Personal training on the gym floor is a wonderful and rewarding career. You get to help people to extend the length and quality of their lives. You help them to develop the confidence they didn't think possible. You guide people to rediscover the joy and energy in their lives.
But much of what you do requires being physically present in the gym to guide, support and train your clients. When this isn’t possible, you may need to find other ways to help your clients. Here are some suggestions on how you might be able to earn money when delivering in-person sessions isn't possible for you.
Online personal Training
Online personal training is a one to one service you provide individually for each client. It's built around their needs, current fitness, movement patterns, and lifestyle. Online personal training allows you to provide a service that clients can access 24/7. We regularly see trainers report even better results with their clients from online coaching than face to face. This can generally be attributed to the extra coaching available and the fact clients can be given reminders, coaching, and training throughout the week rather than feel limited to a couple of training sessions.If that's something you've been considering for some time, the features PT Distinction offers might be what you need.
Membership Portal
Building an online platform where you provide pre made programs, habit coaching, and assessments would allow you to serve more people at a lower price. Clients can login via your website and chose the programs and coaching that suits them best.It could also be a compelling additional service that you offer to your in-person clients in a version of hybrid training. In that setup, clients still attend sessions with you face to face, while the membership portal will give them additional support for at-home workouts, nutrition habits and many more.
There are a few ways you can get started by setting up membership features to your audience within your personal trainer website.
You create content and add to hidden web pages then you add a paywall that gives them access to the paid features. This option is a bit passive as your members will consume your content and will be able to interact with you on other platforms.
Another way of setting up a membership feature is to develop a branded app or portal they could use on multiple devices, laptops, tablets or their phone with in-built messaging. That will add a unique selling point to your brand. If you wanted to hire a developer, it would take you a while and cost you a fortune to get such an app launched, but PT Distinction allows you to easily set all of this up very quickly and easily.
Creating New Services
Adapting your services into an entirely new format could be a way that you could uniquely deliver training to suit some of your clients. You might consider video-based personal training sessions which are pre-recorded. You could then store them as individual workouts on your website, or add them to PT Distinction and deliver them to your clients as programs or coaching videos.You could also consider live streaming workouts which have the benefit of providing your client with a real-time structure in the session and allow them to schedule your appointment in their diary. It seems to be something that many in-person clients value.
You may need to consider the available software options and whether one-way broadcasting is enough, or if you need to be able to interact in real-time and see their movements to give them feedback too.
Check Available Funding Opportunities
If you're unable to work during the COVID-19 pandemic, there may be support available from your local government. Check the official advice and the updates regularly.Ensure you speak to the landlord or the gym manager to find out how you can get your gym rent frozen.
There may be relief from mortgage payments available from banks and rental agreements from your landlord. You can speak to your particular bank for guidance on what to do in your specific circumstances.
If you need to take a payment holiday from other contracts that you're in, such as mobile phone providers, debt management companies, or other organisations, there is advice available. Refer to your government website where there is advice for what to do for financial relief during the Coronavirus pandemic.
A Note on Personal Training
Personal training should always be personal. But that doesn't mean that it still has to be in-person and face to face. For some people, this may be your preferred way to work. You may thrive off the structure of having allocated appointment times, and the energy of the gym.But perhaps you're restricted by the number of hours you can work in a day. Maybe your personal training business has to fit around other commitments, like your family, or even something as simple as limited opening hours of the gym you use.
Considering an online or hybrid option can protect your income if you fall ill or get pregnant, or have to manage your business around a worldwide pandemic. It allows you to continue to provide an exceptional level of service to your clients on a schedule that works for you both. The team at PT Distinction is committed to helping all personal trainers who are considering to venture into the online training space, so feel free to get on the free trial and get in touch for support.
