I agree that striving for balance is essential if you want to avoid burnout and have a lasting and fulfilling career as a fitness coach—but do you actually know how to create balance in your day-to-day life?

Rizzo began personal training, and dabbling in coaching group classes, in 2017 and found it challenging to build her client book big enough and charge enough money without burning out from working way too many hours a week. As a result, she kept coaching on a part-time basis and continued working a full-time job. 

It is fascinating how deeply ingrained that thought is in today’s society.  Now, we aren’t saying that those statements are wrong on a global level but, let’s be honest, you need to think about yourself as you go through this fitness equation.  

Cooking your own food is essential to reaching your fitness goals. Why? Because you have more control over the ingredients inside your food than if you ate at a local restaurant, also it’s the most economical and sustainable option.

Commonly found in functional fitness gyms, the AirBike is OPEX Fitness’ go-to method for testing our client’s work capacity. Based on James FitzGerald’s latest monthly Knowledge Series, an exclusive webinar for OPEX Coaching Certificate Program (CCP) Coaches, here is everything you need to know about the 10-minute max calories on the AirBike test.

“There’s no really bad answer—or I mean I guess there are bad answers—but what I mean is if someone asks me a question like, ‘What should I be eating?’ I’m not going to tell them, ‘You need to eat these three things and avoid this entirely.’ I will tell them, ‘It depends,” she explained. 

The question we tend to get this time of year — you know, a month into resolutions and everyone is jumping ship — is: How do I track my client’s nutritional behaviors? Whether a coach wants a client to track their macros or just make sure they drink enough water, properly tracking a client’s nutritional behaviors can be the difference between reaching goals and falling frustratingly short. Here are four steps, derived from the OPEX System of Coaching, we use to track nutritional behaviors.

“A lot of people in our industry are suffering right now. I coach a lot of other coaches, so seeing some of my clients, who are full-time personal trainers or CrossFit coaches, go through this horrific financial time, has created gratitude,” Lamb said.

There are times when the anaerobic or lactic energy system needs to be improved for some particular clients. Specifically, anaerobic energy training is necessary for clients participating in intense sports like competitive functional fitness or football in which the work is highly demanding and success is dependent on how well adapted their glycolytic system is to the volume and workload. Anaerobic energy system training is not entirely necessary nor should it be a priority for those whose goals are only to be healthy. In any case, it is important to know how to build this energy system with the right person at the right time especially since a coach will eventually have clients who want to compete in some fashion in mixed modality fitness.

Nutrition and behavior tracking is not just about weighing every gram of rice and obsessing over every step. When executed properly, tracking is a useful tool that can bring about realizations and positive changes in behaviors for many clients. If your client is struggling with compliance or progression in a specific area, tracking nutrition and behaviors may be the answer. Here is how to start doing just that with five different data points. 

“For several years, I wrote (and made up) my own workouts with a few other people from my gym. Once I realized I was not hitting my weaknesses though, I then thought an online program would help me do that, so I started following CompWOD. I made progress for a while but ended up stalling out after a few months. Not knowing enough about recovery, I tried to push harder and ended up with a major back injury,” Anthony said.

“I didn’t have much direction with my programming. I followed a basic template that I occasionally tweaked, but I was essentially wrecking myself every single day. I had the ‘more is better’ mentality, so my volume was excessively high and I could hardly keep up,” Exclusive Coaching client Cass Duffield said on her life ‘before OPEX’.

It’s organic in the sense that who you are and the actions you take create it. This implies that if you wish to change your gyms culture, you must first start with your personal behavior. Changing or aligning your actions to reflect your ambitions and aspirations in fitness will create your gyms culture. This has a trickle down effect on everything, even your business’ operation and culture.

Last month’s Knowledge Series, a members-only webinar, focused on the idea of how everyone responds differently to the stimulus of exercise. After studying this for more than 25 years James FitzGerald has come up with an equation that helps predict and explain the response someone will get from exercising. That equation: Intent + Modality + Person = Dose. This blog will explain each part of this equation giving you the ability to determine the correct stimulus your clients need to get results.

Crowell outlines competition broadly, to truly stand out a coach must know where they fall within the industry. Coaches are not just competing with other gyms but they’re competing with at-home workout options and large corporations. So, for a coach to truly succeed they must define their segment and define how they standout within the industry. Learn how to define your market and the business of coaching with this free mini-course.

In just four months, Robin Steyvers has managed to build a book of remote individual design clients to a financial level that he can live off of.

In fitness culture, puking in the midst of working out is often perceived as a badge of honor. Phrases like, “it’s weakness leaving the body” perpetuate the ideology that you’re only training hard when you are driven to the point of vomiting. This ideology can make clients work with a lack of awareness about their own physical abilities in an effort to ‘feel’ like they are working hard enough to receive the benefits of their training.

Sleep is an interesting phenomenon. For some it’s elusive, while others can’t get enough of it. But no matter if you sleep a sound 8 hours a night or struggle to get 3, there is no denying that for optimal health humans need sleep. Your clients are no exception. They need sleep to function optimally and reach their health goals. Here are six tips you can use to help your clients get better sleep.

Have you ever noticed how all clients communicate differently? Communication styles vary but, the two most common are masculine and feminine. These styles are not bound by gender and are not black and white, a client can use one or the other or a mixture of both. In order to communicate with all types of clients, a coach must understand the difference between the two, how to spot it, and how to adapt to each style.

“I was coaching eight group classes a day and it was painful,” said Velasquez, a native of Venezuela currently living in Colombia, referring to his days coaching group classes when he owned the first CrossFit affiliate in Venezuela.