Hybrid Personal Training: Effective and Efficient

Online personal training continues to grow and expand in the fitness industry. With such rapid growth in the online fitness world, personal training professionals are starting to develop a hybrid style of training to grow their businesses.

What is a Hybrid Trainer?

It's a combination of in-person training and online personal training. Fitness professionals who shift to become hybrid trainers work with clients face to face in the gym as well as through online training software. Personal training software supplies accountability, workout prescription, nutrition plans, and fitness goal-setting tactics outside the in-person training sessions.

Major Benefits of Becoming a Hybrid Trainer

The rise of technology has increased the popularity of hybrid personal training. There are many advantages to pairing traditional personal training with online personal training. As a certified personal trainer, you can maximize your time to help even more clients and increase your income.

Maximize Time and Build a Bigger Client Base

Hybrid training can give you more time in your schedule, allowing you to get more clients—even more than if you only met with clients in-person throughout the day. Operating with training software can help you strategically plan the number of times a client meets with you in-person versus online to allow for more availability and flexibility.

As a fitness professional, you know how time-consuming training can be even with a small client base. The hybrid personal training model can give fitness professionals the ability to create more valuable time, leading to greater growth. And that leads to greater benefits and pay compared to the average pay for fitness professionals.

Increase Income

According to the Bureau of Labor, the median pay for fitness trainers is $40,700 per year or $19.57 per hour. Most personal trainers will not thrive on an income like this, especially with the amount of time in a day limiting the ability to increase this income.

For personal trainers, conducting training sessions all day long is more than a workout in itself, never mind the client. Conducting sessions for more than ten hours per day for five to six days per week can become unsustainable.

Making use of a hybrid training model reduces the amount of in-person time you spend with clients, while increasing their accessibility to you. You'll conduct fewer sessions while providing a higher value to your clients. This will lead to an increase in client base all while having to dedicate less time to traditional gym training clients.

With a shift to online training, start selling packages, not sessions. If you sell packages when looking to build more income online, not only does the client attain a more customized program fit to their lifestyle, but it builds client retention. The more custom the program, the better the results. Client retention creates more income from your services due to longer commitment levels.

How to Become a Hybrid Personal Trainer

Before becoming a hybrid personal trainer, consider the advantages and disadvantages it can offer you. Understanding how things can change is vital to succeeding in this model. The shift to a hybrid personal training model can influence your current client base, the number of in-person clients you have, and what you currently earn.

Hybrid training can be quite different than traditional training in the fitness industry. Determining how this will affect each of your clients can help you preserve your current client base. Not every client may want to use the hybrid approach and not every client will succeed with a hybrid approach. Carefully consider their strengths and weaknesses and talk them through the options.

For example, you can have a client who would like to meet with you four days per week but realistically can only afford to meet with you one time per week. A hybrid training plan could be a great option for this client if they're comfortable with the online platform and can still stick to their goals.

You can also have a client who meets with you three or four days per week but is extremely busy and is not receiving the support outside of the gym to the extent they would like. Shifting them to fewer days per week in person and more online check-ins can elevate them to take their goals to the next level. This creates more availability in your in-person schedule for new clients while keeping your compensation where it needs to be with that specific client.

It is all about finding out what the client prefers and how online training can accelerate their goals within their lifestyle. This goes hand in hand with seeing you, the personal trainer, at least one time per week.

Tools and Resources for Becoming a Hybrid Personal Trainer

Personal training software is a key tool for hybrid trainers. It can help with organizing schedules, connecting with clients, posting workout plans, and more. A few popular programs include the following:

• The Training Notebook - This is an app where you can access your client's workout regimens, training schedule, contact information, assessments and more. You can quickly build client programs and even choose from pre-made program templates to email to your clients.

• Trainerize - This cloud-based personal trainer software helps personal trainers stay in contact with clients and their programs. You can create individual personal training programs and meal plans specific to each client, communication via chat with clients, and hold clients accountable with check-in services. There is a full exercise database with video demonstrations, and you can upload your own.

• GAIN - With over 1,600+ exercises in the database you can expect to have endless routines for your clients to complete. You can communicate, create, and train your clients through the app itself. This app supplies detailed instructions for your clients to learn proper form and technique, so you as the trainer can focus more on growing your client base.

These software programs not only equip trainers with the necessary tools for success but also clients. The software programs and tools discussed can help accelerate client results and teach them how to maintain these results. It is important to stay up to date with current trends and career path avenues. You must adjust to keep a career in your passion field.

Fitness is moving from the gym to home in a lot of instances. This is the main reason why, as an online trainer, you can work from anywhere while impacting lives around the world. There are many software programs out there that do the same things but finding what one works best for you and your client base is key.

Key Takeaways

When choosing a personal training software, be mindful of the following things:

1. Prices: Prices tend to vary but software can start as low as $19/month. Compare all prices when searching for your best option.

2. Features: A lot of the features are usually the same, but there could be an option with one or two unique pieces. Be on the lookout for ones that stand out to you and make sense for your clients.

3. Accessibility: Not only should the software app be easily accessible on your end but check to see if it is simple to navigate for clients. You must think of this on a broad scale, don't just assume that because it is easy to use for one client that it will be for all clients.

Are you ready to make the most of your time and fitness expertise? Check out the ISSA's Full Training Experience for a top-notch education on the ins and outs of personal training.

Resources

Personal Trainer Hourly Pay | PayScale. Payscale.com. (2022). Retrieved 13 May 2022, from https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Personal_Trainer/Hourly_Rate.

Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Fitness Trainers and Instructors, at https://www.bls.gov/ooh/personal-care-and-service/fitness-trainers-and-instructors.htm (visited April 19, 2022).

Eugenio, S. (2017). 4 Reasons Fitness Is Moving From the Gym to the Home. Entrepreneur. Retrieved 13 May 2022, from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/290579.

Personal Trainer Software. Capterra. Retrieved 13 May 2022, from https://www.capterra.com/personal-trainer-software/?utf8=%E2%9C%93&pricing_model%5B2%5D=2&commit=Apply+Filters&sort_options=.