For years, we've witnessed that one of the defining factors for treating your gym like a real business instead of a hobby, was making the transition from part-time to full-time coaches on your team. But the right part-timers can be a massive asset to any gym business, when the aspirations, buy-in, and availability of the part-time coach is in alignment with the needs of the business. At its essence, part-timers can provide versatility and stability to a full-time team, serving as a utility...

If you want to improve your 1 rep max in a lift, most experienced lifters understand that you shouldn’t max out every day. Yet when it comes to developing well-rounded fitness, most people attack all of their workouts with the intensity of a 1 rep max every single day. This leads to them hitting walls with their conditioning and aerobic fitness, and plateauing their skills where bad habits become ingrained instead of improved. As coaches, we can all picture those clients who go out hot in...

What if you could streamline your gym business to only the most important parts? What if you could intentionally downsize your gym in a way that allowed you to pay yourself more than you ever have, while restoring the work/life balance that excited you about owning a gym in the first place? If you've owned your gym for any length of time, you understand that it's extremely common to reach member or revenue milestones with your business, only to realize that there's little to no profit at...

On the care-coach-lead youtube channel, we've posted several videos over the last few months discussing universal movement patterns and how they can make you a better technical coach. One example is how we look for a vertical forearm in most pushing and pulling exercises like push ups, dips, handstand push ups, burpees, and bent over rows. Another example is what we call knuckles around the bar, which shows up in many barbell pulling exercises like cleans, snatches, and deadlifts but also...

We're looking for our next rockstar coach at FitTown Jupiter! Do you believe that coaching is your calling? Do you love learning every day and being part of a strong team? Do you love coaching both group classes and personal training? Do you want to make a great living helping others and transforming lives? In today's episode, we discuss what we look for in an ideal coach at FitTown, and how we set up coaches to thrive once they join our team. Whether you are already coaching in another...

All scaling is not equal. When a client is in the middle of a workout, rarely are they happy about regressing an exercise to make it safer or to better achieve the stimulus for that day. It's usually not fun to take weight off the bar, switch from a barbell to dumbbells, or come off the pull up bar to perform ring rows. But one of the things that I've learned as a coach is its not the modification that's being delivered that matters, its how and why its delivered that makes it valuable or...

What if the people who needed your help most were already part of your gym? What if the people who were most willing to invest in themselves were already the ones who know, like, and trust you? What if you had an extra $100k in potential annual revenue for your gym that didn't require you to bring in a single new client? The PT Legends Dave and Scott are back on the podcast to discuss how to upgrade existing members to higher-touch, higher-ticket coaching. For group class facilities that...

Since the sale of CrossFit Inc. almost 2 years ago, there's been a noticeable increase in the tools, resources, and desire to help CrossFit affiliates succeed from a business perspective. This includes things like: Launching an affiliate network of brands and businesses to leverage the purchasing power of thousands of affiliates and save owners $$$ Creating an affiliate playbook that incorporates staff and business ideas, not just training methodology. Launching CrossFit Affiliate...

We have a pretty thorough hiring process at our gym. Every candidate goes through multiple phone calls or in-person interviews, fills out questionnaires, spends time shadowing classes, meeting with our team, and immersing themselves in our community. We have had a few coaches throughout the years that have made it to the final stages of our hiring process, but we ultimately decided it wasn't a fit. In today's episode, we discuss what would keep a coach from getting hired at our facility,...

Last month, my brother Tony and I got invited to attend the FitPro Growth Summit in Nashville, run by Tim Lyons. Tim opened the weekend with a powerful talk about the 19 Pitfalls that Fitness Businesses Need to Avoid if they want to be successful. Some of them that resonated most with us were: Focusing on more, instead of better Lack of balance between front-end revenue and offerings, and back-end revenue and offerings Low pricing, and margins too slim Falsely believing more leads...

When I first started coaching, I was attending 2-3 certifications per year to develop my skills and help my clients on a deeper level. Some of those certifications would conclusively make me a better coach, and other certifications sometimes created more client issues, not less. The problem with most certifications I was attending, is that they were strictly focused on the technical aspects of specific modalities; kettlebells, olympic weightlifting, gymnastics, mobility, or pose...

As coaches, we want our clients to feel comfortable enough with us to open up about their goals, their struggles, and what's missing from their lives. But in my experience, coaches can accomplish this in a positive way through a foundational relationship of trust, or they can accomplish this through negative means like gossip, complaining, and venting to their clients. So we may feel good about clients sharing their secrets with us, or confiding in us about the struggles they are going...

One of our favorite exercises that we have all of our employees take on is building out their perfect day. It can teach someone a lot about themselves and where they thrive, and it allows us as a business to put them in roles that come effortlessly to them, creating a win-win scenario. But over years of running this exercise, we've also seen downsides to focusing too much attention on the perfect day. Often, coaches get so focused on their perfect day early in their careers that they...

Have you ever fallen prey to the idea of chasing passive income? You're rushing so hard to get to a point where you don't have to "trade time for money", that you don't even make enough money to support yourself or your family today. Most coaches falsely believe that the only way to ever make a living in the fitness industry is to be a gym owner, not a coach.   Meanwhile, many gym owners are making less per hour than their coaches are, even though their coaches may only be making $15-20...

What if you could generate $250k in revenue as an online coach, only to find out that this path wasn't for you? In 2020/2021, Drew Girton decided to hire out all of his responsibilities for his brick-and-mortar gym Pendulum Fitness in California, so he could move to Austin, Texas with his family to go all-in on online coaching.   Despite having massive success in terms of revenue and profit ($250k in about 12 months with almost no overhead), Drew found he hated the online coaching...

Most coaches that pride themselves on being a great coach, would prefer not to believe that the clock or music can have a drastic impact on our ability to be effective coaches. Most of us see it as a necessary evil, not something that can make or break the results we are providing for our clients. But like it or not, the clock and music play a significant role in the level of enjoyment and engagement that you will get from your clients. The clock can help us start and finish on time,...

I was recently invited to be a part of a really interesting conversation about how personal trainers can level up, and make a lucrative career within a gym. It's pretty common to see a physical therapist or masseuse renting space out at a CrossFit box or microgym, but it seems to be more rare where a freelancing personal trainer will rent out space at those same gyms. In the rare cases where it does happen, those relationships usually end poorly if the personal trainer starts to achieve too...

In a recent interview with Stuart Brauer of WTF Gym Talk, we discussed how our programming has evolved over the last decade, and if we made any significant changes since rebranding from CrossFit. The answer to that is yes, there have been lots of small changes that have been made, but we didn't do it with the goal of differentiating ourselves from CrossFit. All of the programming changes we have made over the years have been in an effort to create a better product that clients enjoy more,...

When you make the transition from a coach or staff member into a leadership position like head coach or owner, it can be difficult to now become the authority when you are not used to being the one in charge. Many new gym owners and managers struggle setting and upholding policies in this new role.  They don't want to be a hard-ass unnecessarily, but they also want to create the systems and structure for their team to thrive. One simple framework that has helped me become a better manager,...

A long time listener of the podcast reached out for some quick advice before he opens his first gym later this summer, Gowanus Fitness in Brooklyn, NY. Instead of answering his questions 1-on-1, I thought it would be fun and valuable to bring him on the podcast and give him some feedback and coaching live for everyone to learn from. In today's episode, we dive into how to set up your memberships, pricing, and marketing in a way to fill your gym and be successful right from Day 1. We...

When you are coaching a warm up in the group class setting, do you prefer to lead the class exercise-by-exercise, or do you prefer to explain the entire warm up and then have athletes go through it on their own? It's common for coaches to have a preferred style, or believe that one format is better than the other. But we use both formats are our gym, and here's why: Coach-Led formats are great for keeping the group together, working through progressions or higher-level skills, and...

If you struggle with your confidence or your effectiveness in public speaking, then the solution might be simpler than you think. So often we get caught up in how we appear to others or whether we are doing a good job or not, that we lose sight of our role as coaches or presenters in that moment. But if we can (1) keep our focus on the audience and off our own performance, (2) find our unique voice or value that we want to bring to the table in every class, and (3) reframe our nerves as...

Whenever we are coaching a group class or 1-on-1 training session, our clients are placing an expectation on us to deliver value to them above and beyond what they are paying for that day. That value typically comes in the form of answering 5 key questions each day in a way that resonates with each client.  But I should note that these questions aren’t usually asked out-loud by our clients, they are just inherent in how the client is experiencing the value they are receiving each day. If we...

Every gym needs someone who's setting the standard and making everyone better. We'll call this person the head coach, whether you have this as a defined role at your gym or not.   In the simplest sense, there are 3 objectives that all head coaches should be looking to achieve with their staff.   A way for delivering consistent feedback (Both formally and informally) A shared language among your staff A way of doing consistent and ongoing coaches development (Both internally and...