificate Program (CCP).
Not only did it change the course of his life professionally, the 32-year-old Brockhurst said CCP helped him grow on a personal level, as well.
“It made me realize I wasn’t getting what I wanted from my life. It changed the way I deal with not just my clients, but (also) the people close to me—my wife and the rest of my family,” he said. “Learning new ways to communicate with them has helped me build better relationships.”
On a professional level, Brockhurst said it was immediately obvious to him that the OPEX model was the way forward career-wise.
“Once you learn what you learn in CCP, you can’t go back to group training,”
Mark Brockhurst
“Once you learn what you learn in the CCP, you can’t go back to group training,” said Brockhurst, a former CrossFit affiliate owner in England, who got involved in coaching fitness in 2012.
As a result, Brockhurst made a career move that allows him to put all he learned during the CCP to use. He uprooted his life in London, England and moved to Arizona to coach at OPEX North Scottsdale.
“I wanted to work at a facility that actually allows me to do something I’m passionate about in a way that actually helps my clients,” he said. This wasn’t possible in a group class environment, he added.
“In the group, you have 16 people in a session all with one program and you’re constantly trying to tweak or scale or alter the workout to suit them. And it’s like, ‘OK, you’re here for body composition, and we have power cleans and assault bike sprints today.’ I was always trying to get people to resonate with a program that didn’t fit with what they want,” he said.
Brockhurst added: “I got sick of tweaking things and giving Band-Aid solutions. It’s exhausting for a coach trying to work in that environment.”
Even when Brockhurst did get to know his clients on a deeper level in the group model—when he found out personal things about their lives—he didn’t really have a solution to help them, he explained.
“I’d find out all this information about them, but I didn’t have an avenue to help them deal with their problems,” he said. “It was draining getting the information from them, but then not being able to provide them a service to match it.”
Not only that, in order to make a living as a group class coach, Brockhurst had to run himself into the ground. Read more about the economics of coaching here.
“If you want to make half-decent money, you have to work every hour under the sun,” he said. “I used to work at two different gyms just to make enough hours. Living in London, you need to make a decent wage to live anywhere near the city, so I needed multiple jobs to keep my head above water.”
In the months prior to his move, Brockhurst branched off from the group model and to gain experience working both on-site and remotely with individual program design clients, but his ultimate goal was still to work at an OPEX facility, a goal he’s now finally fulfilling. Learn the basics of individual design here.
“I’m most looking forward to the connection you build with your clients and having a chance to provide a service I believe in,” he said of the new job in Arizona.
“Knowing that I’m providing a service that resonates with the client, instead of manipulating a template, is way more rewarding as a coach.”
OPEX Fitness’ main mission is to educate coaches like Brockhurst. With this being get a free introduction to our coaching principles today by signing up for the Free Professional Coaching Blueprint.
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