How to Deliver a Personal Training Session: Don't Crash the Plane
Behind the Design, Episode 40 with OPEX Coaches Daniel Persson and Brandon Gallagher
When was the last time you thought about how you deliver a personal training session? Not the program. The hour itself. What happens before the client walks in, what you say and do not say while they train, and how the session ends?
Daniel Persson and Brandon Gallagher are opening a new block of conversations on in-person coaching, and they are starting with the one-on-one session. Both of them run businesses that are mostly online now, and both of them believe the in-person work is where the online work gets built. Brandon still keeps a roster of in-person clients and credits it with making him a better coach every week, because in a live session you check the things you say in real time. You see the cue land or miss. You see the feedback happen. Online, that loop can take a week. Daniel has spent more of his career in group classes and remote coaching, and he is careful with the phrase "online personal trainer" for exactly that reason. He has too much respect for what personal training on the floor demands to borrow the title loosely. You can be a great trainer in person and struggle online, and you can be great online and not as strong on the floor. They are different services.
So this episode is the floor version. Not the X's and O's of design, which they have covered for months, but what a professional one-on-one session looks like from the door to the debrief. Kandace put a line on it at the close: the experience is the service.
What You Lose When You Leave the Floor
Brandon opened by asking Daniel what he misses by working mostly online. Daniel's answer was the chance to correct. Take someone just starting their fitness journey. Coaching the corrections in person, early, is an investment in every training session that follows. Online you give a cue, they film themselves, you send feedback, and sometimes a week passes before they get to try it again. The instant relationship, the instant feedback, and the speed at which you can develop a client are what get lost. It is one reason remote coaching tends to work better with people who already have some experience in a gym. Completely new to fitness, it is doable, but it comes down to safer exercise selection and a slower start.
Which is why most of the personal training Daniel has done in recent years is with his own remote clients. If he is about to introduce cleans into someone's program, he wants thirty minutes on the floor with them first. Fix the clean and jerk together, and everything after it goes better. One-off sessions in support of the program rather than the program itself. Brandon's point for anyone who aspires to be an online coach is that these pieces of the craft are worth hanging on to in some capacity, whether in-person work is part of your business, as it is for his, or sprinkled in on occasion, as it is for Daniel's.
Do the Work Before They Walk In
Brandon's first non-negotiable is that most of the work in a PT session happens before the client arrives. It is the same logic as online training. Clients do not log in next week to find their program is not written. Everything is laid out ahead of time. His in-person clients are all on CoachRx, and it came up in the October cohort lab day, where another coach asked about an older client who sees him in person and is not into using the app. Brandon has one of those too. The answer is to make it simple. It is not go in and do this, this, and this. It is open it up, look at what you have, and let me know if there is a question. Have it laid out somewhere they can look at before the session, because that removes a chunk of the hour you would otherwise spend explaining and answering questions about a movement they have never seen.
Daniel added a rule for the clients who will not use a platform at all. Put it in there anyway. Plan it in CoachRx exactly as you do for every other client, because the moment you make an exception for the one who does not like the app, it becomes very easy to plan less and prepare less for that person. The procedure stays the same. The only question left is whether they read it or you walk them through today's agenda when they arrive.
From there the prep list is short. Know the workout. Know the intention of the day and what the session is trying to achieve. Prep the room as much as you can. Brandon admitted this has been a struggle since he went back to training at a large, busy gym. He cannot stake out equipment for an hour and hope nobody touches it, so he plans around it and has an alternate ready for every machine that might be taken. Plan it ahead and it takes a load off you in the session, because you are only thinking about coaching. Everything else is done.
Daniel framed the same thing as value math. Whatever the window is, thirty minutes or sixty, how can he increase the value for the client inside it? Every minute spent walking around looking for equipment is value lost. You have seen the trainer who stands there scanning the machines and asks, what should we do next? Even if the winging adds up to three minutes, that is three minutes of a service the client paid for. They expect you to do what you can to make the hour worth it.
Brandon took it a step further. If you offer both, personal training should be the premier way to train with you. In no world should the online experience be better than the in-person one. Proximity should elevate the coaching. And part of what elevates it is smoothness, something most coaches never think about. The flow of the exercise selection. The flow from one piece to the next. When the machine is taken, cool, we go here. When a dumbbell is missing, we go a little heavier or a little lighter and adjust the reps. That is what he means by professionalism inside coaching, and it only works if the thinking was done beforehand.
Energy Is Not Cheerleading
Professionalism bleeds into what Brandon calls energy, and he was quick to define it. There is a difference between a cheerleader and a coach. You do not need pom-poms. You need to be excited to see the person who just paid for an hour of your time. He has watched it go the other way too many times: a client walks in excited to train, the coach waiting for them is not, and the whole session takes on a bad mood. It is exhausting for a client to show up and not feel valued.
His rule is to leave it at the door. Whatever is going on in your life, and it could be horrible, it stops when you cross that line. If it is so bad you cannot let it go, do not show up. Reschedule. That is not the client's burden to carry. But if you commit to the session, you commit to being glad they are there, even when they are not glad to be there. He has had plenty of clients walk in at six in the morning with nothing to give. Too early, too tired, do not want to be here.
Which is where Daniel cut in with the balance. The end goal is to coach them toward a good session, but you have to meet the client where they are that day. Someone who had a rough day does not need a coach bursting through with let's go. Your job is to take them there, not to start there. Brandon agreed and said it was literally his next line. Energy means letting someone know you care that they walked in. Stand up when they arrive. Be waiting for them, ready to go, not sitting there saying go ahead and get started, I will be there in a minute. Nobody should feel like a burden walking through the door.
Then ask the questions. How was the weekend? How did you sleep? How did that meeting go that you mentioned? Brandon had a live example from that morning. A new client who is normally five minutes early showed up five minutes late. Not enough to assume something was wrong, but different. They walked in a little down, he asked, and they explained they had not slept. That is good information. It was already in his head that he would be cautious from the start and think about what to adjust. You are noticing something is off and asking leading questions to figure out how to meet this person today. And then give a quick rundown of what is ahead. Glad you are here, we are getting to deadlifts, a couple of things after, forty five to sixty minutes. The work you did before the session is what lets that briefing take ten seconds.
Put Yourself in Their Shoes
Daniel added something he learned in CCP that is almost embarrassingly simple. If a new client came in for a consultation and is returning for their first session, wear the same clothes. For a lot of people starting to train is a little scary, and the first thing they do walking into the building is look for their trainer. Minimize that time. Look the same, look professional, be easy to recognize. Then stack the small things. Show them where the toilet is. Show them the locker room. Answer the questions that feel stupid to ask.
When Daniel ran his remote coaching company, they took it further. People could apply for a few spots where the company bought them training clothes and shoes, because what should I wear is a real barrier for someone who has never trained. Then the coaches went with them to the gym. No personal training. They just walked in together, asked reception where the bathroom and the locker room were, and showed them the building. Daniel has spent so much of his life in gyms that none of it is scary to him anymore. That is exactly why he has to put himself in the client's shoes before the hour starts.
Consistency, and a Warm-Up They Can Own
Before the warm-up, Brandon made a point about scheduling. Build the session around what helps the client grow and what helps them show up. One of the biggest wins in personal training is getting someone on a schedule consistent enough that progress starts to feel good. So when he signs a client he picks the days and the times. Twice a week means two fixed slots. That is your time. It sets the expectation for both of you and lets you build a schedule around it. He has seen coaches wing it week to week and sign people up whenever, and he cannot see how that helps either side. His packages run two, three, or four days a week, rarely more or less, because that keeps the monthly session count predictable.
On the warm-up itself, he does not think there is one correct way. Five to ten minutes, simple, straightforward, enough to prep the body for the movements ahead. What he does think is that the warm-up is a great place to build autonomy. He does not always run warm-ups with clients. If they are ready for it, they come in five or ten minutes early, do it on their own, and when the session starts they are straight into the first exercise with more time for the parts that need a coach. The general population or lifestyle warm-up is basic enough for that. His newer performance client gets something more involved. Where it goes wrong is when coaches use the warm-up as a time filler. It stretches, it becomes a workout in itself, and it eats the session.
Daniel liked it because it is his own definition of coaching applied to one block. If a coach takes someone from point A to point B, you can isolate that to the warm-up. Progress the client to the point where they can do it themselves, and they get more of you where you are actually needed. Value of the time goes up.
Inside the Session: Say Less
Brandon was explicit that he was not going to touch program design here. This is only about what you do while the person trains. First, talk. Not to fill space, but ask questions, get to know them, give feedback when it is needed. Keep your cues clear and concise. Be specific and intentional. Over-cueing is one of the most common problems he sees in new coaches, especially in personal training, where a coach keeps talking to feel like they are adding value. His own lesson is that the less he says, the more effective it is when he does say something. When he sees a fault, he can hit it, explain it, and fix it faster because there is less noise around it.
Second, learn something about them. At a minimum you are spending two hours a week with this person, sometimes four. You do not have to love everyone you train, but take the initiative to know whether they have a family, what they do for work, what they are into, so there is something to talk about between sets. And then watch the line. The trainer versus friend boundary gets crossed, and twenty or thirty minutes of the hour disappears into conversation. Ask the questions that lead somewhere, and be honest about keeping them moving.
Third, listen. Anyone coaching one-on-one knows the session sometimes turns into something like therapy. The client has someone they trust, and they get things off their mind without being judged. Be ready for that. Take mental notes, and real notes, on the things you can check in on later so they know you care. And make the hour feel important. That is why the energy at the start matters so much. You want them to feel that they matter to you and that you care about their outcome, because when that lands early, people buy in, follow the program better, and listen to you outside the gym. Brandon hears often that training with him is one of the things a client looks forward to in their day. Sometimes because they can say whatever they want. Sometimes because they finally enjoy training again. Whatever the reason, they walk in feeling important.
Daniel put a frame around the conversation piece. Keep the structure of the session. If the rest is ninety seconds and the story is not done, save that thought, let's do another set. Conversation fits around the training, not the other way around, because the training is the value they are paying for. Where the therapist role goes wrong is when the rest period gets blown through and the thing that was supposed to be protected is the thing that got lost.
He also raised something he will come back to in the group class episode: do not devalue your voice. If you cue constantly, they stop listening, because it stops meaning anything. So he keeps two voices. A conversation voice for rest periods and life. A coaching voice that is a bit stricter and more professional, and that he uses only when it is time to go or when a cue matters. His wife can hear the switch from across the room. The point is that when he goes to the coaching voice, the client knows. They listen, and then he can drop back to the relaxed tone between sets.
Space, Body Language, and Your Phone
Brandon kept going down his list. Know when to talk and when not to. Listen to understand, not to respond, something he is still working on himself. Save the words so they resonate when they matter. Be aware of space. Build a little box for you and your client, and do not squeeze them into a corner or set up somewhere crowded and dangerous. In a busy gym especially, a client may not feel comfortable grabbing equipment or doing an exercise in front of a crowd. Think about how much space you actually need and where you are putting them, because being jammed into a corner takes a lot out of a session.
Watch body language. Shoulders rolled, head down, no smile, grindy movement that is slower than normal, less lift between sets. Pay attention, because it is something to bring up and dig into. And take notes and track the weights. Brandon runs CoachRx on his phone between sets, pulls it out, logs the weight, puts it away, and does not take it out for any other reason. He hates seeing trainers on their phone or checking their watch while they are supposed to be with someone. The notes matter because of all the small changes you forget: the machine that was unavailable last week so you swapped the exercise, the load that felt better, the detail you tweaked. Without the record you lose the detail and you lose the progression.
Daniel told a story about a coach he liked who kept his timer on his phone when there were clocks on the wall. The coach said he was better with the phone. Daniel's answer was that the client is not. Even a five percent suspicion that you are doing something else on your phone hurts the experience. Use the clock. Daniel has this so ingrained that he feels guilty pulling out his phone on the floor, and when he has to, he narrates it: I am just writing down the weights, that is it. A notepad or an iPad can be worth the investment simply because it does not look like a phone. What it all comes down to for him is presence. Be with your client and make sure they feel it, alongside the clarity of explaining what a cue is for and why you gave it.
Then Brandon got to the thing that drives him nuts. Eating in front of a client. If it is that important, take five minutes and eat. Standing in front of someone, telling them to train while you shovel rice, says you are important but not that important. Imagine the person cutting your hair doing it. Daniel's version was blunter. Prioritizing your own meal timing over the person who paid you is putting your fitness above your career, and he does not believe you make it as a full-time professional coach without putting the coaching first. A great coach can figure out how to eat and do the job.
End Well
The last piece is the post-session. Review quickly before they leave. Brandon has become adamant about this over the last year and a half back on the floor: bench press went up five pounds, a couple more reps on the row, the squat did not go up but the movement looked a lot cleaner than last week. Include what could have been better and what you will work on next time. Ask if there are any questions about today or anything they want to talk through. Then set up the next session. If he sees someone Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Monday ends with great work today, Wednesday is squat and RDL, be ready for that. Remind them of the homework, the nutrition, whatever keeps them on track between sessions.
Then, away from the client, close the loop. When you sit down to program, go back and review. How did they perform compared with last week? What changes, what stays, what did you wish you saw more of, what was too easy? That review is what makes the prep for next week possible, which is where the whole episode started. Brandon's summary for anyone new: do your homework, have energy when they walk in, make the warm-up efficient and eventually theirs, be clear and do not overspeak, learn something about them, and reflect at the end. Do those few things and you will stand out, and the rest of the episode fills in the gaps.
Daniel closed by naming what the hour had quietly demonstrated. They talked about a PT session for the better part of an hour and never touched the training program, which is a decent definition of individual design. You should be good at the craft of writing programs, because it is necessary. But the program is a tool. Everything around it, the experience and how the person is coached, is at least equally important, and may matter more going forward. Then he offered the line he was taught about presentations and borrows for every session and every call. The most vulnerable parts of a flight are the takeoff and the landing. Start well and end well. The middle matters, but how you open the session and how you close it is what the client carries out the door. Don't crash the plane.
Where to Go From Here
This is the first of a short series on in-person coaching. Next week is group sessions, and Daniel and Brandon are holding a final topic for the end of the series that they say can create more freedom in your business and a clearer end goal for some of your clients. Questions about personal training, online training, or refining either process go to Daniel and Brandon on Instagram.
The thinking in this episode, a session built on preparation, presence, and a client who feels like their hour matters, is the coaching work taught inside the OPEX Method Mentorship, where Brandon is currently in week two of the October cohort. Enrollment is open for 2027, which runs as two semesters, and February seats are already going. There will be no Black Friday deal on the Method, so there is nothing to wait for. Apply and book a call with a coaching advisor, who is a graduate of the program rather than a sales rep, to explore it.
Behind the Design releases weekly on the CoachRx Podcast Network. This was episode forty, forty live shows without a missed week, and every episode is in a playlist on the OPEX YouTube channel if you want to catch up.
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For the full pathway into this kind of program design, look at the OPEX Method Mentorship.
Connect with the coaches
Brandon Gallagher:Brandon’s Instagram (@bgperform_)
Daniel Persson:Daniel’s Instagram (@danielcapersson)
Join us live on Tuesdays mornings 11:30am EST on the OPEX YouTube Channel
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