Creating a coaching structure that isn't based on commissions and sales.

Growing a fitness brand is hard. Growing a F&B or other brand must be equally hard. But in an industry where your face, your physical appearance, your own athletic abilities, and often your social media presence is all that people choose you on, growth relies on a balance between empowering individual coaches ideas and company systems.?

Being a single site gym with a heavy coaching schedule by the Founder is hard on your energy but takes little leadership. Being a multi-site, multi-regional brand flips this challenge and asks questions of why people work with you, and how you maintain a standard that was easy when it was just me folding towels. Do we have an answer? No, but we take a lot of lessons from other industries and leaders to improve our model and in particular the attraction to working with us. After all, a poor product is not going to survive let alone grow, and in fitness, our coaches are our product.?

Conventionally in the fitness sector a ‘Senior Coach’ is the one who earns the most commission, works the longest hours, in essence takes home the highest earnings. Maybe this is the case in other sectors too, but for us this isn’t the case. Yes our more senior roles are paid more, but thats through a full time salary and benefits, and the security of their role in the organisation. If our Senior Coaches are busy chasing client packages and clocking 60+ hours per week coaching how do they develop the more junior coaches that want to learn from them? No one is going to be as passionate about reviewing and helping a new coach learn after a 14 hour split day.?

Five years ago we innovated our coaching structure and we continue to do so. Oddly (or embarrassingly) I even learned a lot from bingeing on Grey’s Anatomy, after all as a “teaching hospital” everything is about the Interns and the next generation, not the top surgeons. So how do we structure our coaching at Pinnacle?

Internship (Level 1)

Observe | Repeat with supervision | Deliver?

Junior Coach (Level 2)

Learn | Deliver and Review | Improve?

S&C Coach (Level 3)

Research | Scrutinise | Teach

Senior S&C Coach (Level 4)

Lead | Guide | Team

Facility Manager (Level 5)

Question | Mentor | Steer

Every L3 coach is expected to be teaching a Level 2, who in turn is mentoring and guiding an Intern. Our Senior coaches ask the right questions, critique the product delivery, and ultimately steer the ship through stormy (read Covid) waters.?

All very nice Tom but what does this mean for how each day looks and what your athletes experience? Well in short, education. Our Senior Coaches spend time with the newer coaches reviewing programming, coaching cues, and session delivery, as well as ensuring that time with any athlete focuses on teaching them something. Because their earnings aren’t commission based this utilisation of their time improves everyone without compromising on tomorrow’s take-home.?

There is nothing wrong with being a sole trader and a sole coach, in fact the product might be so revered that this is a perfect model. But we believe there is so much to improve in how our industry is held accountable and the professionals within it developed that we spend more and more time asking how to teach through the knowledge in our leadership teams instead of sell them hourly.?