There’s always something crazy going on in this industry. At any moment, there’s a maniac in a weight room taking a dangerous lift and a shady businessman in an office finding a way to turn dirty profits. The posts you find here in my log are the musings of a mashed-up meathead — the reactions I have as I spend my whole life watching this industry. I will share my thoughts with you here, unedited, uncensored, unfiltered, and Under The Bar. If you are offended by profanity - do not read this.
Some more thoughts, considerations, and observations of online training.
In the strength and fitness industry today, online training is becoming more and more popular by the month. Not a day goes by that I don't see some type of social media post of somebody promoting their online training service in one way or another. If it's not a social media post, then I'm seeing it through emails and other media outlets, trying to call attention to their training services. This is great. This REALLY is a great thing if you think about it.
It's a great thing for consumers who are looking for guidance for their training, and it's a great service that has really been around since any gym I've ever gone to. It's just wasn't really called online training. It was called giving advice, usually from the guy that was running the gym. The gyms I grew up in you just talked to the guy who ran the gym. He usually had more experience than anybody else. He'd write you out a program, tell you what to do, and watch your form and technique, and give you advice from there. The rest of it was just fucking around trying to figure shit out for yourself, which I posted about earlier. This post, however, is not about that.
This post is more along the lines of...
Would people just stop fucking complaining about all the online trainers that suck?
Have we not all read enough of this shit already? I'm willing to bet I read more posts about why online trainers suck, from other online trainers, than any other posts that I've ever read about online training. I don't think I've even read a fucking post about the benefits of online training. Let that sink in for a minute. The guys that are trying to promote their online training think the best way to promote it is to tear all the other people down. It's ridiculous.
To me, if I was a consumer of an online training service, the last person I'd ever want to hire is the person who's bitching about how all the other online trainers suck because obviously the person doesn't have enough work themselves to keep them busy enough.
They are probably the ones that actually suck themselves. In business, those who spend the most time tearing down others are usually the ones who do not have enough selling points of their own.
They certainly know enough reasons why all the other online trainers suck. If they've done all this research on why online trainers suck, then maybe they ought to take a look in the mirrors because the people who I know who specialize in online training, that are doing a phenomenal job at it, don't have the time to post about why other online trainers because they're too busy working with the clients that they currently have, and their own business.
Are there online trainers that suck? Hell, yes. There's people who suck in every industry. It's nothing new. It's nothing new at all. Are there online trainers that are phenomenal at what they do? Most certainly. Are the online trainers that are phenomenal at what they do the ones that are coming out and telling you how phenomenal they actually are? Hell, no! They don't have to toot their own horn because they have the client success to toot the horn for them. It's called fucking referrals. #referrals
The takeaway here is stop posting about why all these online trainers suck. Everybody knows they suck. If people are so stupid that they're going to hire somebody who you can actually tell is a complete idiot and doesn't know anything about training, then I think you really need to give people a little bit more credit. I know there's a lot of dumb people in the world, but come on. They're not as dumb as people are making everybody out to be, and if they are, are these the clients you really want to target?
I do feel online training can be a phenomenal service. I do feel it has its value. I also think it has a lot of negative aspects as well, which I touched upon in one of my previous posts. But at the same time, if you're NOT going to present the profession and the service that you offer in a professional manner, then you suck, because it's doing nothing for the profession except make everyone look bad. I am not an online trainer. Elitefts doesn't offer online training. We have no plans to ever offer online training. It's just not what we do. It's not who we are. It doesn't mean it's a bad thing. It's just that's not our path, our vision, or our aim. We do however have team members who do offer this service (full disclosure - we do allow them to promote it but we do not get anything in return, I have also helped many of them set up their business structure for this at no cost)
The one thing I do understand is, if you're trying to build a profession and this profession is online training, and all people are doing is spending time tearing everybody else down about why they suck, then you're doing a shitty fucking job of trying to build a profession that you're trying to build your own career on. EVERYONE can come up with a reason why someone else sucks regardless of how good the person feels they are.
Is tearing down a handful of online trainers really worth creating an even more negative impression for potential clients?
Use your fucking head. Think about it a little bit. Spend your time talking about what value you have to offer and how your value will be different than somebody else's out there competing with you. There's thousands, if not millions, of people who would be your potential market. What you think are your competitors are not really your competitors. There's far more consumers in this market than there are people capable of actually servicing them. If you don't have the clients, then look at your own education base. Look at the service that you offer and look at how you're presenting yourself and how you're marketing yourself, and you'll see the answers there.