Considering hiring an online PT?
Before you do, it’s worth noting that asking a prospective online fitness coach the right questions can be a great step toward making sure youโve found the best fit.
And I think that’s crucial, and worth saying again, finding the best online personal trainer is going to come down to the best fit. There is no shortage of personal trainers in the world, in fact I have read that there are approximately 740,000 of us. So where do you even start when trying to find the right one for you?
Narrow your search
To start your search, it helps to get a feel for what you need help to achieve. For example, if you want to get your energy back and get consistent with exercise for the first time in a while, then you want to choose an online PT that can help you do that.
Whilst that sounds obvious, it matters because if the coaches you are considering are geared up for bodybuilding competitions, photoshoots or endurance races and expect you to exercise in that style that isn’t going to be a good fit. All of those pursuits could be considered a ‘luxury’ goal. By which I mean that to achieve them we would have to assume that you had the time, habits structure and energy levels to implement the workouts and recover well from them.
Of course, that’s not to say a bodybuilder or a runner can’t adapt, of course they can. But it would be your job to decipher whether their methods for helping you will be taking cues from what is effectively sports training. Because if they are, that’s simply going to be a mismatch and will lead to temporary results at best, as you don’t yet have the prerequisites necessary to succeed.
Likewise, let’s say you are looking to do your first nocturnal ultra marathon. If your personal trainer is geared up to help corporate workers mitigate the health compromises of a sedentary lifestyle, there may again be a mismatch in interest and protocol. And with three-quarters of a million personal trainers in the world, there really is no need to compromise with a poor fit.
What do you need for an online fitness coach?
You probably also want to consider your intention for your time with the trainer. For example, if you’re looking to sign up to learn as much as you can and after a period of tuition, subsequently take things forward on your own, you might be looking for informative content, a deep knowledge base and a passion for teaching.
Whereas you could be looking to plug a fitness coach right into your existing lifestyle with the express purpose of instantly removing guesswork. So if outsourcing decisions around exercise and nutrition, would be your priority then you might seek out someone who can offer you 1-2-1 communication, and conscientious service. So that you won’t be left hanging when your schedule changes at short notice and you need to adapt. Of course, with top-tier fitness coaches, there will be a crossover, but it’s still worth thinking about.
I’ve had clients on my own online personal training service, who have been a perfect fit and seen excellent results, and I’ve had others where there has been a spoken or unspoken misalignment.
Typically, because I like to take a steady approach and seek permanent lifestyle change, I see this as the right and only way to do fitness, but if you’re looking at getting in shape two weeks before a holiday, my way of coaching might not be what you’re looking for.
5 Questions that, as a PT, I would ask an online personal trainer
1. Are you qualified and insured?
To be clear, being qualified and insured is not a guarantee of competence or experience. A certification, technically is the minimum formal qualification necessary to be legally insured as a professional.
In the same manner, I’m pretty sure a big wave surfer could tell us all a thing or two about consistency, developing a resilient mindset, balance and core strength despite the absence of formal fitness qualifications.
Having said that, if you intend to pay hard-earned money for a professional service, formal qualifications and insurance are the absolute minimum you should expect from someone taking fitness seriously as a career. It’s a good signal that they have long-term intentions, and are familiar with industry standards in conduct alongside at least a broad understanding of how to help their clients achieve a portfolio of fitness goals.
2. Can you show me some of your results and testimonials?
Asking a potential trainer if you can get a glimpse of the results they have achieved with previous clients and potentially some testimonials is pretty common practice. It helps you get a feel for their track record and showcases not just their ability to deliver results, but also to maintain client rapport over time.
If a trainer is so new to the fitness industry that they can’t yet back up their propositions that’s normal, after all they are just getting out of the gate. However, in my view, they should be coaching friends and family for free, in person, to get their initial experience and results. Once they have clocked up their first few thousand coaching hours at a local gym, that’s when they should move online.
As I mentioned, that’s all pretty standard stuff. But it’s not the real reason you should seek to see results and testimonials. Pursuing a fitness goal over time can be challenging. There will inevitably be times where progress is slow, and where you’ll want to second-guess the progress. Again all normal, and to be expected.
The best way you can buttress yourself against this is by familiarising yourself with the achievements of people just like you, who started in a similar position and went on to achieve the things that you currently desire.
It’s just how we humans think. You can’t say it’s not possible for you if you’ve seen someone just like you do it. That alone could be the reason you stay on the path when the going gets tough, and it will. Not necessarily because of gruelling workouts or precision nutrition, but because life gets busy, work gets stressful and there will be external demands on your time and energy.
This circles back to what we discussed above about narrowing down the search to a coach who focuses on what you want to achieve. It’s not that a specialist marathon trainer couldn’t help you gain muscle or a bodybuilder couldn’t help you run a 10k, they probably could.
The point is that it’s in your interest if your coach’s focus, infrastructure and current client base are in sync with your goals because that’s where you’ll find contextual resonance, that’s really the power of choosing to go online with your fitness coaching in the first place, it allows you to find the personal trainer who has made it their business to solve the exact problems you have and not be in any way constrained by time zones, or location.
3. What is your approach to exercise and coaching?
If you owned a business and you asked an employee, “What do you think it takes to do well here?” or if you were 6 months into a relationship and you asked your boyfriend or girlfriend “What would you say it takes to be a great partner?” Wouldn’t you be a little concerned if their answer or lack thereof, revealed that they had never really thought about it? Perhaps they just thought it would be good enough to show up. Well, it’s the same with coaching.
This question isn’t about expecting some profound altruistic answer, those would likely have been rehearsed. You’re just looking for signals that they’ve thought it through and are acting on purpose.
This way you can be assured that they think about what takes to be a good coach and hold themselves to the kind of standard you’re willing to invest in. I make that point because we live in an era of social media, influencing and curating reality, all things that shine a light inwardly, whereas in my experience the best coaches I’ve ever met all shine the light outward on their clients.
4. How would you help me if I started to lack motivation?
What you’re looking for here is some understanding of psychology, as it relates to goal setting and performance. Working remotely with an online personal trainer won’t be a movie-style coaching dynamic in which we’re whispering advice into your ears between sets.
It’s more of a reflective, assessment on the decisions that were made, the actions that took place or didn’t including the workouts completed, performances within them and the food that was eaten over the given time period, measured contextually against the optimal blueprint that was set out for you in the form of a custom exercise program and meal plan. Essentially it’s building you the perfect route to your goals and then holding you accountable to it.
Again, I wouldn’t say this was a trick question, but a trainer who thinks they are going to give you a pep talk at the moment with rah-rah style motivation likely isn’t very experienced. The motivators that will determine the success of a training program should be established in the onboarding stages of the process. They should then be anchored and discussed. Believe me, these won’t be things like setting PBs and a faster 5km time.
Don’t get me wrong those are both great, but they are surface-level goals, best utilised for those already in consistent training with established habits, in other words, those that are the least likely to suffer from low motivation.
In challenging times, a coach needs to be able to remind you of your real reasons for starting your program. Things like building a confident self-image, or being a great example for a young family. Those are real behaviour drivers, and will always be more powerful than fitness goals.
In the final analysis, a great coach knows that you can’t make someone want something they don’t already want for themselves. What you can do though, is provide a contextually appropriate path to getting there, and hold them accountable to their intention to change for the better.
5. How much support will I get?
Support is interesting because it can be deployed in a number of different ways. When I first started online fitness coaching, I thought being available for calls would be the best possible service I could provide. I would offer catch-up calls weekly or monthly. But before long it dawned on me that my clients were very busy people.
They wanted rapid adjustments to programs, the opportunity to have questions answered quickly and be able to know that even when they travelled at short notice they would still have support on what workouts to do and which meals to eat. It wasn’t always going to be easy for them to jump on a call, especially not at their busiest moments, which is when they were at most risk of falling short of their fitness goals.
I realised that the idea of a call was a ‘catch up’ or ‘check-in’ sounds good on the surface, but it’s fundamentally flawed. Doesn’t the fact that there is something to ‘catch up’ on imply that oversight has been lost in the interim? And if so, for how long, a week? a month? I know from experience this is just too long to go unsupported if you are trying to gain momentum or aren’t following the program as your coach intended.
So I restructured my fitness coaching service around maintaining high-level oversight over all activities in the week of my clients, from workouts, meals and other healthy habits that would be good to track. This allows me to keep open access and rapid responses to instant messaging. Think of it a bit like the fitness version of an air traffic controller.
With this approach, questions can be answered and challenges can be solved at as close to the inception of the problem as possible.
Calls are still available, but I make it my priority that there will be nothing to catch up on and calls now take the form of a strategy session utilised when a client of mine has suffered a significant challenge or is going through a wholesale logistical change that warrants a change of plan.
I mention that to make the point that support can be described as instant messaging, calls, check-ins etc, but on a website landing page, these are all just features. What you really want to get a feel for is a genuine investment in you and your goals. See if you can jump on a consultation call with a few prospective coaches and get an intuition for the kind of personal investment you’re likely to get.
Finally, a thought experiment
Did you know that there is evidence to suggest that when faced with implementing a course of antibiotics, we would be more likely to see it through to the end for our pets than we would for ourselves? I’ve always had a house full of dogs and cats, so I completely get it. But think about that, it means that there are scenarios in which we treat those that we care about better than we treat ourselves.
So as a thought experiment to try before you hire an online personal trainer, hold all of the information you’ve gathered about your shortlist of trainers in your mind. Use all the contact you’ve had with them thus far, all of their social media content, their website and what you can gather about their general approach to health & fitness.
Now imagine you’ve been tasked by someone close to you, a best friend, a younger relative, or a favoured neighbour to find them the best possible online personal trainer. Does this change raise any doubts?
You may be very motivated to achieve your own goals and turn a blind eye to some unsustainable methods or potential red flags, but would you subject your 20-year-old niece to a 1200-calorie diet plan? Would you want your best friend reprimanded by an ego-driven coach for missing a training session on a stressful day? Would you want your elderly neighbour to be pitched supplement after supplement? Would you vouch for a personal trainer who would hand your closest colleague off to a constantly revolving door of team members and closers? Probably not.
So if you wouldn’t subject those you care about to unprofessional service, or shortcuts that could undermine their long-term health, I’d strongly suggest that you don’t subject yourself to it either. Even if it means taking a steadier route to your fitness goals.
In the right hands online personal training can completely transform your relationship with exercise and healthy eating, help you form habits and be a vehicle for significant personal development so do your research and make sure you find the right coach for you. There are plenty of excellent trainers out there, I’ve interviewed many of them on my podcast.
I hope this quick guide helps you find the perfect fit for your fitness goals. If you would like to schedule a call to see if the best fit would be me, let’s set one up.