Why I feel online training is much harder than training a client in person.
I spent over a decade working as a personal trainer. I spent 8 of those coordinating a corporate personal training program. My job and ability to pay bills were dependent on retaining clients and having a team of trainers that could do the same. I averaged 40-45 billable hours per week plus working on elitefts and training at WSBB for several years before making the leap to elitefts full time. This is not to impress anyone but to provide background about me that many readers may not know.
Trainers mostly like to talk about the programming aspect of the job. I get that; that was the most fun for me. But at the end of the day, the programming was secondary for my clients' progress. My ability to communicate was what mattered most.
Here's the thing that gets left out all the time. When you train a client in-person, you have a multitude of communication methods to help assess and progress the client including (but not limited to) verbal and non-verbal methods. Utilizing all the communication modes at their disposal is how good trainers develop the skill set to work with a client and provide the results they seek. The client's results always trump how much you think you know or how great you look on paper.
Doing this online is not easier, it's harder. All the trainer has is written communication and some visual in the form of pictures and videos. Written communication is often misunderstood and misinterpreted so this is a huge hurdle on both sides of the relationship. Even the videos are limited. In my experience, the trainer will ask to see the last reps of the heaviest set. Meanwhile, close to 50 warm up reps have gone unchecked.
A trainer with years working in the physical world learns to recognize the cues, patterns, and tendencies that can only be learned by "doing it". This provides the ability in the digital world to ask better questions to access the feedback required for the client's success.
If the trainer can't get results using every form of communication in the physical world, how can they ever do it when most of these are taken away in the digital world?
In my opinion, they can't. They can be an excellent educator but will never be a great trainer. There is a difference; and both are needed.
The solution is to always work on communication skills. While elitefts.com does not offer online training, I have been contacted by people who receive online training and the biggest complaint I get is the lack of communication. When most of these trainers only have a handful of clients, lack of communication should never be an issue. But apparently it is a huge issue since these customers feel the need to email a third party.
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