Over the course of five years, 500 people came in and signed up at Glen Oliver’s gym. But after five years, where were those 500 people?

Dylan Staniec remembers the frustration: The frustration he felt when he wasn’t able to offer a solution to his clients. Then in January 2018, the 35-year-old from Santa Cruz, California opened Sea 2 Summit Training and abandoned his old way of training clients in favor of an individual program design model.

In 2013, Craig Massey spent a weekend with OPEX Founder James FitzGerald and had his aha moment.

Learn how Ronel Velasquez applied OPEX's Mixed Modal education to create a program to prepare his client for the CrossFit Open.

3 Reasons Even Experienced Coaches Should Take the OPEX Coaching Certificate Program (CCP).

In the fourth article of this six-part series, we’re going to look at how you can incentive your coaches to care.

The moment Abi Hammond came across James FitzGerald and OPEX education, she knew she needed to get involved. “I was coaching at a CrossFit gym, and the owner was a client of James’. He turned me on to the education. I just remember sitting there like ‘Oh shit, there’s a lot of information.

When we think about fitness coaches, we often think about fit 20-somethings who burn out after a year. But that is not the case for OPEX Gold Coast.

Though many group class and CrossFit affiliate gym owners find themselves overworked, burnt out and barely turning a profit, they’re too scared to make sweeping changes, so they continue on the dire path they’re on. They continue to let their fears get the best of them:

One hundred and twenty five clients who pay USD$355 a month for individual program design and monthly consults: Doing the math on that sounds like the dream for many who aspire to be a full-time professional coach.

Five years ago, Sam Smith coached at a CrossFit gym and had some remote clients and sport teams on the side, and was in the process of becoming a physiotherapist because he didn’t know if it was possible to make a professional wage and pursue a full-time career as a fitness coach.

Gym owner Justin Yoon ran a group class CrossFit gym for years. Here’s why he decided to transition his fitness business to individual design coaching.

I spent the first 3 years of my coaching career as a group fitness instructor. While my work gave me fulfillment, I felt a disconnect in the purpose of delivering deeper value to the people I worked with and towards my personal vision. 

Before she knew it, she was helping relieve coaches at OPEX Morgantown and decided she wanted to take her coaching to the next level. And when Smith told her that the OPEX Coaching Certificate Program (CCP) was “more informative, educational and beneficial” than her exercise science college degree, Lewis had no doubt the CCP was the course for her. 

I don’t want to quit, but I can’t keep coaching how I'm coaching. What can we do to make it more sustainable?

“The coaching profession in general, and I mean fitness coaching, life coaching, business coaching, is a bit of an unfair profession, in that people with the means to gain access to it are the ones who receive great coaching and mentorship,” he said.

“CCP exceeded my college education. By a lot,” said 26-year-old McCormick. “CCP really gave me a new perspective: To be less dogmatic. In university, they teach you the way things are, but they don’t do a lot of explaining about why this is the case, or why this might not always be the case.”

Prior to taking the OPEX Coaching Certificate Program (CCP) and opening his OPEX licensed gym, Burchfield had gained experience in various avenues in the fitness industry. He started personal training in 2011, spent some time coaching small group classes, and then ran a CrossFit gym in North Carolina. While running that gym, Burchfield took CCP and realized, “this is what I want to do long-term,” he explained. 

“CCP armed me to have difficult conversations with patients, and it armed me with supporting people better, especially my rehab clients outside of the clinic. And it has actually made me significantly better at managing my chronic pain clients,” said 37-year-old Reese, who first discovered OPEX when she was a Regionals-level CrossFit athlete. She started following the Big Dawgs blog and soon began working with James FitzGerald.

The goal of this 30-minute video is to show coaches 5 common program design mistakes and a detailed explanation of how each can be avoided. Coaches will also receive a demonstration of how using The OPEX System of Coaching creates better results for both the coach and the client. You can watch the video here.