What Makes You Different from Peloton, Les Mills Virtual etc..

Getting Started

Jul 3, 2020

By Tim Saye




With the rise of virtual fitness and fitness on-demand services, your ideal clients have never had more options to choose from in terms of home workouts. Making it clear to them why working with you will be more beneficial to them is more important than ever to your success as an online personal trainer. 

Here we look at how you differentiate from streaming services and make your online coaching stand out in the massively growing online fitness market.


Personal Training Is Personal

The overwhelming advantage that you have over on-demand online services such as Peloton and Les Mills Virtual is that you can provide the personal in personal training. Not just workouts designed for that specific client and their needs, but fully bespoke nutrition, lifestyle, and potentially rehab coaching as well. 

This fully customised programming with access to an empathetic and expert trainer is what your prospect needs to help them achieve their goals. It's the relationship that you'll build and the trust that your client will place in you, which helps them to achieve their goals in the fastest possible time. 

Individualised programming is just part of it. Having someone they can speak to about actually making that program fit their lifestyle, and get coached through the process of making exercise and nutritional changes part of their habits - that's where the real magic happens.


Streaming Is Convenient

In streaming services, there's access to on-demand videos 24 hours a day, and they often have enormous back catalogs of pre-recorded sessions as well as regular live workouts. There's certainly no beating them in terms of convenience. However, you can easily match them by providing online workouts clients can do any time and in any place. The truth is you aren't competing on convenience but it's still good to ensure clients know your service matches up on this anyway


Accountability

The results our clients get are based not just on workouts and diet plans, but on being held accountable to and supported with their goals within their particular set of circumstances. Being treated as only a number on a screen does one thing well: gives them a workout they can follow along. But it doesn't help your prospective client develop a world-class understanding of their body, to learn a system to implement their fitness and nutrition changes to overhaul their health, and it doesn't give any accountability.

When they employ you as their coach, they get treated as a person - with a family, a job, and demands on their time that need to be managed just as well as their exercise and healthy eating. This is what will give your client exceptional results, and that's why they can expect to pay a little more for your services than they would for an online streaming provider.

As an online personal trainer, you don't provide workouts only. You deliver results. You're not in the marketplace to compete on the most workouts or the lowest or price - you're not a drive-through. Having access to you, and building a long term relationship in which you understand your client; what drives them, what struggles they face, what legitimate demands on their time there are, what motivates them and all the complexities of their lives. That's the service that you're selling.


Uniquely Placed

In a streaming environment, your client might be one of several hundreds of people all doing that live workout at the same time. There's absolutely nothing available for them in terms of being treated as an individual, with their specific needs taken care of, or any management of pain or rehab.

As a personal trainer or an online coach, you are uniquely positioned to provide highly personalised coaching. In other words, your services are dynamic and responsive to your individual clients' needs. They are treated as a real person. They get opportunities to interact with you, and not attending a mass workout that's being conducted on the other side of the world.

Whether you're online, or in a doing hybrid coaching with a face to face client you'll notice if that person skips a few workouts, or doesn't log their food for a week. There's nowhere to "hide" a lack of effort on their part - and that willingness to embrace the process is what will give your clients incredible results.


Clients Don't Have To Choose

With the rising popularity of streaming classes, it makes sense to not compete with those services at all. Instead, those services could well complement the personalised results-driven help that you provide. They are fun and can suit people who are reluctant to use gym facilities. They give some focus on exercise in a home environment, and for people who enjoy the competition of group fitness they can feel motivated by seeing their name on a leader board. 

They provide a significant coaching opportunity in that they provide your client with scope to choose from a range of suitable options. That can be an essential coaching point to teach them to develop the skill of listening to their bodies and knowing when to challenge themselves and when to take it easier with a low-impact session. 

We all know that the ability of simply beasting clients isn't what makes an excellent personal trainer. Instead, the coaching skills you develop and the ability to teach them how to use exercise and nutrition to manage their lives long term that matters. Thus, streaming services, while fun, accessible and affordable - don't even come close to the life-changing services provided by a talented and caring personal trainer like you. 

Keep that in mind and create your marketing strategy around that and you'll see that the right type of clients, those that need your services will find you.

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