Innovating in the Personal Training Space - What is Hybrid Training?

Hey everyone, and welcome back to another Fitlosophies: Blog edition! Last month I discussed what the future of CHT looks like, and my initiative to intertwine ourselves with a community built on trust and creativity. I mostly spoke on the higher level with general statements on the direction of the business, but today, I’d like to go into a bit more detail and give you more insight into exactly how we’re innovating to meet the market where it’s at.Alright, so what exactly does innovating in the personal training industry mean? I think people typically think of innovation in a more product-centric way - a new technological improvement, a change in a food’s ingredients, a better material to make a softer shirt, etc. But for services, especially one centered around human physiology which is relatively static in a timeframe less than thousands of years, we can’t necessarily think of innovation the same way. I’d argue that services typically innovate from a few different pathways:

• Technological advances in the environment with which that service exists (i.e. - the internet giving information companies the ability to instantly connect with its viewership - newspapers, book authors, etc - instead of needing to get a hard copy).

• Science and research create new consumer attitudes toward a specific product (i.e. - cigarettes containing carcinogens leading to non-smoking sections of restaurants, nicotine pouches, smokeless tobacco, etc). Yes, probably a horrible example to use given I’m in the health space, but, it was one of the first to come to mind - please excuse my ineptitude!

• Changing the service infrastructure to create a better rendering process (i.e. - online check-in and digital entry for hotels, making the process of getting to a hotel room much more seamless).

In short, there are tons of ways to improve upon services, something that I’m constantly working to do here at CHT, and feel that we’re uniquely positioned to champion. Last month, I mentioned that I had upgraded our business infrastructure by adding our own CHT app, keyless entry for open gym, robust benefits measures for our staff, and more. All of these are objectives in innovating how our services work, and today, I’ll be focusing on Hybrid Training - what I believe to be the future of Personal Training, and where CHT is heading!

Hybrid Training IS personal training, first and foremost. The name change is meant to indicate a change in expectations for the consumer and to begin the process of differentiating how CHT renders its services, as opposed to the general population of the personal training space. Most potential customers of personal training likely think of the classic approach - show up to the gym at a specific time, workout with your trainer giving you the exercises of the day, get tired, go home or to work, and come back a different day or the next week - cool. In reality, this doesn’t really work all that well in creating effective change, especially given the emerging research in exercise science and exercise psychology. Foundationally speaking, I do believe exercise to be the BEST entry point for effective health interventions - it’s actionable, it helps to establish routine, there’s direct feedback between the body and mind, and it’s one of the absolute best things someone can do to improve their health outcomes across the board. But, as practitioners, I think that misses a huge chunk of what can create long-lasting, positive changes, in personal training clients and the greater population. This is where I look to innovate, and where I believe that CHT already operates, and prior to these changes, failed to properly acknowledge and set the intention for our prospective clients. Exercise is one piece of a much larger pie regarding reaching most people’s training goals, but it’s also the piece that most prospective clients tend to focus on, without giving as much credence to these other factors:

• Nutrition and dietary counseling

• Behavior modification and habit formation

• Self-care and recovery

• Education

While this is by no means an exhaustive list, I think the expectation that exercise alone will allow someone to reach their goals actually creates a barrier to long-term success - it materializes a specific inflection point that will have to be overcome once it’s apparent that there’s more to the equation, and more effort is needed. In my 12+ years as a fitness professional, I’ve found that energy allocation is typically the limiting factor - afterall, how many of you reading this feel that you have enough energy to tackle and solve your nutrition needs, habit formation, self-care, educational needs, and everything else at this exact moment? While this is often due to more systemic factors that are just higher prioritized, or create worse health outcomes due to lack of control (e.g. work/life balance, access to well-sourced foods, lack of education surrounding proper nutrition, lack of community, other obligations, family responsibility) I think it’s important to be able to help our clients navigate these with respect to their own ability to work towards their goals. I think it’s equally important for individuals to understand this, and expect it, from the jump, so that the energy allocation won’t feel like a rug pull, it can be budgeted for and allocated for at the beginning. 

And this is the genesis of the infrastructural changes that have begun to take shape here at CHT! My goal has been to update our processes to allow us to tackle these instances more effectively, by giving a wider scope of access, and removing hurdles that may have been creating additional hardship to solving these non-exercise related challenges, OR, take advantage of the windows of opportunity that arise when people have higher motivation levels to make lifestyle changes. In the next installment of this blog, I’ll be looking at specific ways that CHT’s Hybrid Training can be used to help our clients better reach their goals! Stay tuned!