Why Mobile Training?

by Machelle Lee
(Santa Cruz CA)

Mobile fitness training is an important part of the fitness industry because it reaches those who will never join a gym or health club. Interestingly, only 14% of the entire U.S. population belongs to a gym or health club (IHRSA, 2006). That means that 86% of the U.S. population is NOT IN THE GYM!! This leaves quite a large population that is not being serviced by our industry!

Mobile training is a very easy business to get started - It doesn't require a lot of money to begin or a lot of overhead to maintain. What it does require is a trainer who truly wants to help those who need physical activity. One great benefit of mobile training is that because of the low overhead, more of the training fee will stay where it belongs - in your pocket!

Fitness professionals think of fitness as a part of our everyday "hygiene" and something we do because our bodies need it and because we enjoy it. Our health and fitness routines are just as important as brushing our teeth. However, the office people we were working with actually viewed our fitness programs as any other service one might use. Simply put, these people viewed our delivery of services no different than the delivery of pizza. I know this sounds a bit funny to associate exercise with eating pizza, but stay with me for a second...

Do you drive and eat pizza at the pizza parlor? Or, do you call and have your pizza delivered?

Most of us call and have it delivered! Why, because, it's convenient. We don't have to put on our shoes, get in the car and drive over to the pizza parlor. We can simply pick up the phone and place an order. It can't get any more convenient!

When pizza first started being delivered, many people thought this was a crazy service. However, pizza delivery service is now a main income source for many pizza businesses.

Many people view exercise in a similar way - they want it delivered! People are busy!

They will do anything they can to save time. To put it bluntly, exercise is not a top priority. Our goal, of course, is to help our clients realize the importance of daily physical activity, but for many, it will never be a priority. Just knowing that they have to walk or drive to a facility is enough to discourage them from exercising.

Of course we don't view exercise this way. For us, and many other fitness professionals exercising is extremely high on our priority lists. But we're not talking about US. If we want to succeed in this industry, we need to stop thinking for ourselves and begin thinking like those who need our services. Keep in mind we're not talking about the people you see at the gym. We're talking about those that will never step foot into a gym.

Why is mobile training successful at attracting the inactive population?

Convenience! By making exercise convenient, we are helping to eliminate the most common barriers to exercise. These include: lack of time, lack of convenience, lack of instruction, family and work commitments, inaccessibility, cost and weather.


Mobile Training Eliminates The Most Common Barriers To Exercise

Lack of Time: As a society, WE ARE BUSY! There are so many things in our day that can compete for our time. Exercise is not a priority for most people and it gets pushed off the "to-do" list. Because we meet clients in a location of their choice (mostly in their homes or offices), we save our clients the time needed to travel to and from a gym. Most people have to drive 10-15 minutes to get to the gym. By eliminating the need to drive anywhere, we've successfully saved our clients 20-30 minutes!

Convenience: What can be more convenient than having a personal trainer "deliver" their services directly to you?

Lack of Instruction: A lot of people do not know where to start when it comes to exercise. They want instruction and motivation, but don't want to go to a gym to receive it. At the gym many people also have to pay additional fees to hire a personal trainer for proper instruction. Again, with mobile training, we are providing the desired instruction directly to our clients.

Family and Work Commitments: This relates to the busyness in our lives. Jobs and families require time and energy. Of course, they are both very important, but wouldn't our clients make better employees and family members if they were balanced and healthy? Mobile training can help because our services save time. We can meet a client in their work location. We can visit a client in their home. Often we include family members in the workout so that the client can get their physical activity and have quality time with a family member at the same time. We love to see family members exercise together and we encourage it. What better way to set a positive example for children than to have them participate in a family exercise session?

Inaccessibility: There are no accessibility issues with mobile training. We can go anywhere, anytime to meet our clients.

Cost: Yes, personal training has a cost. The good news with mobile training is that the client does not need to have a gym or health club membership. In most gyms, you have to pay for personal training on top of your membership fees. Plus, the reality with mobile training is that because the overhead is so low, you can actually provide the service, cover your costs, pay yourself and still have profit left over while charging less than the local gym (not that we're advocating for charging less than the market rate).

Weather: With mobile training, we meet our clients anywhere. If the weather is poor, we meet indoors. If it's a nice day, we can go outside. Case closed!


Mobile Personal Fitness Training is one of the fastest growth areas within the fitness industry!

According to the IDEA Health and Fitness Association, nearly 25% of all personal training is occurring in a home setting and this appears to be the fastest growing segment of personal training. (IDEA Health and Fitness Association, 2001). As time goes on, this will only grow larger because it meets the needs of the majority of our population.

You may ask yourself, if mobile training is so big, why is it that we rarely hear about it in our trade magazines?

The reason is simple:
Our entire industry is still very facility focused! Our industry needs to talk more about mobile training and start providing the education trainers need to succeed in mobile training. I think the assumption is that training a client in a gym is the same as training a client in another setting. Speaking from experience let me state that training a client in a gym is completely different from training a client in a home or another setting. Saying that they are exactly alike would be like saying that training a senior is similar to training an Olympic athlete. I think we all can agree that those two have very little in common. The same is true with mobile training and gym training. They are completely different and the skills needed to be successful as a mobile trainer are different too.

Machelle Lee and Ryan Andrews own and operate The Invisible Gym.
www.the-invisible-gym.com

Our frustration with the lack of resources for the mobile trainer led Ryan and I to start presenting at Health and Fitness conferences and we also created a resource manual called, The Mobile Fitness Guide To Business Success!
http://www.the-invisible-gym.com/mobile-fitness-professionals.html

It is our hope that mobile training become an integral part of the health and fitness industry and we are trying to create a mobile training community!

If you have any questions about mobile training you can contact us at: getfit@theinvisiblegym.com

Keep a pair of sunglasses handy, the future of mobile fitness training looks bright!