It’s only taken me 8 years!

Since the pandemic hit us, I’ve trained people virtually, by that I mean through an online plan and video call workouts. Before that and since 2012 (when I left the Royal Marines) I was training people face to face outdoors.

Throughout that time I’d take on Women as clients, Men, the fit, the unfit, clients with sporting goals, people with weight loss targets and everything in between. I cast my net wide. I loved training in real life, I got the chance to meet some terrific people from all walks of life. The goal of a Personal Trainer is to really get to know their clients so that their training becomes a journey specific for them. I realised this after a while of training, people’s goals aren’t really that important as a trainer (really?), it’s the REASON that they want their goals that’s important to figure out. We all do what we do for a reason. It was almost as much about being an amateur psychologist as it was about being a PT!

In the last 8 years I’ve studied all that amateur psychology and trends have emerged. More on that later.

I may as well be honest. In Britain, being an outdoor trainer is….challenging! The weather played a MASSIVE part in session cancellations. I would make my way up to the park, set up my workouts and hey presto the heavens would open! My phone would begin to beep with clients cancelling and my days would be ruined. I’d say this would happen quite regularly too. Clients who signed up bright eyed and bushy tailed with visions of themselves becoming superheroes quickly found out that outdoor training wasn’t for them. I also had some truly shocking clients, people who would show up and just moan at me non stop. It’s fair to say that personal training every type of person produced a wide variety of results, and (with my amateur psychology) I now want to change that.

It’s been tough, trying to figure out just who my ‘niche’ client is as I’ve seen great success generally, it’s fair to say I’ve done my homework, 8 years of it. I think if most personal trainers were honest with themselves, we all have a ‘niche’ client, the type of person who consistently gets better results from working with you. It’s having the confidence to market yourself as a specific trainer for that niche, now that I’m online I think the time has come.

You might be better at working with youngsters, middle aged women or the elderly. It’s simply the type of client that responds best to you and the style that suits the person the most. That’s what I’ve found anyway. What works for the goose, definitely doesn’t work for the gander.

Believe me I tried to fight the tide for YEARS. I would almost have to force some clients to train, to stick to their plans. I would rack my brains and I’d give myself such a hard time trying to figure out what it was I was doing wrong. But the truth is, I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I was just the wrong trainer for them.

Think about it, when you get your hair cut, or go to a certain clothes shop and even restaurants, you go for choices that you like. That strike a chord with you and hit the spot. Choosing a personal trainer is no different.

Like I said, now that I’m online, it’s my chance to focus on my niche group. It’s the perfect opportunity to really sharpen my blade. To help the group of people who hit their goals when they work with me and their experience, the whole kit and caboodle has proven results. As I talked about earlier, studying the REASONS behind why this certain group like to train also resonates with MY reasons to train too.

I guess going online has basically given me the opportunity and the chance to ask myself; “Who have I helped most in these last 8 years?” At the end of the day, I’m kind of tired of potentially wasting my clients time, why should they pay me for a service that doesn’t suit them? They might get a bit fitter, more toned etc, but the journey that got them there – was it enjoyable? Will it be something that they stick to long term? I’m not in this business to simply take people’s money, I want to change lives FOR LIFE. Also, like I said earlier, you wouldn’t go to a men’s clothes shop if you were a women would you! For me, it’s all about offering the BEST service I possibly can and

It’s with great excitement that I can finally reveal (trumpets please)…….

Over 30s Men have consistently hit their targets when working with me, so it’s this group I’ll now focus on.

I’ve had guys running half-marathons who could never do so before, tough mudder assault courses, triathlons, consistently hit tough training blocks, lost weight, gotten ripped, you name it. It’s not to say Women that I trained didn’t hit such goals, it’s just Men did it CONSISTENTLY more and from what I’ve seen, had a better experience on that journey with me.

So Mark Hughes, over 30s Men’s Fitness Coach is finally born!

Exciting times. And it’s crazy how much since coronavirus Virtual Coaching has taken off, maybe people are slowly realising online training is actually a viable choice. I can’t see myself ever going back to face to face training and I think coronavirus has just accelerated the fact that virtual coaching is here to stay.

Have a great week all.