Our online service has one simple goal: make you strong in any setting you are comfortable with: home, gym or in a park. We bring strength training to a setting you are comfortable in.
Online coaching is a complicated business. The odds are stacked against it working. Most people want their strength training to contain doses of community, outdoors, options, equipment, physical experiences and of course human interaction. They want the live experience. We try to find some middle ground by coaching live online. Basically coach people on how to do a whole bunch of moves well, scale it for them and then throw them into our class to practice and scale what they learn.
HOW WE MAKE IT WORK
We personally love ‘live’ online coaching. Managing an hour of training, communicating clearly with some humour, getting details right, keeping people engaged through it and getting people stronger is a challenge I enjoy. And there’s the joy of working with constraints such as limited spaces and less equipment. That forces us to work with a lot more single leg work, bodyweight exercises and unconventional exercise choices. You realise that with a little creativity your bodyweight and a couple of dumbbells can go a long way in the strength and conditioning game. Zoom fatigue means there is a large section of the population who are wary of the format and don’t like it. And that’s OK. The small percentage for whom it resonates is big enough for me to find enough willing and paying participants to work with.
THE DETAILS
Online coaching is a sensitive game.
The first 3-4 weeks are critical to push clients into a regular schedule and make a habit of training. They need to learn the names of exercises. Both the coach and trainee need to figure out if they learn better by seeing someone do it and follow along. Or verbal cues produce better outcomes. There’s a lot to get right.
We start with an assessment to get a basic sense of client expectations and to get a sense of how they move.
We follow it up with one-on-ones to coach clients on how to perform basic exercises effectively and tailor it to their strength levels.
We take 2-3 sessions outside of the group classes to get this done. After the one-on-ones, we move clients into the group classes.
The timings of these sessions are listed below. The key to our online service is to help clients pick the right exercises based on their strength levels. And also pick a variety of patterns to ensure every major joint and muscle group in the body gets healthy and challenging dose of movement. Clients aim to train for between 4-6 sessions a week with us online.
Timings
7 AM: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday
7:50 AM: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday
11 AM: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday
6:00 PM: Monday, Wednesday, Friday
7 PM: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
How to sign up for our online service
Call us on +919840424684 to schedule an assessment.
A coach will get a basic sense of how you move and you get to have a chat with them about how our service works.
If you choose to sign up, the fee is Rs 4400 for a month. We do not offer longer memberships. The fee will be pro-rated based on start date.
More deets
The online service is a godsend for folks who don’t want to commute to train, folks who have never liked the gym setting or crowded spaces and who prioritise quality of life and strength outcomes. Clients train between 3 to 6 times a week.
I handle the programming for all the sessions online. And the split is a fairly pragmatic one. We do a lot of pushing, shoulder rotation and spinal rotation work twice a week. There’s squatting and using the hamstring and glutes twice a week. And there’s pulling and calf work twice a week.
We spent an hour or two walking clients through all the basic patterns we use during the training sessions. This is done one-on-one. We make pick the appropriate difficulty levels on exercises, walk through each pattern in detail and most importantly try and make the client comfortable with our voice, cues and coaching style. People often zone out. We need to work hard to earn their attention and keep it for the 50 training minutes. We need their confidence that we are watching them carefully. We ask for changes in angles.
Once we complete the one-on-one, it’s not yet mission accomplished. Clients need to consistently show up for the sessions. Get used to the lingo and the pacing of the hour.
We do have some clients sign in from gyms. And we make extensive use of machines, barbells, pull up bars etc. But in case they don’t, we use plenty of single leg work, isometrics, jumping and calisthenics.
We use slide outs, lateral squatting, single leg squatting, hinges, hip thrusts, squat jumps, wall sits, single leg isometric holds and emphasis control and stability. The volume is higher than what we use in our gym. With single leg squats, we use assistance to ensure control and comfort with depth.
For example, a routine could involve a push up isometric hold followed by push ups. And we use deficit push ups to add range and difficulty to the exercise. For those who do not have push ups yet, we use elevated push ups on dining tables, chairs, sofas.
Several clients also have dip stands. This lets us throw in inverted rows and dips into the routine. We now seen at least 7-8 clients actively work towards single arm push ups. Similar choices are made for pulling work too.
Like with our in-person service, we use plenty of ankle rotation, shoulder rotation, hip rotation and lateral flexion of the spine drills too. This is in addition to healthy doses of planks, crunches, spinal rotation, flexion and extension. Our online-service also allows us to dose people more frequently with these patterns. This is useful since these patterns lend themselves to more frequent doses.
We keep a close eye on clients. And when they have settled in and gotten comfortable, we notch up the difficulty. And with a community of over 200 trainees, more recent clients watch experienced folks using dip stands and pull ups. Or belting out weighted pistol squats and aspire to this stuff too. And we give them a clear road to these training outcomes.