Finding the right fit
When it comes to fitness, you might have heard the advice: ‘Just start’ and to an extent, I would agree. It’s always a good idea to capitalise on positive intent and momentum, especially in the face of a difficult change. You’ve likely also heard that more is lost by indecision than in wrong decision. However, my experience as a fitness coach tells me that when considering hiring an online personal trainer, that’s not entirely true.
Not when you’ve met as many people as I have who’ve been burned by bad choices in fitness. From taking on diets that are so restrictive that they rob healthy young women of their monthly menstrual cycles, to training programs so out of context in terms of frequency and demand that they actually drive testosterone levels down in men looking to build muscle due to over training.
Not to mention the long-term psychological consequences of being chastised by a coach for not being perfect, or struggling with self-esteem after another failed attempt to lose weight. These are all anecdotes relayed to me by my clients about their previous experiences. So my advice is that before you start out on your next fitness challenge, you would benefit from finding the best fit for you, both in terms of methodology and coaching style.
Below is a list of those that are most likely to thrive with my methodology and those that for a variety of reasons might be suited to another coach or setting.
Who it is for:
Whilst I’m always open to jumping on a consultation call and seeing if we’re a good fit, I’d be remiss not to point out that I’ve worked with thousands of people in my online personal training service and tend to work in a very steady way, without restriction or requiring you to live in the gym. This approach isn’t the typical fitness industry experience and tends to suit some more than others. So in the interest of helping you avoid the wrong fit, I’ll outline my experiences.
Below I’ll outline a list of those who have thrived most with my coaching:
Corporate office workers
I understand the challenges of maintaining healthy habits when your work keeps you at your desk for the majority of the day, and you don’t always have time to plan meals. My online workout programs help you build activity into your lifestyle and make exercise a daily habit. Not necessarily via a big workout, but with a level of activity that will help lower the health risks of a sedentary lifestyle. It’ll also help you counteract the effect working at a computer can have on your posture and of course, aim to make you the envy of the office with your fitness results and consistent energy throughout the day, without making you the stick in the mud that can never break their diet plan, or let their hair down.
Medical professionals
As a personal trainer, I know where my advice is warranted and when to defer to medical professionals. Collaborating with Dr. Katie Turanianytsia & Dr. Olivia Lesslar has provided valuable insight into the specific challenges of medical professionals, from dealing with constant stress and facing a near-daily need to unwind, not to mention the demands of shift work where one may not be able to guarantee themselves a healthy meal. Plus helping to address a lack of self-prioritisation that is all too common with those dedicated to the service of their work, this understanding along with our evidence-based approach has made us particularly popular with medical professionals who make up a considerable portion of our client base. I’ve also made it a priority to interview medical professionals on my podcast
‘Fly in, fly out’ & remote workers
I’ve been delivering custom workout programs online since 2015, long before digital fitness went mainstream. My online personal training service has delivered for clients in a number of wild and wonderful scenarios.
Lets have a look at a few:
- Hollywood Stuntwomen
- Wildlife Rangers
- Luxury Yacht Personnel
- Off-shore oil engineers & fishermen
- Farmers & Ranchers
- Buddhist Monastery Volunteers
- Professional Skiers & downhill Racers
- Professional Mountain Bike competitors
- Those living the perpetual ‘Van Life’
- Sea Shepherds & Doctors Without Borders
- Commercial Pilots
- Dozens of ‘fly in fly out’ workers from the Arctic Circle to the Outback
Working in these scenarios is always a fun challenge, often requiring us to find novel training solutions in unique and unconventional settings with makeshift training equipment.
Entrepreneurs
I’ll always have a soft spot for entrepreneurs, as this online personal training business much like yours is the product of an idea, a dream, and years of blood, sweat, and tears. I understand what it’s like to shoulder the weight of responsibility for my clients and know firsthand what it’s like to regularly work 16-hour days to make things work. This will inherently invite the challenge of balancing health & well-being with work. I have walked the path, and found the solutions, like you, at a certain point we had no choice, being in business and serving our clients is who we are, and we’ve worked hard to develop strategies that mean that work ethic doesn’t come at the cost of health, I’d like to show you how that’s possible because I can assure you, there were times when it seemed it wasn’t. My personal story of health and fitness challenges may be particularly interesting to you as a business owner.
First response + military personnel
I never set out to create workout plans for military personnel or emergency workers. But due to the unorthodox scenarios and logistics, these men and women often find themselves in, the process I use to build a custom workout program has proved rather successful in these settings. Particularly for those stationed on a foreign U.S. military base. Plus those in the police, ambulance and fire services here in the U.K. who tend to work in shift patterns, like many of the medical professionals we’ve helped. So whether it’s helping decide what to eat in the mess hall or aiding my clients and their families find a sense of routine in a new land, all the way to helping young recruits approach their selection training I’ve come to understand the specific challenges, and whilst I wouldn’t hold myself out as an expert in this niche of fitness, my online personal training service has been exceptionally successful.
Is my online personal training service right for you?
Who may not be a great fit (and why)
As a fitness coach, pattern recognition is a skill you tend to hone over time, and whilst everyone has their own individual circumstances and situation, experience has shown me that some are more likely to enjoy my style of coaching than others. It’s a coaching style that has delivered results for many people and been recognised as amongst the best in class for some years now, but it is a departure from the status quo as it’s a mindset-first approach, aimed at flexibility and sustainable results.
Therefore listing the scenarios in which my online fitness coaching is unlikely to be the best fit is intended with the intention of helping you find the right space or coach for your fitness goals, even if that unfortunately means I’m not the best person to help.
Generally, this will be because the contrast between how I work and what you’re used to or tend to enjoy is a gap that’s difficult to bridge, or because I don’t feel I can offer an environment you would thrive in with a digital service.
Those who prefer group exercise
I certainly admire the community and energy that comes with CrossFit and group exercise. However, my focus here is a one-on-one coaching relationship aimed at lifestyle transformation that eventually equips you to achieve your fitness goals independently. So if you thrive in group settings, I completely understand, infact I’ve taught fitness boot camps all over London. It’s just worth noting that you might find online coaching less engaging as you’ll be encouraged to carry out your actual workout sessions alone in your own time which is a big difference from the energy you might be used to in a class. Of course, if you’d like to join my online personal training program and have me incorporate your external group exercise sessions into the over-arching strategy we can certainly do that.
Qualified personal trainers
It’s always rewarding to be requested as a personal fitness coach by fellow fitness professionals, and it happens more frequently than you might think. However, I have decided no longer to coach other personal trainers in their own fitness pursuits because I’ve developed a modest career consultancy service for personal trainers which among other things covers advanced workout programming.
Given that I can only work with a certain number of people at any time, I’d prefer to keep fitness coaching spaces open for those without their own formal fitness qualifications and I think that’ll be where I can make the most transformative impact.
Endurance athletes
My methods focus on consistency to achieve composition change rather than measuring a workout on intensity and duration. So some of the measurements of success commonly emphasised in endurance training may not as highly valued with my coaching style. If you’re an active athlete, you might find sports-specific coaching more suitable, unless you want to shift gears and focus on body composition and sustainable lifestyle change in which case let’s talk. To be clear, we can certainly maintain events like 5 and 10-km runs and even sprint triathlons, but if we’re edging out into half-marathon territory, I tend to consider that more as sports training, and that’s not my focus.
Avid martial artists
While I highly respect martial arts and personally engage in them for their mental and physical benefits, disciplines like ju-jitsu and wrestling often carry a high risk of injury. Of course, you are best equipped to assess your own risk factors, but experience has shown me that injuries from sparring and drilling outside of my programs can disrupt our planned trajectory, sometimes hindering our progress. At this point, I can no longer vouch for your results. It’s crucial to be aware of this if we decide to work together.
Competitive bodybuilders
At the risk of sounding pedantic, whilst I help my clients build their bodies, I tend not to be a good fit for actual bodybuilders. This is because my ideal end goal for most men is to coach them to a point of 10-12% body fat in a way that can be maintained year-round, this figure moves to 18-22% for women. Dieting down beyond that would be past the point of diminishing returns for the vast majority of my clients, who simply want to look and feel good year-round.
The very low body fat percentages are where you start to enter the realm of bodybuilding as a sport, whilst I have huge admiration for the dedication it takes to compete, it’s not the goal of the majority of my clients or indeed my team. So I wouldn’t presume to advise you on selecting a show or helping you develop a posing routine, it’s just not my wheelhouse. If you’re destined for the competition stage you would be better off working with someone who is firmly entrenched in the bodybuilding community.
Those reluctant to cast the scales aside
You only have to look at my results to see how successful my weight loss coaching has been. But counter-intuitively despite how adept I’ve become at helping my clients lose weight, I actually coach against a loss of weight on the scale being the primary marker of success, and certainly against frequent weighing-in. Fitness has come a long way since the weight loss groups of the 1990s.
I prefer that body composition change and sustainable lifestyle habits replace the focus on what you weigh on a scale. I’ve outlined exactly why in my comprehensive guide to health & fitness. As ironic as it might sound, if you want to be free from weight loss concerns for good you’ve got to stop focusing on the scale, it’s just not a very practical goal.
Those not ready for change
If you’re not willing to adapt or replace existing habits and approaches to fitness and nutrition that haven’t served you, my coaching may not be the best fit. It isn’t always the right time to make a change and I get that, ultimately the right time to make a shift in fitness will always present it the same when the idea of staying the same is uncomfortable enough, before that it might just feel like a ‘should’ and that’s ok.
This approach requires a readiness to change and a commitment to new lifestyle habits. I’m in the business of coaching you to a healthier approach not co-signing your old one. Which might mean a departure from certain ways of thinking or long-held preferences that have been keeping you in the comfort zone, but delivering very little by way of results.
What is your decision?
I’ve been upfront about these scenarios because I believe in setting you up for success from day one, even when it means unfortunately that you’ll be pursuing your fitness journey elsewhere. So if you’ve read this far and still feel we would work well together you’re probably right. If you have any questions or reservations, I’m always open to discussing them on a call to help you make the right decision.