You Can't Take Personal Training Online. Here's What You Do Instead.

Behind the Design, Episode 42 with OPEX Coaches Daniel Persson and Brandon Gallagher

Most coaches who try to move an in-person client online make the same mistake. They try to rebuild the gym experience on a screen. The energy, the immediate feedback, the standing there while someone finishes a set. Then they lose a good portion of the roster and conclude that remote coaching doesn't work for their people.

In this episode, Brandon Gallagher and Daniel Persson take that assumption apart. Both coaches have run gyms, both have moved rosters online, and both have lost clients in the process. Their answer to "how do I transition my personal training to online?" is blunt: you don't. It's a different thing.

This is the third episode in their short series on in-person coaching, after the personal training session and the group session. Daniel joined from the OPEX Coaches Retreat in Lisbon, between breakout sessions on the future of the profession.

Dependency Doesn't Travel

Brandon's first attempt at taking clients remote happened because he had to. He sold his percentage of his gym, started traveling, and still had people who wanted to train with him. Many of them didn't make it. Not because the programming was wrong, but because he had trained them to depend on him. He picked the weights, chose the machine, loaded the bar, put the plates away. In person that feels like good service. Online it leaves the client staring at a session they don't know how to run.

Daniel frames it as a question about value creation. If your roster is built on the belief that the value is you being in the room three times a week, the transition will be rough. If the value is the client getting more capable over time, the transition is already underway.

He also pushes on complexity. If a client could never run your design on their own, ask whether the design needs to be that complex, or whether you're entertaining with complexity because it keeps you necessary.

Teach the Basics While You're Still in the Room

Brandon's fix was not a remote system. It was becoming a better coach in person. He went into every session with a short list of what the client needed to own before going solo: what a dumbbell is versus a kettlebell, how to load a barbell, what tempo looks like, what three sets of eight actually means. Small things a coach stops noticing because they've handled them for years.

Then he let clients make decisions and get them wrong. Misloaded bars, mismatched dumbbells, the wrong machine. Not neglect, but room to notice. He had them pick weight jumps and explain back how a set felt in their own words. His view: you can't really learn something until you understand it your own way.

Fade In, Don't Flip

Daniel's transition went smoothly for a reason he only recognized later. He had been running his monthly consultations on Zoom even when the client was a member of his gym. When he went fully remote, the structure and delivery barely changed. The only thing missing was him on the floor.

His advice is to introduce the remote elements before you need them. Hold the consult online. Have them track and comment in CoachRx while you're standing next to them. Build the habit of meeting on a screen before the screen is all there is.

Where he did lose ground was presence. In the gym, a formal consult could slip three months because he saw the client every week anyway. Online, that slip meant the relationship went quiet. His correction: interactions need to be structured. The casual conversations that happen on their own in a gym have to be scheduled when the gym is gone.

A Client in His Seventies, One Year In

Brandon's example is a client in his seventies, recovering from a heart attack, who started with him two days a week and did nothing else. Brandon writes out the rest of the week for anyone who trains with him at least twice, and once the client asked for a third day, he wrote one. Simple, all machines, the same session every week, with the instruction to pick what would be a tough set.

The point was never progression on that day. It was walking into the gym alone, knowing which machine to use, choosing a weight, and coming back to say "look what I did." After a year, the client asked for more on his own. He is now at one day in person and two days solo, plus walking. Roughly ninety percent of his training time happens without Brandon in the building, and he is doing the best work of the year.

Coaching Online Is Not Personal Training Online

Not every client fits remote coaching, and you won't convert a full roster. Both coaches are clear on that. But the ones who do convert free your schedule, open your practice to more people, and keep paying for the relationship rather than the hour.

That distinction is the episode. Personal training online is rep counting and workout delivery. Coaching online is behavior change, accountability, communication, and a plan for a phase of someone's life. If you build toward the second one while the client is still in front of you, the transition stops being a transition. It's just the next step in their journey.

Where to Go From Here

If you are a coach somewhere in this shift, with in-person clients you think could run more on their own, Brandon and Daniel both offered to talk it through on Instagram.

If this is the kind of client journey you want to design on purpose, the OPEX Method opens two semesters in 2027 with 40 seats each. The first live cohort starts in February, and you are assigned your mentor as soon as you onboard. Apply to the OPEX Method and book a call with a coaching advisor, who is a graduate of the program rather than a sales rep.

Behind the Design releases weekly on the CoachRx Podcast Network, and every episode is in a playlist on the OPEX YouTube channel.

Have your clients tracking their own sessions, leaving comments, and messaging you inside the platform before they ever train alone. Start your free 14-day CoachRx trial and build the habits that make the transition work.

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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