How to Price Hybrid Personal Training — a Simple Formula.
The personal training landscape has shifted radically thanks to the pandemic. “Hybrid” personal training is now the best way to provide services. In fact, 62% of personal trainers now offer hybrid services (PTDC, 2020).
Question is, how do you price hybrid personal training?
Like most internet-era denizens, I went to Google for answers. There, I found hundreds of articles written by certification organizations, software sellers and personal trainers who claimed to have cracked the “online training” code.
But after reading a dozen or so, I was super confused. While most were informative about hybrid personal training itself, every article failed to provide a clearcut pricing recommendation.
Hybrid Personal Training — Defined
First, let’s align our definitions. Traditional personal training is in-person, one-on-one workout sessions. “Digital” (aka “online”) personal training is workouts, advice and/or accountability delivered via digital means — text messages, email, spreadsheets, apps, video links, etc. “Hybrid” personal training combines traditional, in-person sessions with digital training.
(“Virtual” personal training, which I won’t cover here, is real-time training sessions over a live video stream.)
With hybrid training, we’re talking about clients who have worked out with you in-person, for some (or all) of their tenure. If you’ve ever emailed or texted those same clients advice, motivation, or workouts, you’ve already provided hybrid personal training.
Pricing Anchor #1: Your 1:1 Session Price
Pricing is always tricky — it’s part art, part science. The “science” part involves calculating transactions across a number of buyers and sellers over time in a competitive marketplace.
Nobody has time for that.
Fortunately, personal training has relatively well established market pricing. It varies by geography, education, experience, target audience, and other factors.
You probably know your one-on-one session price already. It may be $60 an hour if you’re in Boise or $100 an hour if you’re in San Francisco. This is your first pricing anchor.
Pricing Anchor #2: Marketplace of Alternatives
Since hybrid personal training includes digital workouts, effective pricing must consider the alternatives marketplace. This includes well-known workout apps like Peloton, Sweat by Kayla, Les Mills+, Beachbody and Apple Fitness+, which offer non-personalized workout videos, limited advice and nearly zero accountability. Considering the top 5, and ignoring term-based discounts, the average price is $14 per month.
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Another market, which emerged more formally since pandemic, is online-only personal training companies. This includes Future Fit, Trainiac, CoPilot, Kickoff and Caliber. The average of these services is $106 per month.
(Note the default pricing model for the marketplace of alternatives is a monthly, recurring subscription fee.)
The Winning Formula
You now have three relevant data points to keep in mind when determining your hybrid personal training price. This is where the art comes in. It’s how you use these data points, and, more importantly, how you sell “hybrid” with confidence to your clients.
I think of the online side of personal training as an extension of your in-person services. In-person sessions provide the highest value, and digital training helps clients get better results through increased contact.
This is why it makes sense to sell digital training as an “add-on” to in-person sessions, and price it as an ongoing, monthly subscription. Knowing that, here’s the magic formula:
Monthly Hybrid Price = Half Your 1:1 Session Price
So, if you’re charging $100 per 1:1 session, you sell hybrid personal training as a $50/month add-on.
If you’re charging $65 for sessions, you sell hybrid as a $33/month add-on.
Selling it with Confidence
Armed with this info, here’s a sales pitch for discussing hybrid training with your clients:
I offer a digital training add-on if you want to take advantage of that. It’s a really effective way to stay connected and continue working out between sessions. The cost is very reasonable — I only charge half of a single session. For comparison, that’s less than half the cost of online-only training companies, and only a few times more expensive than non-personalized workout apps. Do you want to try it out?
If, at any time, the client stops buying in-person sessions, you may decide to end the relationship, as they are no longer a candidate for hybrid personal training. Or, you may decide to keep that client on a digital-only package — which you may want to price differently. (I’ll leave that discussion for another day.)
About me
I studied quantitative business, economics, and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, started my career as an analyst at Deloitte, then worked as a pricing manager for Google/YouTube. From there, I became certified as a personal trainer (through ACE) and have since trained clients online and in-person, all while co-founding various fitness-tech companies. I’m currently CEO of GAIN Fitness, an app-first digital platform for trainers, and a Managing Director of Next Epic, a fitness-tech consultancy and creative services company.
