It pays to know about your body’s energy systems, whether you’re a coach or an athlete. 

Jonathan Mike, PhD, CSCS*D, NSCA-CPT*D, USAW, NKT-1 is a currently a faculty member the Exercise Science department at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, AZ. He is also a strength coach, author and speaker, and has competed in the sports of strongman and jujitsu. In this blog, he outlines the energy systems of the body and their relevance for coaches and athletes.

The Truth About Energy Systems

Energy systems within the framework of coaching and athletic development is always a heated topic, and there has been this very unsettling trend within social media and online articles discussing the best methods to incorporate these systems into programs. While this topic is critical to the improvement of athletic performance, implementation, and program design, the use of specific terms and application have been misinterpreted.

As times goes on, the staggering amount of self-proclaimed training and nutrition “experts” within the industry become more obvious. Many are discussing and even advocating basic programming ideas based on these systems without ever really thinking about how they actually work. There are way too many people who speak and write as though these energy systems are completely independent of each other.

Here’s the truth – and I know it may be shocking – but all these energy systems are not independent of each other. They never have been and never will be.

This article will help set the record straight and examine the truth about energy systems, what they are, how they work, and what you really need to know. Let’s get started!

Energy Systems 101

The essential terminology governing energy systems is called bioenergetics. It’s the conversion of chemical energy to mechanical energy. In other words, the conversion of carbs, proteins, and fats (chemical energy) into biological energy (mechanical), or what you use during training sessions.

Our bodies are in a constant state of anabolism and catabolism (called metabolism), which is the sum of all the anabolic and catabolic reactions in the body.

Energy from catabolic reactions is used to drive anabolic reactions through, you guessed it, adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Without ATP, muscle activity and growth wouldn’t occur, plain and simple.

What is ATP?

ATP is made up adenosine (nitrogen base), ribose (five-carbon sugar), and three phosphate groups. Essentially, if you remove a phosphate group, ATP becomes diphosphate (ADP). Remove another and ADP becomes monophosphate (AMP).

Here’s the scoop—your cells can’t generate ATP from scratch.

If we think back to the first law of thermodynamics, the total amount of energy in the universe remains constant. Therefore, from the foods we eat, potential energy exists within cells in the chemical bonds such as glucose, glycogen (composed of hundreds or thousands of glucose molecules stored in the muscles, liver, and brain), and fatty acids. When these compounds enter energy pathways, some become rearranged with energy released and captured in the formation of ATP. This “new energy” is then used for cell functions such as supplying the energy for muscle contraction (like heavy ass lifting).

The energy for all these processes is liberated from ATP by removing the terminal inorganic phosphate (Pi) group from the molecule, leaving adenosine diphosphate (ADP) plus one proton (H+). This ADP is readily recycled in the mitochondria (power source organelle in cells) where it is renewed again to ATP.

ATP is broken down (hydrolysis) because water is the splitting molecule. ATP is not much of a storage fuel. Muscle cells store ATP only in limited amounts, and activity requires a regular supply, which provides energy needed for muscular work.

Anaerobic vs. Aerobic

Now, this is where things start to get misinterpreted and perhaps a little confusing. We have to briefly touch on this because this sets the stage for the actual terms for true energy systems discussed later.

Most people would say, “Aerobic metabolism is an energy generating reaction that ‘uses’ oxygen.” While this statement isn’t totally wrong, it does leave out some keys aspects. Oxygen actually serves as the final electron acceptor in the chain (electron transport chain) and combines with hydrogen to form water (13).

Now, the term “aerobic” may seem misleading because oxygen does not actually participate directly in ATP synthesis. Instead, it is present at the “end stage” and significantly determines the ability for aerobic ATP production and sustained exercise, particularly during endurance exercise (13) and throughout heavy strength training as well.

As we’ll see more in the next section for energy systems, research suggests that the oxidative system also works hard to help you recover after a high intensity anaerobic effort like a set of squats or hill sprints (4).

With anaerobic, the generation of high energy via quick, intense exercise bouts is facilitated through the immediate anaerobic system, which has no reliance placed on oxygen due to the nature of the stimulus and combined efforts of the other two high energy systems.

Some metabolic pathways require oxygen. They are said to be aerobic and will not proceed unless oxygen is present in sufficient concentrations.
Other processes don’t require oxygen to proceed to completion and are said to be anaerobic.
The important underlying message is that oxygen can play a pivotal role in some pathways and have little effect on others. However, this variation in cells is actually ideal so they can adapt to cellular energy needs (at least temporarily) independent of oxygen.

Energy Systems: The Correct Terms

The Phosphagen System

During short-term, intense activities, a large amount of power needs to be produced by the muscles, creating a high demand for ATP. The phosphagen system is the quickest way to resynthesize ATP and is active at the start of all types of training regardless of intensity (6). The creatine kinase (enzyme) reaction regulates the breakdown in creatine phosphate.

Here’s the scoop—at the start of training, ATP is broken down into ADP, releasing energy for muscle contractions. The increase in ADP activates the creatine kinease (enzyme) reaction to promote the formation of ATP from the breakdown of creatine phosphate.

If training continues at high intensities, this enzyme reaction (CK) remains elevated. Once training is over or continues at a low enough intensity, it will allow glycolysis or the oxidative (mitochondrial respiration) system to supply adequate ATP for muscle energy demand.

Because ATP and creatine phosphate are stored in the muscle in small quantities, the phosphagen system can’t supply enough energy for continuous, long duration training. Overall, type II (fast twitch) motor units contain greater concentration of phosphagens compared to type 1 (slow twitch) motor units (10). Creatine phosphate (CP) is stored in skeletal muscles and donates a phosphate to ADP to produce ATP. No carbohydrate or fat is used in this process. However, the regeneration of ATP exclusively comes from stored CP. This process does not require oxygen to resynthesize ATP because it is anaerobic or oxygen independent.

The phosphagen system is the predominant energy system used for all-out exercise lasting up to about ten seconds and sometimes fifteen seconds, although there is currently not an exact time frame. However, because there is a limited amount of stored CP and ATP in skeletal muscles, the onset of fatigue occurs quickly.

This is the primary energy pathway that creatine monohydrate supplementation is built upon. It’s highly effective in the rapid regeneration of ADP to ATP from the creatine kinase reaction during andfollowing intense exercise, primarily from resistance training. It is undoubtedly the most studied performance supplement in the last twenty years, as the body of evidence clearly supports that creatine enhances exercise capacity and performance (1, 2, 7, 9, 11).

Glycolysis

Glycolysis helps to supplement the phosphagen system initially and then becomes the primary ATP source during high intensity muscular work that lasts from thirty seconds to about 2–3 minutes. It is the second fastest way to resynthesize ATP. Glycolysis, which is the breakdown of glucose, is one of the most studied metabolic pathways in the exercise sciences.

During glycolysis, carbohydrates in the form of either blood glucose or muscle glycogen (the stored form of glucose) are broken down through a series of chemical reactions to form pyruvate (glycogen is first broken down into glucose through a process called glycogenolysis).

Now, at the end stage of glycolysis via the breakdown of glucose, you get two pyruvate and two ATP. Once pyruvate is formed, it can go two directions: conversion to lactate or conversion to acetyl coenzyme A (acetyl-CoA), which enters the mitochondria for oxidation and the production of more ATP (10).

Simply put, the conversion to lactate occurs when the demand for oxygen is greater than the supply (e.g., during anaerobic exercise via sprinting or high intensity resistance training). In contrast, when there is enough oxygen available to meet the muscular and metabolic demands (e.g., during aerobic exercise), pyruvate (via acetyl-CoA) enters the mitochondria and goes through aerobic metabolism.

When oxygen is not supplied fast enough to meet the demands of muscular effort, an increase in hydrogen ions occurs, causing muscle pH to decrease (called acidosis) and other metabolites. Acidosis and the accumulation of these other metabolites cause a number of issues that can significantly lower your performance and interfere with everything inside and outside of the muscle. Due to the loss of performance, muscles lose their ability to contract effectively, and muscle force production and exercise intensity are ultimately ceased.

Mitochondrial RespirationI (Aerobic System)

From these three energy systems, the aerobic system, which is dependent on oxygen, is the most complex (3, 16). The metabolic reactions that take place in the presence of oxygen are responsible for most of the cellular energy produced by the body. As most people know, aerobic metabolism is the slowest way to resynthesize ATP. It provides a large magnitude of ATP, but the tradeoff is that you have to wait for it.

This system includes the citric acid/Krebs cycle, or the better term TCA cycle. I like TCA because it sounds better and should be used more often.

This system also involves the electron transport chain, which simply uses blood glucose, glycogen, and fat as fuels to resynthesize ATP in the mitochondria of muscle cells. When using carbohydrates, glucose and glycogen are first metabolized through glycolysis, with the resulting pyruvate used to form acetyl-CoA, which enters the TCA. The electrons produced in the TCA are then transported through the electron transport chain where ATP and water are produced. This is technically termed oxidative phosphorylation (6, 10).

Thus, the aerobic system produces eighteen times more ATP than does anaerobic glycolysis from each glucose molecule.

What About Fat?

This is nearly another topic and probably a future article in itself, but essentially intramuscular triglyceride is the other major fuel for the aerobic system.

Fat oxidation also requires oxygen. Because fats are long carbon chains, they are transported to the muscle mitochondria where the carbon atoms are used to produce acetyl-CoA (a process called beta-oxidation). When using fat, triglycerides are first broken down into free fatty acids and glycerol (a process called lipolysis). The breakdown of fatty acid compounds goes directly into the mitochondrion to produce ATP, as the oxidation of free fatty acids generate considerable more ATP molecules than the oxidation of glucose or glycogen.

A Quick Recap

There are way too many people who speak and write as though these energy systems are completely independent of each other. All these energy systems are not independent of each other.

• Phosphagen system: Forming ATP by using creatine phosphate or two ADP molecules; this pathway yields the highest ATP turnover rate
• Glycolysis: From blood glucose or muscle glycogen; can activate very early on in muscle contraction
• Mitochondrial respiration: The use of oxygen in the mitochondria

Intense, sustained movements, such as a 400-meter race, are dependent on not only the phosphagen system, but also largely on a slower pathway of ATP production, glycolysis, and to a much smaller extent, the slowest pathway of producing ATP, mitochondrial respiration.

As the duration of maximal effort work is sustained, the absolute power output will decline, as there is a shift in the energy system that is most dominant in resynthesizing ATP. In this sense, energy systems represent a continuum that ranges from rapid energy production to slow energy production.

It is important to note that at any given time, all energy systems are in operation. While we often like to classify activities as anaerobic or aerobic, each energy system is making a contribution to the total energy production.

For example, if a person is performing a max effort squat, the majority of energy used to supply the contracting muscles is being derived from the phosphagen system and anaerobic glycolysis. However, what energy system would the arms be using? How about the heart? Perhaps the only time in which an animal would be in a true anaerobic state is during the final moment of life.

Intense, sustained movements, such as a 400-meter race, are dependent on not only the phosphagen system, but also largely on a slower pathway of ATP production, glycolysis, and to a much smaller extent, the slowest pathway of producing ATP, mitochondrial respiration.

As the duration of maximal effort work is sustained, the absolute power output will decline, as there is a shift in the energy system that is most dominant in resynthesizing ATP. In this sense, energy systems represent a continuum that ranges from rapid energy production to slow energy production.

It is important to note that at any given time, all energy systems are in operation. While we often like to classify activities as anaerobic or aerobic, each energy system is making a contribution to the total energy production.

For example, if a person is performing a max effort squat, the majority of energy used to supply the contracting muscles is being derived from the phosphagen system and anaerobic glycolysis. However, what energy system would the arms be using? How about the heart? Perhaps the only time in which an animal would be in a true anaerobic state is during the final moment of life.

Practical Applications for the Energy Systems

Since all three of your energy systems ultimately run on ATP, let’s break it down by each energy system.

Phosphagen

Let’s say you’re doing a max effort squat, as you move the weight via the concentric phase, posterior chain musculature immediately burn through their ATP stores. Once the ATP has been used, it’s either further broken down or recycled via creatine phosphate (see above sections), so it can provide additional energy for the working muscles.

It’s the fuel source for all your physical functions, from eating to breathing to pushing the Prowler®.

Most people don’t realize how quickly the phosphagen system is activated; it simply takes thousandths of a second. Like many things, there is a benefit to risk ratio, or in the case of energy systems, a speed and efficiency cost.

The phosphagen system can only supply enough ATP and CP lasting for a minimum of 6 seconds, and up to 15 seconds of serious effort.

Despite the fact that the phosphagen system will enhance and provide explosive speed and power (e.g., shot put throw, Olympic weightlifting, max deadlift, vertical jump, 100m sprint, yoke walk, etc.), it does not afford the ability to operate at full throttle beyond the time frame (6-15 seconds). Further, the majority of trained athletes require three to five minutes of rest before their ATP is resynthesized and they can continue to perform near the level of their previous effort. (15)

Glycolysis

As the phosphagen system dwindles down (although it becomes re-synthesized), the glycolytic system becomes more activated for another several minutes before it begins to diminish too. As discussed above in more detail, glycolysis converts carbohydrates (glucose) into ATP. Although less sensitive compared to the phosphagen system, your glycolytic system continues to provide as much as half the energy in the first several seconds of intense training.

The best example of all-out glycolysis are 200-meter and 400-meter sprints. Usain Bolt ran a 400 in 46.74 seconds and recently won the world championships in the 200 in 19.66 seconds. That wasn’t even a true max run for him.

Despite what ignorant gurus and online coaches and trainers might tell you, the “burning sensation,” for lack of a better term, that you get when the exercise intensity is very high is not caused by lactic acid. In fact, there isn’t any such thing as lactic acid.

There is only lactate.

This is due to the buildup of hydrogen ions, a byproduct of glycolysis. In fact, accumulation of muscle and blood lactate after exercise can be oxidized back to pyruvate for gluconeogenic conversion of glucose in the liver or be converted back to pyruvate in the muscle for mitochondrial ATP production. It’s a fuel source. If the muscle did not produce or could not produce lactate, there would be no means to rely on additional ATP from glycolysis and no reaction would take place to regenerate energy.

Lactate is a good thing.

Further, the more you train your glycolytic system, the better you’re able to buffer these ions and the faster you can recover between sets of moderate to high intensity training. Of course, this is really the foundation for at least one factor of high intensity interval training (HIIT) that fitness professionals continue to recommend and incorporate into their programs for people who want to gain muscle, lose fat, and maximize results in their training, depending on their goals.

A study published this year showed that high intensity interval training (HIIT) performed in an “all-out” manner (e.g. repeated Wingate tests) is a time-efficient strategy to induce skeletal muscle remodeling toward more oxidative aspects of muscle. The training, which lasted less than ten minutes per session including the warm up and was performed three times a week for six weeks, improved chronic muscle adaptations (V02) in young healthy subjects (8).

In addition, glycolysis does very well in fat loss due to its metabolic stress. Recovering from it actually requires work from all three energy systems. Specifically, glycolytic training develops not only the operation of each individual system, but also the capability to transition efficiently between them. The primary methods to train your glycolytic system are through repeated high effort activities with less than full recovery between efforts via 20- to 30-second sprints with a minute of rest between them or strength training sets lasting thirty seconds to one minute (6, 10, 13).

Mitochondrial Respiration

Mitochondrial respiration, or your aerobic system, operates continuously and is probably the most important both at rest and during training. It is fueled primarily on fat and glucose. As previously mentioned in the first sections of this article, it’s the only system that directly requires oxygen in order to function.

Now, despite the fact that this energy system is ongoing, generally speaking, it’s the last system to kick in. However, highly trained athletes, particularly endurance athletes, have such a dominate oxidative system that it actually activates much sooner compared to normal individuals. These athletes are able to reach a steady state much quicker compared to less trained individuals. The majority of long distance events and sports (marathon, cycling) require exceptional aerobic capacity, as do athletes in all continuous action field and team sports (soccer, basketball).

Traditionally, the belief was that the best way to develop the oxidative system was through long, slow cardio exercise. Times have changed. Although many still do believe this and even though the aerobic system certainly responds well to that type of training, recent research suggests the oxidative system also works extremely hard to help you recover after high intensity anaerobic efforts (14).

Due to the intermittent nature of heavy strength training, the energy expenditure contributions of weight training are almost always in a non-steady state compared to aerobic type exercise, which is usually defined as being steady state.

What does this mean? Well, a resistance training session corresponds to a series of intermittent/non-steady state waves of intensity and effort for the oxidative system (mitochondrial respiration). Many times, individuals feel “gassed” after high intensity bouts of strength training or conditioning even though these specific bouts themselves are technically anaerobic.

What is happening is that mitochondrial respiration (oxidative system) moves into hyper-drive in order to replenish the depleted ATP stores and remove the buildup of metabolic byproducts that were produced from the other energy systems (phosphagen and glycolysis).

Upon the cessation of intense lifting or interval work, mitochondrial respiration (oxidative) continues activity for a few days. This is where the concept and application of excess post-exercise oxygen consumption (EPOC) comes in. This occurrence can burn additional fat and calories for up to 72 hours post-training when intensity and duration (especially intensity) are the presiding factors (5, 12).

Here’s the deal—unless you compete in endurance events, performing lots of long, slow cardio isn’t the best way to train or enhance your aerobic system. You are better off engaging in higher intensity training as a more effective and efficient means to develop your oxidative system and drive fat burning.

Lastly, because low intensity aerobic activity enhances recovery from other forms of training, perhaps the best use of oxidative training is a recovery tool used on non-training days.

References

Bemben MG, Lamont HS (2005) Creatine supplementation and exercise performance: recent findings. Sports Med 35:107–25.
Bemben MG, Witten MS, Carter JM, Eliot KA, Knehans AW, Bemben DA (2010) The effects of supplementation with creatine and protein on muscle strength following a traditional resistance training program in middle-aged and older men. The Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging 14:155–59.
Bishop DJ, Granata C, Eynon N (2013) Can we optimize the exercise training prescription to maximize improvements in mitochondria function and content? Biochim Biophys Acta.
Bishop PA, Jones E, Woods AK (2008) Recovery from training: a brief review: brief review. J Strength Cond Res 22:1015–1024.
Borsheim E, Bahr R (2003) Effect of exercise intensity, duration and mode on post-exercise oxygen consumption. Sports Med 33:1037–1060.
Brooks G, Fahey Baldwin (2005) Exercise Physiology: Human Bioenergetics and Its Application.
Buford TW, Kreider RB, Stout JR, Greenwood M, Campbell B, Spano M, Ziegenfuss T, Lopez H, Landis J, Antonio J (2007) International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: creatine supplementation and exercise. J Int Soc Sports Nutr 4:6.
Cochran AJ, Percival ME, Tricarico S, Little JP, Cermak N, Gillen JB, Tarnopolsky MA, Gibala MJ (2014) Intermittent and continuous high-intensity exercise induce similar acute but different chronic muscle training adaptations. Exp Physiol.
Jones AM, Atter T, Georg KP (1999) Oral creatine supplementation improves multiple sprint performance in elite ice-hockey players. J Sports Med Phys Fitness39:189–96.
Kraemer WJ, Fleck, SJ, Deschenes MR (2012) Exercise Physiology: Integrating Theory and Application. Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Kreider RB (2003) Effects of creatine supplementation on performance and training adaptations. Mol Cell Biochem 244:89–94.
LaForgia J, Withers RT, Gore CJ (2006) Effects of exercise intensity and duration on the excess post-exercise oxygen consumption. J Sports Sci 24:1247–64.
McArdle K, Katch (2009) Exercise Physiology: Energy, Nutrition, and Human Performance.
Scott CB (2011) Quantifying the immediate recovery energy expenditure of resistance training. J Strength Cond Res 25:1159–63.
Weiss L (1991) The obtuse nature of muscular strength: The contribution of rest to its development and expression. Journal of Applied Sports Science Research5:219–27.
Yan Z, Lira VA, Greene NP (2012) Exercise training-induced regulation of mitochondrial quality. Exerc Sport Sci Rev 40:159–64.

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Bridging the gap for physiotherapy coaching & care

Omaha, Nebraska—the Silicon Prairie, the heartland of farmland—is known for a few things: steaks, corn-flavored ice cream, Stacie Tovar, Peyton Manning, sticky-hot summers, and massive sports fanatics. With so many midwestern athletes, sports prehab/rehab is a solid business for Judy Gelber (@movement.physio), owner of Forward Movement just outside Omaha. 

Forward Movement sees in-office physiotherapy patients from all walks of life, but the large athlete population has allowed Judy and her team to expand. Through TrainHeroic, they now offer online fitness classes, virtual movement analysis, and some specific programs for runners, postpartum moms, and military folks.

But that’s not all they’re doing. Forward Movement exists in a unique space, because they don’t just help with personalized care for movement patterns, at-home recovery, or myofascial release techniques. They also offer professional development and networking for other physiotherapists across the country.

Through Forward Movement, physical therapists can get medical continuing education units (CEU) and leadership training that spans all fields of focus. Judy’s Facebook group has over 600 members of movement experts and athletic trainers committed to helping athletes blow past “broken” to maximize their performance. 

One of Judy’s coaches, Jenny LaCross (@thedysplasiadoc2), is a PhD candidate hoping to use TrainHeroic as a part of her dissertation. Between providing patient care and supporting other movement experts to become pros, Judy and Jenny had 5 minutes to spare for an interview.  

Q: Give me a quick overview of Forward Movement – I know you have a physical location, but are there distance options?

Judy: We are modern physiotherapy coaching and education, which is a blend of two audiences: movement experts (like PTs, coaches, athletic trainers), and patients/athletes or people who just need to move well. I have both in-person and virtual patient care, athlete care, and then I work with a lot of other clinicians who also do patient and injury care. It’s a huge network of resources. 

In the last year and partly due to the pandemic, I’ve overlapped these two groups big time. So, all of my PTs are welcome to take athlete classes and my athletes have access to rehabilitation and collaboration with therapists. We also offer courses for medical professionals to learn and keep up with their CEUs. 

I’m a CFL2 and I’ve worked with affiliates for around 8 years. So, you can think of me as a coach with a medical degree. Imagine your own personal trainer who is also a doctor. That is us.

What are some of the more common sports injuries you work with?

Jenny: My speciality is in women’s & pelvic health, so I work with a lot of moms who are postpartum and trying to get back into running. They usually have some combination of urinary leakage, pelvic pain, back, and/or hip pain. These individuals want to get back into CrossFit and functional fitness movements, tennis, golf, or higher impact sports that were easier before childbirth.

Judy: My patient population is CrossFit-related and runners, so I see a lot of shoulder issues like rotator cuffs and foot/ankle injuries. We also see a lot of back pain related to weightlifting and powerlifting. Our practice reflects some of the more common injury problems in the athletic population.

I actually love working with adolescents and teens whose pain doesn’t make sense. Since pain is such an individual experience, it’s always unique when young people start having it for the first time. Adults have enough pain experience to distinguish between different types of pain, but kids need to learn those differences. 

How has TrainHeroic helped connect you and your PT clients?

Judy: I program my rehab for actual physical therapy patients in TrainHeroic. Traditional PT is more like, “Here’s your piece of paper, do these exercises X number of times per day and we’ll see you in a week.” 

The app has totally changed my practice so I’m able to know if clients have logged in and are keeping on track. And it’s so nice to see the data for someone who doesn’t live locally. 

I love that you can program custom entries like scar desensitisation, banded distractions, and stretches. I also use Trainheroic’s messaging feature to allow my people to communicate more freely with me. If you love or hate a movement, you can tell me on the spot so I can adjust your therapy. And you don’t have to remember on Thursday what you struggled with on Monday. It’s so efficient.

Jenny: Another interesting feature TrainHeroic has are those four or five readiness questions asking about topics like sleep quality, soreness level, etc. There’s more research emerging about how we can utilize these metrics in rehabilitation and how they relate to the pain experience. 

It’s a nice way to categorically capture that information on a daily basis. If I only saw a patient in-person once a week and asked how they slept every night since their last visit, they might give me a vague answer. The readiness questions let you hone in on what’s really going on.

A big issue in PT is getting people to see the long-term value of actually doing the stuff. The app makes it more fun and familiar for the larger subset of athletes we see.

Jenny, tell me about your dissertation using TrainHeroic!

Jenny: I want to use TrainHeroic to explore the utility of an app in rehabilitation, especially for individuals who don’t live near a physical therapy clinic. 

I’m fascinated with the hip joint, so for my dissertation I’ve partnered with a hip preservation surgeon who specializes in treating patients who have acetabular dysplasia. Acetabular dysplasia is when the ball of the hip joint sits in a socket that’s too shallow, creating instability. This can cause all kinds of performance and pain problems for athletes. 

After my own hip surgery, I was still getting rehab at 8 months, but I had to stop when I moved out of state. If my PT had access to TrainHeroic, I would have kept working on my longer term rehab. Distance programming like this could be useful for active and athletic people across the lifespan to get them back to the level of activity they want to achieve. 

Any final thoughts/things you want to mention?

Jenny: I think the app helps to promote equitable care, because almost everybody has access to a smartphone. The video feature in TrainHeroic is fantastic for people of all literacy levels. It’s also so much better than paper handouts because the videos won’t get thrown away or lost.The app really opens up the avenues of access to fitness care and wellness in general. 

Judy: Forward Movement is bound by Nebraska and Missouri state licensure when working with pain patients. Jenny is licensed in Oklahoma. But our healthy clients and athletes can be anywhere. A healthy athlete is someone who doesn’t currently need care for a pain problem or injury, but they might have a history of issues they don’t want to come back.

When you’re in that iffy time period where you’re not sure if you need to go to the doctor, we can advise you. TrainHeroic actually helps us to collaborate with local therapists in the best interest of the client. 

// Sending the perfect conversion email

Picture this: you’re selling a training program in the TrainHeroic Marketplace. You’ve created a killer sales page using these guides and your sales are increasing as more and more athletes want to train using your programming. 

You typically send a personalized email to your new clients to thank them for their business and let them know how to get started. 

But with the recent influx of program sales, you haven’t been able to send your welcome emails promptly, or even at all. You’re afraid you’re not going to get future business from your new clients (upsell) because they aren’t hearing from you when they need you the most. 

You’ve been working hard to grow your client base and sell more programs. But now that it’s happening, you don’t think you can keep up with the workload because this is only one of many revenue streams for you.

Has this happened to you?

If so, let us be the first to congratulate you on growing your business! 

Whether this resonates with you or this sounds like a problem you’d like to have, we have a solution for you. 

With the help of Zapier and Mailchimp, we will show you exactly how to automate welcome emails so the right information goes to the right person at the right time. 

Whether it’s 2 AM or you’re on vacation, never again will you have to scramble to manually send a welcome email when a new client purchases your training program.

// Email copy and creative: building a welcome email that deepens the connection between your brand and your customer

Before we show you how to build this automation, what exactly should go in this email? What makes a great conversion email?

Think about the purpose of this email: to welcome your new client and make sure they have the necessary information to get to training. 

Here are some ideas of what to include: 

• What makes your program different from others? 
• Is there anything they need to know about your specific program? Tips, advice, inspiration you want to share?
• Do you sell t-shirts or merch? Include information on how to purchase.
• Insert your Instagram handle or link to your blog to stay connected with you 
• Let them know about any other programs you coach in the chance that the program they purchased isn’t the right fit for them.
• Want to upsell? Programs have an end date. Training communities are ongoing and include direct access to you, their coach. If you coach training communities in the TrainHeroic Marketplace include information about them in case that’s more of what they are looking for.

This guide will walk you through sending one email when an athlete makes a purchase. If you have additional info that’s important to share, feel free to add more emails to the sequence and send them on the following days. If you need help automating those additional emails, reference this Zapier guide.

Now that we’ve talked strategy, let’s build the automation using Zapier & Mailchimp. 

Build and design your email

Below, we’re going to lay out recommended email topics & suggested copy. As you read through, begin building your email template in MailChimp. If you’re starting from scratch and need help getting started with templates, follow this MailChimp guide.

Use our template as a starting point with this link. 

You’ll need a Mailchimp account to access the template. Don’t forget to edit all links including the social buttons in the footer.

// creating email automation with TrainHeroic, Zapier, and MailChimp

After your email template is built, you’ll need to create a tag that ensures the email is sent to the right people. 

If you sell multiple programs in the TrainHeroic Marketplace, it’s important to identify which program was purchased in Mailchimp so you can send a customized email and message. Even if you only sell one program currently, following this first step will have you set up to sell additional programs in the future. To do this, we need to create a custom field in Mailchimp so we can send in the program name.

1. Click Audience from the left-hand menu then Signup forms

2. Locate Form builder and hit Select

3. On the right-hand side, locate Add a field then select Text

4. Name the field label. We’re going to use Program Name.

Using a Field tag allows you to pull an athlete’s program name into the email copy for additional personalization. We used PROGNAME (be aware of a character limit) which we can be easily referenced in emails.

Once you’ve filled in both of those fields, select Save Field.

5. Now, select All Contacts from the left-hand menu. When viewing all contacts, you will notice a new column labeled Program Name.

Once you’ve filled in both of those fields, select Save Field.

Later in this guide, we will show you how to send Program Name into Mailchimp from Zapier.

Create Tags

1. To get started, select Audience in the left navigation then Tags.

3. Give your tag a name. We are going to name ours Program Purchase. Then select Create.

Creating your automated campaign

Now that you created your Program Purchase tag, you’re ready to set up the automated email campaign.

6. Next, select Edit next to Please select a tag.

7. Edit the following settings:

1. Change the delay to Immediately so the email sends promptly after a purchase
2. Under Settings, select the tag you just created: Program Purchase. This will ensure that only athletes who have that tag receive this email campaign

Select Update Trigger when done

8. Remember in the beginning when we created the Program Name field in Mailchimp? Here is where we add a filter to reference the program name. For Doug’s Gym, this guarantees that the email in this workflow will only be sent to athletes who purchase the Intro to Powerlifting program. 

Select Add next to Filter by segment or tag.

Check the box then select Contacts match the following conditions

9. Select the dropdown and locate the custom field you previously created: Program Name. Then type in the name of your program. Make sure spelling and capitalization are correct or else the filter may not work properly.

When finished, select Save Segment in the top right corner.

Adding email templates to your campaign

1. Next, you are ready to select your email template. Select Design Email.

2.Give this email a name and fill in your desired email subject, preview text, from name, and from email address. Then hit Next.

3. Click on the Saved Templates tab, find your desired template, then hit Next.

4. Review your template, make any necessary changes, then select Save and Continue when done.

5. Now we have set the timing, identified the program purchase tag, added a program name filter, and selected our email template.

Since this campaign consists of one email, we’re done with the setup. If you would like to send additional emails in this series, select Add Another Email and follow the same steps.

Go ahead and select Send a Test Email in the top right corner so you can see what it looks like in your inbox. Test emails can sometimes end up in spam so if you don’t see it right away, check your spam filter.

6. When you’re happy with your email and ready to launch, select Next.

7. You’ll see an overview of the campaign you just built. Give it a once over and when you’re ready to launch, select Start Sending.

8. When you view your campaigns in the Campaigns tab, you will see that this campaign is now labeled as Sending.

Now, anytime a Program Purchase tag is added to a user, this email campaign will trigger. Only athletes that have the Program Name “Intro to Powerlifting” will complete the workflow.

// connecting zapier, trainheroic, and mailchimp

Now that your campaign is actively sending in Mailchimp, let’s automate it through Zapier. 

Head to the TrainHeroic Integration page in Zapier.

Scroll down on the page and locate the section labeled Connect TrainHeroic to 3,000+ Apps. This is where you will find our pre-built templates to help you connect supported apps even faster. 

Select Try it next to the template named “Send Mailchimp welcome emails for new program sales in TrainHeroic”

Only use this template if you are using Mailchimp as your email provider. If you’re using a different email service provider, you’ll have to make a new zap and start from scratch.

2. Next, in the bottom left corner, select Go to Advanced Mode. This step is important so we can configure an additional setting for Mailchimp.

3. Begin by hovering over the trigger and selecting Edit. 

4. Under the Choose app & event dropdown, you’ll notice that the app (TrainHeroic) and the trigger (Marketplace – New Program Sale) have already been selected because we started with a template. Simply select Continue.

5. Next, select your TrainHeroic account. Then hit Continue.

If you haven’t previously connected your TrainHeroic account, you will be prompted to log in. 

6. Next, select Test trigger.

7. Next, Zapier will search for an athlete on your team to be used for testing. We recommend choosing yourself. That way, you will be on the receiving end of emails during testing and one of your actual athletes will not receive an email out of context. Once identified select Continue.

7. Now that your TrainHeroic trigger is set, let’s set up Mailchimp.

Since we started with a template, the app and action have already been selected for you. Select Continue.

8. Next, connect to your Mailchimp account. Then hit Continue.

10. To set up your action, fill in the following fields:

• Audience: Select your Mailchimp audience
• Subscriber Email: Grab your test athlete’s email from the dropdown
• Update Existing: Make sure this says Yes
• Tag(s): Select your Program Purchase tag from the dropdown. (This is how the tag is assigned to the athlete)
• First Name: Select your test athlete’s first name from the dropdown
• Last Name: Select your test athlete’s last name from the dropdown
• Program Name: Select your test athlete’s program name from the dropdown. (This is how you identify who is training on what program)
• Select Continue when done

11. Now you’re ready to test the action you set up. Hit Test & Review.

You should receive a green banner indicating a subscriber was successfully sent to Mailchimp.

12. Before turning on the zap, let’s look at what was just happened in Mailchimp.

In Mailchimp, click on Audience then All Contacts. You should see the user and their associated data that Zapier just sent in, including the Program Purchased tag.

13. Now, head over to this campaign in the Campaigns tab. Since this email is set up to send immediately after a program purchase, you’ll see that this campaign has already been sent to one subscriber. If you were the test user, you’ll see the email in your inbox.

If you’re not seeing that the email sent, remember the filters we added when setting up the campaign. The tag AND program name in your campaign settings need to exactly match the subscriber’s profile that was used in testing.

14. Now that we confirmed the automation is properly working, head back to Zapier and select Turn on Zap to launch.

15. You’ll receive a confirmation message letting you know that the zap is turned on

// unlocking the power of event-triggered email communications

Sending communication that feels personalized and timely to your customers can be a real business game-changer. Well crafted email communication can help you convert more athletes, reduce churn, upsell and cross-sell, and keep your athlete engaged for longer. It’s a powerful business tool. But, it’s not always simple.

We wanted to change that.

We wanted to unlock the power of email automation for our sellers.

Bringing you the power to automate like the pros

We’ve now integrated TrainHeroic with Zapier, meaning signals or events from the TrainHeroic platform can now be sent into Zapier and connected for use with thousands of other apps. 

Zapier is known for “handling your busy work.” It connects more than 3,000 apps to easily automate your tasks and workflows. Our guides focus on automating emails but that just scratches the surface of what else Zapier can help you automate. 

Zapier offers a free 14-day trial to get started. Once you take advantage of this, they have multiple pricing plans to choose from.

The Free plan is a good option if you’re just getting started with email automation. This plan is “free forever” and allows you to set up 5 different Zap triggers and run 100 tasks/month. A Task is counted every time a Zap successfully moves data or takes action for you. 

Once you outgrow the free plan, the Started plan is $19.99 billed annually or $29.99 month-to-month. This allows you to set up 20 Zap triggers and run 750 tasks/month.

Think about how many clients you currently have, what your growth goals are, and how many Zaps you would like to automate to help you decide which plan is right for you.

In our eyes, $20/month is worth it if it means you no longer have to do manual, repetitive busywork. Plus, it’s more cost-effective than hiring someone to manually do the same work.

Picking the right email service provider

When we set out to develop an integration with Zapier, one of the most exciting use cases in our eyes was bringing the potential of true email automation to our power sellers in the TrainHeroic Marketplace.

In order to do this, we needed to pick a single Email Service Provider (ESP) to base our guides on. Our email automation expert spent hours comparing multiple ESPs so you don’t have to. If you’re not already using an ESP, MailChimp is a great tool for email marketing for small businesses in particular. It’s user-friendly and integrates with many apps that help you to automate tasks. They have a simple, yet effective email design tool that allows you to add the flavor packet to your emails, which helps bring your brand to life in your customer’s eyes.  A big bonus is tracking the performance and engagement of your emails, a feature you don’t get when using Gmail, for example.

If you already have an ESP of choice, don’t fret. The strategy and basic connections you’ll read in these guides translate to other ESPs with just a bit of work and research required on your end.

We recommend purchasing the Standard MailChimp plan because it’s the most affordable plan that allows you to create a series of automated emails.

// understanding the customer lifecycle

Before you begin working on your email automations, it’s worth spending a few minutes reviewing or learning the basic customer lifecycle. Understanding the basic principle of a customer lifecycle as well as the behaviors and motivations of your customers at each stage will help put the content covered in each guide into the proper context. 

// save failed trials and churned customers with trainheroic and zapier

It’s an unfortunate truth, running a recurring subscription online training business means your customers (athletes) can churn at any time, and without warning. 

When it comes to your training communities in the TrainHeroic Marketplace, one of two scenarios can happen:

• An athlete completes their free 7-day trial and decides not to move forward (does not convert)
• An athlete who was a member of a training community decides to leave (cancels subscription)

No matter which scenario it is, both can occur for similar reasons. It could be that they have an injury preventing them from training, the timing wasn’t right, or the programming wasn’t the right fit for their goals. 

The good news is that just because the athlete canceled or didn’t convert, doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in training with you – this is a case where “it’s not you, it’s me” might actually be true.

We all know how crazy life can get. Sometimes people have every intention to get the most out of a product or service throughout their trial or subscription, but life gets in the way. 

Maybe they felt like the training program was too easy or too advanced for their current level. This would indicate that it wasn’t you as a coach, but the specific programming wasn’t right for them. 

It can be difficult to understand exactly why an athlete chooses to cancel. In a future guide, we’ll teach you how to automate an exit survey that will give you quality insights into the reasons you’re experiencing athlete churn. In the meantime, when reaching out it’s important to take into account the different reasons someone may have for canceling.

Being aware of those reasons allows you to address them and overcome them in your messaging. 

This will increase your chances of winning them back.

Here’s what we recommend when an athlete cancels or doesn’t convert: set up a series of automated emails that include the following:

• Let them know about other training communities you coach that are focused on different skills or levels of ability. Or, let them know about stand alone programs you offer for sale that allow for a more self-paced start and end date.
• Encourage them to follow you on social or subscribe to your blog to keep them engaged with you and top of mind
• Add delays to your emails so you can continue to follow up with them and catch them at a time when they are ready to train again

// Email copy and creative: creating win-back campaigns that work

Our recommended email sequence consists of five emails sent over 60 days. Here are the themes of each email that we’re going to build for our fictional gym, Doug’s Gym.

Triggering Event: Athlete cancels or doesn’t convert

Day 1: send a “we’re sorry to see you go” email and include ways to stay in touch
Tip: Ask them to subscribe to your blog or follow your social media accounts

Day 3: send email with your other available teams/programs
Tip: Let them know the difference between training communities & programs

Day 30: send check-in email and include reviews from your clients
Tip: Put a comment box on your Instagram story to get quick and authentic feedback

Day 45: feature conversations in TH Chat to highlight the community
Tip: Browse your TH Chat feed and screenshot great conversations to highlight what potential clients are missing out on

Day 60: send email with your other available teams/programs
Tip: Last chance effort, drive the sale home by talking about what makes you unique from your competition

To let you in on a little secret, here at TrainHeroic we have an automated email sequence that sends to coaches who don’t convert after their free 14-day trial. Our series consists of 6 emails and sends up to 75 days after the free trial ends. Here are some of the topics we include:

• Subscribe to our blog to stay in touch
• Recommend popular blog articles
• Touch on pain points 
• Address price concerns 
• Highlight app features 
• Feature customer reviews 

Automating this sequence has allowed us to successfully win-back coaches because we remained engaged with them while they weren’t actively using the app, let them know how we will make their life easier, and reached them at a more convenient time.

The moral of the story, don’t give up! Just because someone doesn’t convert the first time doesn’t mean that they can’t be a loyal customer in the future.

Now that we’ve talked strategy, let’s build the automation using Zapier & Mailchimp. 

Build and design your emails

Below, we’re going to lay out recommended email topics & suggested copy. As you read through, begin building all five of your email templates in MailChimp. If you’re starting from scratch and need help getting started with templates, follow this MailChimp guide.

Day 1

Use our template (including product images) as a starting point with this link.  Note: you’ll need a MailChimp account to access this. Don’t forget to edit all links including social.

Day 3

Use our template as a starting point with this link.  Note: you’ll need a MailChimp account to access this. Don’t forget to edit all links including social.

Day 30

Use our template (including product images) as a starting point with this link.  Note: you’ll need a MailChimp account to access this. Don’t forget to edit all links including social.

Day 45

Use our template (including product images) as a starting point with this link.  Note: you’ll need a MailChimp account to access this. Don’t forget to edit all links including social.

Day 60

Use our template (including product images) as a starting point with this link.  Note: you’ll need a MailChimp account to access this. Don’t forget to edit all links including social.

// creating email automation with TrainHeroic, Zapier, and MailChimp

Now that you have your templates built, you’re ready to set up the automated campaign.

It’s important to note that there are two events happening here, Athlete Cancels Subscription & Trial Didn’t Convert. These are two separate Zapier triggering actions. For simplicity, we are going to send the same email sequence to athletes who trigger either event. 

In the next steps, we will show you how to do that. 

Set up a tag in MailChimp

As with all of our guides, the email automation is triggered when tags are added to a specific user. So let’s create a new tag to label athletes who cancel & don’t convert from a trial.

1. To get started, select Audience in the left navigation then Tags.

3. Give your tag a name. Since we are triggering one email sequence off two events, we are going to name ours Athlete Cancels/Trial Doesn’t Convert. Then select Create.

If you decide that you’d like to trigger a different email sequence for each triggering event, you can create two separate tags: one for athlete cancels and one for trial doesn’t convert.

Creating your automated campaign

Once your tag is created you’re ready to build your automated campaign. 

Build your workflow

Now we’re going to set up the first of five emails in the sequence. 

2. Edit the following settings:

• We recommend sending the first email one hour after the event triggers. Change the delay to Wait 1 hour.
• Under Settings, select the tag you just created: Athlete Cancels/Trial Doesn’t Convert. This will ensure that only athletes who have that tag receive this email campaign.
• Select Update Trigger when done

Adding your emails to the workflow

2. Give this email a name and fill in your desired email subject, preview text, from name, and from email address. Then hit Next. 

6. To adjust when this email will send, select Edit next to Trigger.

7. Referencing back to the recommended schedule we provided earlier, we’re going to add a 2-day delay to the second email. Then select Update Trigger.

8. Select Design Email to select your email template.

9. Give the email a name and fill in your desired email subject, preview text, from name, and from email address. Then hit Next. 

10. Click on the Saved Templates tab, find your desired template, then hit Next.

11. Review your template, make any necessary changes, then select Save and Continue when done.

Your second email setup is done. Next, let’s set up the third email in your sequence by selecting Add Another Email.

12. To adjust when this email will send, select Edit next to Trigger.

13. Since we want this third email to send 30 days after the initial event trigger, we’re going to add a 27-day delay. (3 days were accounted for with the first two emails.) 

Then select Update Trigger.

14. Select Design Email to select your email template. 

15. Same as before, give the email a name and fill in your desired email subject, preview text, from name, and from email address. Then hit Next. 

16. Click on the Saved Templates tab, find your desired template, then hit Next.

17. Review your template, make any necessary changes, then select Save and Continue when done.

Your third email setup is done. Next, let’s set up the fourth email in your sequence by selecting Add Another Email.

18. To adjust when this email will send, select Edit next to Trigger. 

19. We’re now going to add a 15-day delay so that the email sends 45 days after the initial triggering event.

Then select Update Trigger.

20. Select Design Email to select your email template. 

21. Same as before, give the email a name and fill in your desired email subject, preview text, from name, and from email address. Then hit Next. 

22. Click on the Saved Templates tab, find your desired template, then hit Next.

23. Review your template, make any necessary changes, then select Save and Continue when done.

Your fourth email setup is done. Now let’s set up the fifth and final email in your sequence by selecting Add Another Email.

24. To adjust when this email will send, select Edit next to Trigger. 

25. Add a 15-day delay so that the email sends 60 days after the initial triggering event.

Then select Update Trigger.

26. Select Design Email to select your email template. 

27. Same as before, give the email a name and fill in your desired email subject, preview text, from name, and from email address. Then hit Next. 

28. Click on the Saved Templates tab, find your desired template, then hit Next.

29. Review your template, make any necessary changes, then select Save and Continue when done.

You now have all 5 emails set up in your workflow.

Before going live, you should always send test emails so you can review them and see what they look like in a recipient’s inbox.

Select Send a Test Email in the top right corner. 

30. Select Test all 5 emails and decide who should receive the test emails. Then hit Send Test.

31. You will instantly receive all emails in the campaign regardless of the delays we set. Head over to your inbox to review all 5 emails. Make sure the subject line, design, & layout meets your expectations. Sometimes test emails can end up in spam, so check your spam folder if you’re not seeing them.

If you’d like to make any adjustments, select Design Email to edit any template. 

Once you’re ready to move forward, hit Next in the bottom right corner. 

32. You’ll see a recap of the workflow you just built. Here you can review the audience, tracking, and emails that will send in this workflow. Make sure everything looks correct. If not, select Edit next to the section that needs to be adjusted. 

Once you’re ready to launch, select Start Sending in the bottom right corner. 

33. You’ll notice that this campaign is labeled as Sending, which indicates that it’s running. Now, anytime a user is tagged with “Athlete Cancels/Trial Doesn’t Convert,” this workflow will trigger!

// Setting up your zap: connecting zapier, trainheroic, and mailchimp

Now that your campaign is actively sending in Mailchimp, let’s automate it through Zapier.

As mentioned before, we’re working with two separate triggers. This means that we have to set up two different zaps, however, they will both trigger the same campaign in Mailchimp. 

Building the “athlete cancels team subscription” Zap

1. Log into Zapier and select Make A Zap.

2. Give your zap a name. We’re naming ours Send Mailchimp Campaign When Athlete Cancels Subscription. Then search for and select TrainHeroic as your starting trigger.

3. Our triggering event is a cancelation, so select Athlete Cancels Team Subscription. Then select Continue.

4. Next, select your TrainHeroic account. If you haven’t previously connected to your TrainHeroic account then you will be prompted to log in. Hit Continue.

5. Select Test trigger.

6. Next, Zapier will search for an athlete on your team to be used for testing. We recommend choosing yourself. That way, you will be on the receiving end of emails during testing and one of your actual athletes will not receive an email out of context. Once identified select Continue.

7. Since we are sending this trigger to Mailchimp, search for and select Mailchimp.

9. Next, connect to your Mailchimp account. Then hit Continue.

10. To set up your action, fill in the following fields:

• Audience: Select your Mailchimp audience
• Subscriber Email: Grab your test athlete’s email from the dropdown
• Update Existing: Make sure this says Yes
• Tag(s): Select your Athlete Cancels/Trial Doesn’t Convert tag from the dropdown. (This is how the tag is assigned to the athlete)
• First Name: Select your test athlete’s first name from the dropdown
• Last Name: Select your test athlete’s last name from the dropdown
• Team Name (optional): If you have multiple teams and already created a Team Name custom field in Mailchimp, select your test athlete’s team name from the dropdown
• Select Continue when done

11. Now you’re ready to test the action you set up. Hit Test & Review.

You should receive a green banner indicating a subscriber was successfully sent to Mailchimp.

12. Before turning on the zap, let’s look at what was just happened in Mailchimp.

In Mailchimp, click on Audience then All Contacts. You should see the tag Athlete Cancels/Trial Doesn’t Convert attached to the athlete used in testing.

13. Now, head over to your Email Athletes When They Cancel Or Don’t Convert campaign in the Campaigns tab and View subscribers in queue. You should see your email waiting to be sent. It’s in the queue because we added a 1-hour delay when setting up this campaign.

14. Now that we confirmed the automation is properly working, head back to Zapier and select Turn on Zap to launch.

15. You’ll receive a confirmation message letting you know that the zap is turned on

Building the “trial did not convert” Zap

1. Log into Zapier and select Make A Zap.

2. Give the zap a name. We’re naming ours Send Mailchimp Campaign When Athlete Trial Doesn’t Convert. Then search for and select TrainHeroic as your starting trigger.

3. Our triggering event is a trial that didn’t convert, so select Marketplace – Trial Did Not Convert. Then select Continue.

4. Next, select your TrainHeroic account then hit Continue.

5. Select Test trigger.

6. Select your test athlete. Zapier will default to the athlete you used in the previous zap we made. Then hit Continue.

7. Since we are sending this trigger to Mailchimp, search for and select Mailchimp.

9. Under Action Event, select Add/Update Subscriber. Then hit Continue.

10. Next, connect to your Mailchimp account. Then hit Continue.

11. To set up your action, fill in the following fields:

• Audience: Select your Mailchimp audience
• Subscriber Email: Grab your test athlete’s email from the dropdown
• Update Existing: Make sure this says Yes
• Tag(s): Select your Athlete Cancels/Trial Doesn’t Convert tag from the dropdown. (This is how the tag is assigned to the athlete)
• First Name: Select your test athlete’s first name from the dropdown
• Last Name: Select your test athlete’s last name from the dropdown
• Team Name (optional): If you have multiple teams and already created a Team Name custom field in Mailchimp, select your test athlete’s team name from the dropdown
• Select Continue when done

12. Now you’re ready to test the action you set up. Hit Test & Review.

You should receive a green banner indicating a subscriber was successfully sent to Mailchimp.

13. This is normally when we head over to Mailchimp to look for the athlete and tag that was just sent in. However, the athlete and tag were already sent into Mailchimp with the first zap we created. Since the tag was already applied to that athlete, no changes will be made in Mailchimp. You can always go back to the test trigger step and select a different test athlete. 

14. Now that we confirmed the automation is properly working, head back to Zapier and select Turn on Zap to launch.

15. You’ll receive a confirmation message letting you know that the zap is turned on

// check in often, measure, and optimize

Coach, you did it. You’ve automated communication to your customers across their lifecycle. From those vital first few days on a trial through re-sell and upsell, you now have a communication machine that is infinitely scalable. 

Be sure to check back in on the TrainHeroic blog for more exciting updates as well as tips and tricks to leverage Zapier and TrainHeroic. 

// Keep Your Clients Engaged With These 5 Tips

1. Encourage Daily Competition

Clients on a team hold each other accountable, and the Leaderboard plays a big role here!

While you may traditionally coach clients 1:1, we encourage you to consider team or group training. Think of ‘Teams’ as a virtual gym, where clients can train toward a common goal. With this, you’ll be able to efficiently program for a group of clients, and more importantly, create a sense of community.

We encourage you to program daily Leaderboards for friendly competition, so clients can push themselves to place on the Leaderboard, and compare their results against their teammates.

This isn’t necessarily just a competition, it’s a way for clients to see some friendly faces, and feel like they’re part of a larger community.

Click HERE to learn more about programming Leaderboards.

Don’t forget to mix these up, so everyone gets a chance to play to their strengths, whether that’s time, reps, or weight.

2. Check-in Regularly

Schedule routine check-ins with your customers and regularly monitor their training. Touch base with your client anytime you notice a change in their behavior, whether it’s a low readiness score, missed session, or fistbump-worthy effort.

Show them you care and that you are available to help support them throughout their training journey. Encourage your clients to share progress photos or technique videos through TH Chat.

The real foundation of coaching is in your communication. Keep your customers connected, while also holding them accountable. You can have fun with this, and keep this process simple for your clients, too!

Use Session Comments to post demos or motivational videos for a particular session, or prompt questions:

Use TH Chat to guide group discussions around training, nutrition, and general wellness, or to conduct check-in’s with client’s 1:1.

3. Provide Immediate Feedback

Your customers are driven by positive reinforcement and constructive feedback. Set goals, celebrate achievements, and provide immediate feedback based on their training results. 

Coach Home is your pocket tool for providing immediate feedback to your clients . This is your daily activity feed, so you can easily view each client’s completed training session, reply to Session Comments, or Direct Message your client if you notice anything in their training that deserves affirmation, or sounds an alarm.

Is there anything in their readiness, duration, or intensity scores that doesn’t add up in comparison to other clients at similar abilities? Perhaps there’s an opportunity to request a video for form check on a particular lift or movement. How are they progressing toward their goal?

4. Switch Things Up

No need to reinvent the wheel here! Stick to your foundations while keeping your programming challenging and exciting for your clients. Whether that is changing up your rep schemes with ‘time’ or ‘MAX’ reps, swapping out accessory movements, or diversifying the mode and stimulus of conditioning, be sure to challenge your clients week to week so they stay engaged.

Use the filters on the right to narrow your search, when looking for new movements.

5. Support the Whole Client

Client wellness extends beyond the weight room. Support the whole client by reading into their Readiness Surveys, and providing nutrition guidance, or tools to recover from a tough training session.

Your arsenal of custom Exercises in your Library does not have to be restricted to your core exercises alone. Enrich rest days with meditation and yoga, programmed directly into their session.

Request meal photos from your client over TH Chat Direct Message to easily track their nutrition, and make suggestions that will improve their overall health and wellbeing, and help them be their best.

Like your clients, you’re going to have to put in the reps to see results. Your coaching efforts should be a continuous endeavor, and you’ll need to find a routine that works for you, and stick with it!

// welcome a new paying member to your online training community

When you make an online purchase, you probably check your email to look for a confirmation email. Sometimes you’re looking for instructions, shipping tracking numbers, etc. At the very least, it’s reassurance that your order went through. 

So when a new athlete converts from a free trial to a paid client, they are probably expecting the same. No, we don’t have tracking numbers to send. But, think of it as an opportunity to reach out personally and acknowledge them as a new client.

This is also a chance to let them know what else to expect as a new member of your training community, and to deepen the connection between the trainee and your coaching brand. This is an important step in the customer journey, and a vital opportunity for increasing the lifetime value you get from each athlete.  

But the problem is, you just don’t have enough hours in the day to personally reach out to each and every new client. So how do you welcome them with open arms?

Automation!

We love email automation because it takes away manual and repetitive work, while also ensuring that each email is sent at the right moment. That is what we will cover in this guide. 

We’ll be walking you through what to send when a client converts from a trial and exactly how to set it up using Zapier & Mailchimp. 

// Email copy and creative: building a welcome email that deepens the connection between your brand and your customer

When creating your welcome email, it’s important to remember that this athlete just completed a 7-day trial.

If you set up an automated trial email sequence using this guide, then they will have already received information and resources to get started with their training. TrainHeroic also sends a series of emails throughout their trial to get them up to speed on using the TrainHeroic app.

With that being the case, we don’t need to resend and repeat information that they already received during their trial. 

The purpose of the welcome email is to begin to deepen the connection between your training community and the new client. Keep in mind that consumers are always (consciously or subconsciously) weighing the price they pay for any product / service with the value they perceive they are getting from it.  Letting them know about your social media pages, blog, YouTube channel, etc. is a great way to expand from one channel connection to many.

This is your chance to take your business outside of the platform and show them how else to engage with (or rep) your brand. Remember, the battle against athlete churn starts at day 1. If you can change the mindset of your athletes from a transactional one to an emotional brand connection, you will have created a long-lasting customer. If an athlete feels they get not only their training from you, but also education, entertainment, guidance, and maybe even a few closet staples or their favorite training shirt, you’re on the fast track to a loyal repeat customer. 

Build and design your email

Below, we’re going to lay out recommended email topics & suggested copy. As you read through, begin building your email template in MailChimp. If you’re starting from scratch and need help getting started with templates, follow this MailChimp guide.

Use our template (including product images) as a starting point with this link.  Note: you’ll need a MailChimp account to access this. Don’t forget to edit all links including social.

// creating email automation with TrainHeroic, Zapier, and MailChimp

After your email template is built, you’ll need to create a tag that ensures the email is sent to the right people. 

Select Audience from the left menu then Tags.

1. To get started, select Audience in the left navigation then Tags.

3. Give your new tag a name. We’re going to call this one Converted Trial. After naming it, select Create.

Creating your automated campaign

Now that you created your Converted Trial tag, you’re ready to set up the automated email campaign.

Build your workflow

Now we’re ready to configure the settings for this campaign.

1. To change the trigger, select Edit. 

2. Let’s send this email 1 hour after they convert from their trial. To do this, change the delay to Wait 1 hour.

Under Settings, select the tag Converted Trials.

Not adding a tag will result in the email sending to everyone in your audience, which we do not want.

When complete, select Update Trigger.

Have multiple training communities?

If you have multiple teams and are sending team-specific campaigns, follow the step below. Otherwise, skip this next step.

1. Select Add next to Filter by segment or tag.

Check the box then select Contacts match the following conditions

2. Select the dropdown, and locate the custom field you previously created: Team Name.

Next, indicate which team this campaign applies to.

Team Name is <enter your team or community name>

Make sure spelling and capitalization are correct or else the filter may not work properly.

3. When finished, select Save Segment in the top right corner.

You have now told this workflow to only send to athletes who converted from a trial and who are part of a particular team.

Adding email templates to your campaign

1. Next, you are ready to select your email template. Select Design Email.

2.Give this email a name and fill in your desired email subject, preview text, from name, and from email address. Then hit Next.

3. Click on the Saved Templates tab, find your desired template, then hit Next.

4. Review your template, make any necessary changes, then select Save and Continue when done.

5. This campaign consists of one email, so you’re done with the setup. Go ahead and select Send a Test Email so you can see what it looks like in your inbox. (If you don’t see it right away, check your spam folder.) When you’re happy with your email and ready to continue, select Next.

If you would like to send additional emails in this series, select Add Another Email and follow the same steps.

6. You’ll see an overview of the campaign you just built. Give it a once over and when you’re ready to launch, select Start Sending.

7. When you view all of your campaigns, you will see that this campaign is now Sending.

Now, anytime a Trial Conversion tag is added to a user, this email campaign will trigger.

// connecting zapier, trainheroic, and mailchimp

Now that your campaign is actively sending in Mailchimp, let’s automate it through Zapier.

1. Head to the TrainHeroic Integration page in Zapier.

Scroll down on the page and locate the section labeled Connect TrainHeroic to 3,000+ Apps. This is where you will find our pre-built templates to help you connect supported apps even faster. 

Select Try it next to the template named “Send welcome emails in Mailchimp to new trial converts in TrainHeroic”

Only use this template if you are using Mailchimp as your email provider. If you’re using a different email service provider, you’ll have to make a new zap and start from scratch.

2. Next, in the bottom left corner, select Go to Advanced Mode. This step is important so we can configure an additional setting for Mailchimp.

3. Begin by hovering over the trigger and selecting Edit. 

4. Under the Choose app & event dropdown, you’ll notice that the app and trigger have already been selected because we started with a template. Simply select Continue.

5. Next, select your TrainHeroic account. Then hit Continue.

If you haven’t previously connected your TrainHeroic account, you will be prompted to log in. 

6. Next, select Test trigger.

7. Next, Zapier will search for an athlete on your team to be used for testing. We recommend choosing yourself. That way, you will be on the receiving end of emails during testing and one of your actual athletes will not receive an email out of context. Once identified select Continue.

7. Now that your TrainHeroic trigger is set, let’s set up Mailchimp.

Since we started with a template, the app and action have already been selected for you. Select Continue.

8. Next, connect to your Mailchimp account. Then hit Continue.

10. To set up your action, fill in the following fields:

• Audience: Select your Mailchimp audienc
• Subscriber Email: Grab your test athlete’s email from the dropdown
• Update Existing: Make sure this says Yes
• Tag(s): Select your Converted Trial tag from the dropdown. (This is how the tag is assigned to the athlete)
• First Name: Select your test athlete’s first name from the dropdown
• Last Name: Select your test athlete’s last name from the dropdown
• Team Name (optional): If you have multiple teams and already created a Team Name custom field in Mailchimp, select your test athlete’s team name from the dropdown
• Select Continue when done
  

11. Now you’re ready to test the action you set up. Hit Test & Review.

You should receive a green banner indicating a subscriber was successfully sent to Mailchimp.

12. Before turning on the zap, let’s look at what was just happened in Mailchimp.

In Mailchimp, click on Audience then All Contacts. You should see the user and their associated data that Zapier just sent in, including the Converted Trial tag.

13. Now, find your converted trial campaign in the Campaigns tab and View subscribers in queue. You should see your email waiting to be sent. It’s in the queue because we added a 1-hour delay when setting up this campaign.

14. Now that we confirmed the automation is properly working, head back to Zapier and select Turn on Zap to launch.

15. You’ll receive a confirmation message letting you know that the zap is turned on

// don’t leave your athletes feeling unwelcome

Let us paint a picture…It’s your first-day training with your new coach / trainer. You walk into a new gym for the first time. People are moving, sweating, getting in their training sessions, talking in small groups to one another. 

No one comes to welcome you in. 

You’re in a gym, but is it the right gym? 

You can’t visibly discern the staff from the folks training – much less make out who your coach is, where you should go, or even if you’re in the right place. 

You’ve got a bit of that awkward feeling of walking into a party your friend invited you to, but you can’t find them and don’t know anyone else around. 

What do you do?

As a business owner you’d never let this happen in your gym, right? 

Running a training community in the TrainHeroic Marketplace should be no different. You want to create a welcoming experience that converts the person “walking through the door” into a raving fan, and their first moments with you will make all the difference. 

// Send automated welcome emails to athletes who start a trial of your programming using Zapier

Zapier is the self-proclaimed “Easiest way to connect your apps and automate workflows”. And we agree.

Zapier allows users to connect apps to send information and signals to one another. We chose to connect with Zapier for a few reasons:

• They are focused on helping small business owners like you automate marketing, communication, sales, and admin functions like “the big guys”
• They connect with over 2,000 apps making the possibilities almost endless. (Hint-hint) today is the first announcement of more to come. 
• They are SUPER user-friendly

So, what does this mean for you? Well, among nearly countless possibilities, it means that TrainHeroic now can send a signal to your email service provider (ESP) letting it know that someone has started a trial of your training community. You can use that to trigger a series of emails to welcome and onboard that new athlete. 

Even though the possibilities are endless, we wanted to provide you with an A-Z guide. So, we’ve chosen MailChimp as our recommended ESP. We’ll use MailChimp in our examples here, but you can easily use any other ESP you like. 

If you’re not already using an ESP, MailChimp is a great introduction to email marketing for small businesses in particular. It’s user-friendly and integrates with many apps that help you to automate tasks. A big bonus is tracking the performance and engagement of your emails, a feature you don’t get when using Gmail, for example.

We recommend purchasing the Standard plan because it’s the most affordable plan that allows you to create a series of automated emails.

// Email copy and creative: building engaging emails that deliver the right message at the right time

Why do we do this?

We want to make sure that athletes are comfortable with using the app as quickly as possible, this way they can jump right into their training. We’ve seen that athletes who log a session on their first day are 3X more likely to convert. So knowing this, we specifically cover how to use the app as an athlete and provide helpful guidelines for getting started. The faster they get started, the quicker they can engage with you, the team, and get their first session logged.

We also want to form good habits early on. We express the importance of logging their sessions so you stay informed on their training, progress, or setbacks so you have the tools and the data to be as informed as possible. 

TrainHeroic is also your client’s resource for any technical support. As always, if an athlete has questions about their account or they need technical support, direct them to our help desk and customer support team.

Our goal with these emails is to let you focus on coaching. We’ll tell them the nitty-gritty details on using the app and providing technical support so you don’t have to.

You focus on coaching, we’ll handle the rest. 

Topics we cover:

• Getting athletes to log their first session with a quick how-to video 
• Using TH Chat to connect with you and the team
• How to share their session stats on Instagram
• Viewing Profile Analytics to track their progress

Build and design your emails

We recommend sending a series of 4 emails over the 7-day trial. We designed this to align with the emails that TrainHeroic is also sending. 

Day 1: Welcome

Day 2: FAQ’s

Day 3: Communication

Day 7: Upsell/cross-sell 

We’ve included email templates from our faux-brand Doug’s Gym to give you some inspiration and insight into what these emails can look like.

Day 1

Think about the following as if you were physically in the gym with this athlete: 

What would you run through with them? 

What do they need to know? 

What are they going to love about being part of your training community? 

These are clear calls to action you can put in this email. 

And remember that starting the free trial was the first sale to this client, to keep them for the 7-day trial and beyond, you need to reinforce the sale. Remind them why they made the decision to pick your training in the first place. You can do this by reinforcing your positioning statement, your promise to your customer that differentiates you from other coaching programs. 

Ideas for inspiration:

• Create a welcome script, or better yet, a video to hype up the athlete
• Let them know where to start. Do they just jump right in? 
• Make intros to your community – have the athlete introduce themself in TH Chat 

Day 2

Ideas for inspiration:

• I’m new to the program, Where should I start?
• How should I warm-up / cool down? 
• Can I swap exercises if equipment isn’t available?
• Can you help me track my diet & nutrition? 
• Can I post videos for form check?
• Where do I go for support help?
• How do I update my working max?

Day 3

How involved are you with your team? What they can expect from you? Do you do weekly check-ins? Video reviews? How do you stay engaged while coaching remote? Let them know here. 

Day 7

Drive your value home, let them know what else you offer as a coach, and encourage their friends to join. This is where we’ll work in upsell, cross-sell, and “pre-marketing”. 

If your client started as month-to-month, tell them about your annual plan, especially if you offer a discount for upgrading. Put a time limit on that discount to create a sense of urgency.

Do you coach other training communities in the TH marketplace? Perhaps a client really likes your coaching style but they didn’t start with the right programming for them. If you offer other programs that span different ability levels or goal-specific training, let them know so you can keep them in your organization. This is called pre-marketing. 

Referrals and word of mouth marketing are a great, free way for you to gain more clients. Ask the athlete to invite a friend to train with them. Include a link to your TrainHeroic Marketplace Page so they can send it to their friends and take advantage of the free 7-day trial. 

Lastly, get them to follow you on social, subscribe to your blog, YouTube channel, or anything else you offer. The deeper your connection with these athletes, the more value you provide them, and the longer they’ll stay a paying fan. 

// creating email automation with TrainHeroic, Zapier, and MailChimp

If you’re a coach who has more than one team in the TrainHeroic Marketplace, you may want to send different emails for each team. For example, each of your teams might have a different logo and branding. Or maybe you have a beginner team and an advanced team and you’d like to send different messaging to each. Rather than send one generic email to all of your athletes, you can use automation to send team-specific emails. 

If you coach one team and don’t need to indicate in Mailchimp who is on what team, then you can skip this step. 

We do this by creating a custom field in Mailchimp. This will allow us to send the Team Name associated with each athlete into Mailchimp.

1. Click Audience from the left-hand menu then Signup forms 

2. Locate Form builder and hit Select

3. On the right-hand side, locate Add a field then select Text

4. Fill in the field label. We’re going to use Team Name.

Using a Field tag allows you to pull an athlete’s team name into the email copy for additional personalization. We used TEAMNAME which we can be easily referenced in emails.

Once you’ve filled in both of those fields, select Save Field.

5. Now, select All Contacts from the left-hand menu. You will notice a new Team Name column.

Later in this guide, we will show you how to send Team Name into MailChimp from Zapier.

Set up a tag in MailChimp

1. To get started, select Audience in the left navigation then Tags.

Creating your automated campaign

Build your workflow

Setting up multiple workflows (for coaches with multiple training communities)

If you have multiple teams and want to send different campaigns to each team, we will now add an additional filter to the workflow. If you don’t have multiple teams in the TrainHeroic Marketplace, you can skip this step.

1. Select Add next to Filter by segment or tag.

Check the box then select Contacts match the following conditions

2. Select the dropdown and locate the custom field you previously created: Team Name.

Next, indicate which team this campaign applies to.

Team Name is <enter your team name>

Make sure spelling and capitalization are correct or else the filter may not work properly.

3. When finished, select Save Segment in the top right corner.

Now, you have told this workflow to only send to athletes who started a trial and who are part of a particular team.

Adding your emails to the workflow

Next, select Add Another Email to build the fourth and last step in the sequence. 

Now you have all 4 email automations set up within your workflow. 

Testing your workflow

If you’d like to make any adjustments, select Design Email to head back to edit your templates. 

Once you’re ready to move forward, hit Next. You’ll see a recap of the workflow you just built. 

Here you can review the audience, tracking, and emails that will send in this workflow.

Make sure everything looks correct. If not, select Edit next to the section that needs to be adjusted. 

Once you’re ready to launch, select Start Sending in the bottom right corner. 

Congrats on setting up your first campaign in MailChimp!

// Setting up your first zap: connecting zapier, trainheroic, and mailchimp

1. Log into your TrainHeroic Coach account. Click the drop down in the top right corner then select Zapier Integrations.

3. You’ll be directed to the TrainHeroic Integration page on Zapier. 

Scroll down on the page and locate the section labeled Connect TrainHeroic to 3,000+ Apps. This is where you will find our pre-built templates to help you connect supported apps even faster. 

Select Try it next to the template named “Send Mailchimp welcome campaigns for new trial starts in TrainHeroic Marketplace”

Only use this template if you are using Mailchimp as your email provider. If you’re using a different email service provider, you’ll have to make a new zap and start from scratch.

4. Next, in the bottom left corner, select Go to Advanced Mode. This step is important so we can configure an additional setting for Mailchimp.

5. Since we’re starting with a template, you’ll notice that the Zap is already named with the apps and triggers selected for you.

Simply begin by hovering over the trigger and selecting Edit.

6. Here is where you will log in to your TrainHeroic account. Select Sign in to TrainHeroic.

Next, enter your TrainHeroic email address and paste your Magic Pass Key. Then hit Yes, Continue.

Testing the trigger

1. Next, select Test trigger to search for an athlete in your account. 

Under Action Event, select Add/Update Subscriber then hit Continue.

Head back to your Zapier setup and select Continue. 

Make sure Update Existing says Yes to make sure all trial athletes will receive the email whether they are a new or an existing contact in MailChimp.

Find your sample athlete’s first and last name. Adding these will allow you to personalize emails.

Now let’s see what it looks like in MailChimp

1. In MailChimp, select Audience from the left navigation then All Contacts. 

Head to Campaigns in Mailchimp and find your trial campaign. After selecting it, you’ll see a snapshot of all emails in the campaign. Click View subscribers in queue under the first email.

Head back to your Zapier setup and select Turn on Zap.

// check in often, measure, and optimize

Make sure to stay tuned to our blog and Instagram accounts for more tips on measuring and optimizing your automation flows.

For now, check in a few times on both Zapier and Mailchimp within the first few days.

Be sure to note your conversion rate before AND after launching this automation.

// the (only) three google analytics reports you need to optimize your marketing efforts, and sell more online training

If you are like the thousands of trainers and gym owners we serve, you’ve got a coaching business selling remote training service online. You’re marketing your services and training packages, perhaps using the TrainHeroic Marketplace. You’ve got more work to do than hours in the day. 

From programming to communicating with your clients, providing coaching services to your clients takes up most of your day. 

You know finding the time to be active on social media, create blogs, and other marketing efforts is vital to growing your business. But, let’s be honest, chances are you aren’t a trained marketer. If that’s the case, you’ve probably found yourself wondering: 

• Is any of this working? 
• Should I lean harder into any specific area?
• How do I maximize the return on the time I’m spending trying to market my remote training business?

Each of these questions is multi-faceted and could be a blog in their own right. The first, and by far most powerful step, is understanding what’s going on on your website by setting up Google Analytics. 

In this blog, we’ll walk you through how to use three simple reports in Google Analytics to analyze and optimize your marketing efforts. 

For coaches using the TrainHeroic Marketplace, we’ll also cover how to create a custom conversion tracking event on your website that will easily show you the number of people leaving your website to your TrainHeroic Marketplace checkout page. 

This article assumes you already have Google Analytics installed on your marketing website. If you don’t, Google has great documentation that will walk you through every step. If you’ve got a WordPress site, the installation of the Google Analytics code is easy with several plugins. If you have a website manager or someone who regularly updates your site, they should be able to get you set up in a breeze with a few lines of code.

Using Google Analytics to effectively market online training

With all of the following reports, it’s important to double check the time frame you are asking Google Analytics to show. The drop down in the upper right-hand corner allows you to select the date range you want to monitor specifically. You can also compare one time frame to another.

I recommend looking at each of these month-to-date and week-over-week.

Report 1: Total traffic

Why it’s important: The first step to understanding your marketing efforts is to understand the number of people coming to your website. You want to understand how many people you are reaching with your marketing message who are taking the next step in their purchase journey by visiting your website to learn more about the products and services you offer. After all, people can’t buy something from your website without visiting it.

Understanding the numbers that matter:

• Users: this is the number of people who visited your site over the selected time period. A single user can visit your website more than once. 
• Sessions: this is the number of total visits across all the users on your site. 
  • If one person visits your website once on Monday and again on Tuesday in a given week, that is one user and two sessions. 
• Pageviews: during a single session, a user can visit multiple pages on your website. Pageviews is a total count of all the pages visited by users across their sessions. 
  • If one person visits your website 2 times, and sees the homepage plus a product sales page each time, that’s: 1 user, 2 sessions, 4 total pageviews. 

Putting the numbers into action: When selling remote training, users should be your target focus. Are you driving more users to your website this week than last week? What about month-to-date compared to last month? 

If so, something is working – graphs that go up and to the right are always a good thing. If not, something is likely off – and it is likely a marketing volume issue. 

Have you dedicated social media posts to promoting or supporting your online training product this week? Did you do more of these posts the previous week? Did you send out a massive email blast last week, and nothing this week? 

If you’re following a consistent content and social media marketing strategy, a dip in traffic to your website is most likely related to the volume of posts or content with a direct link and call to action to visit your website. In today’s content-saturated digital reality, if you aren’t putting out your message frequently (daily), your messages aren’t going to land. Yesterday’s post is old news today.

Report 2: Acquisition channels

Why it’s important: Where is the traffic coming from? This is the logical next question in understanding your website traffic. Google Analytics does a pretty great job of breaking this down for you. It’s not perfect, but it gives you a great place to work from. 

• Organic search: this is traffic coming from search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. 
• Paid search: this is search traffic coming specifically from Google search ads. 
• Referral: this is traffic coming from a link on another website. You can click on the word referral to get a breakdown of what exactly those websites are. 
• Social: traffic coming from social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, etc. Again, you can click on the word in the report for a detailed breakdown of different social media channels. You may be surprised at which channels actually drive traffic to your website. It’s not always your biggest channel in terms of following or even engagement. 
  • Tip: People won’t buy something from you if you don’t ask them to. Don’t fall into the trap of being afraid to include a hard call to action on your social media posts. A post breaking down coaching cues for a specific movement pattern in your programming provides educational value to your audience first. Why not include a call to action to try out the training with you for 7 free days? If your social media posts are providing value on their own you will not turn off your audience by selling to them. Don’t fall into that trap. The only way to quickly piss off your followers is to stop providing valuable content. If people are engaged, they are a fan and want more from you.

• Display: this is traffic coming from display ads you might be running across the Google network.
• Email: traffic driven by links in an email. 
• Direct: direct traffic includes several sources, and is more than likely your biggest source of traffic. It includes visits where people typed your url into their web browser, bookmarked your page, and any traffic that Google can’t attribute to any of the previously mentioned channels. In a big way, direct traffic is Google’s catch-all bucket. You can’t do much to understand this traffic at a deeper level. 

Putting the numbers into action: It’s important to understand that Google Analytics is working off of a last-click attribution model. That means that a user’s visit is attributed to the last link they clicked on before visiting your site.

In reality, decades of marketing best practice from companies around the globe tell us that the average consumer sees at least 7 messages from a business before making a purchase decision.

It’s worth keeping this in mind when looking at the sources of your traffic.

True attribution modeling would assign some value of a single conversion to each of these 7 (often more) touchpoints. But, this is extremely complex and more of an art than pure science.

For instance: you might give 2x more weight to a video view than a blog read because research suggests the combination of visual and auditory cues has a larger impact than the written word on buyer psychology. But, what if you’re a great writer and not great at making video?

You might give 5x the value to the first engagement than the last. Or, maybe you want to ramp the attribution exponentially across the customer buying journey.

You’ll find competing schools of thought from the best marketers in the world. The truth is, attribution modeling isn’t perfect. Even a great algorithm assumes buyer behavior is logical, and we know that isn’t always a fact.

As of today, there is not a single attribution model or tool widely available to small and medium businesses that I would personally recommend.

You might be asking, “well isn’t that important for me to know?” Or, “how do I optimize my marketing efforts without perfect attribution detail?”

While it’s tempting, chasing the perfect attribution model as a small to medium sized business is a quick path to spending a lot of time, energy, and money on something that isn’t going to give you a return – kind of defeats the purpose of maximizing the return on your efforts, right? If you are spending hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per month on different marketing efforts, attribution modeling could be a useful tool. Simple changes in budget allocation at this volume could lead you to massive changes in ROI on such a large spend.

In reality, this probably isn’t you. More than likely, you’re running email campaigns, producing blog and video content regularly, and running a social media presence that is actively posting at least once per day. All of those things are foundational to any digital selling success. Marketing is like a machine. You cannot remove one of the basic cogs and expect the machine to work.

While it may be tempting, this report should not be used to answer questions like: is social media working? Should I stop doing (insert marketing effort here)? Can we get rid of our email marketing?

Instead, use this report to understand the digital highways and byways by which people are getting to your website. Use this information as a guide to ensure you are putting enough marketing messages with strong calls to action into the market on a weekly basis across multiple channels. If you aren’t actively keeping the roadway open, people will not come to your site.

Report 3: pages viewed

Why it’s important: You know how many people are visiting your site and how they are getting there. The next logical step is knowing what they’re looking at while on your site. This is essentially understanding your selling funnel.

You have a homepage on your website that gives visitors an intro to your brand. More than likely, you have multiple product-detail pages branching off that. These are sales pages that include information about your digital training product, price, benefits, features, etc. Perhaps you have more than one – for different communities (teams) or different programs you sell.

You designed the site for visitors to engage with these pages, and you likely want to know which are getting a higher share of the pageviews discussed at the beginning of this article.

Understanding the numbers that matter: This simple report will order the pages on your website with at least 1 pageview over the selected period in order from most visited to least. 

• Pageviews: Covered earlier in this article. 
• Time on page: this metric is exactly as it sounds. It measures the average amount of time a user spends on a given page. Don’t read too deep into this figure, but use it to sniff out potential issues. Have a text-rich page chock full of valuable information? You might expect that people spend more time on that page than your homepage. If not, it might be time for some adjustments like adding images, trimming back the text-fat, etc. 
• Bounce rate: Google defines a bounce as a single-page session on your site. In Analytics, a bounce is calculated specifically as a session that triggers only a single request to the Analytics server, such as when a user opens a single page on your site and then exits without triggering any other requests to the Analytics server during that session. These single-page sessions have a session duration of 0 seconds since there are no subsequent hits after the first one that would let Analytics calculate the length of the session.
  • Is a high bounce rate bad? That’s a great question. We’ve pasted Google’s answer below. It depends. If the success of your site depends on users viewing more than one page, then, yes, a high bounce rate is bad. For example, if your home page is the gateway to the rest of your site (e.g., news articles, product pages, your checkout process) and a high percentage of users are viewing only your home page, then you don’t want a high bounce rate. On the other hand, if you have a single-page site like a blog, or offer other types of content for which single-page sessions are expected, then a high bounce rate is perfectly normal.

Putting the numbers into action: If you notice that your sales page(s) are not getting very many pageviews, visit your own website with a fresh set of eyes.

Imagine you are your target trainee. You come to the site for the first time. Read the copy on your page. Click through the first button that catches your eye. Find potential roadblocks or distractions and erase them. 

Is there a clear call to action (button) on your homepage that links to your training sales page? Is something else getting more prime real estate and causing a distraction? Are you providing images and copy that guide a website visitor to your training products in the same way you would guide them if they walked into your gym?

conclusion

With these three basic reports in hand, you should have the insights and info you need to optimize your efforts to market your online training services and products. 

I want to leave you with one takeaway: keep it simple and be consistent with your efforts. Don’t outthink yourself. The key to great marketing is a focused audience (niche), great positioning, content that adds value to your audience, and consistent effort. 

Over 95% of the time, if you see a dip in your trial or sales numbers, the culprit is easily identified using this guide. More than likely, the issue is a lack of marketing efforts with a clear call-to-action. 

Yes, the modern consumer is being bombarded with marketing messages. Choosing to swim against the flow isn’t going to bring you success. It’s about providing value, teaching, engaging, and being authentic. You’ve worked hard to get the education and licenses you need to provide a product and service that will change the lives of those you train. Be proud of it. Ask your audience to give you a chance to prove it to them, and do it consistently (daily). 

// Extra reps

Many coaches use the TrainHeroic Marketplace as the cart for their funnel while keeping the marketing and sales pages on their own website. 

Coach Website Homepage → Coach Website Product Detail Page → Coach Website Start Your Free Trial Button → TrainHeroic Marketplace Account Creation and Checkout Page

If this looks like your funnel, you more than likely want to know the number of people you are sending to the TrainHeroic Marketplace (your checkout page).

You can easily see how many free trials are being started on your team within the TrainHeroic analytics suite, but you want to know your conversion rate from a website visit to a started trial. 

Good news, our team is working hard to develop a robust suite of business analytics. We’ve given you insight into trials and more is in the works.

In the meantime, the steps below can help you get this insight. 

While you won’t be able to see the number of people entering your checkout page on the TrainHeroic Marketplace right now, you can easily see the people leaving your site by clicking your CTA button. 

This is like measuring the number of people going through a doorway, and not being able to count the number of people coming out the other side. There is nothing in between. The numbers will be the same unless you’ve made an error on the URL link in the button. This is easy to check, just go to your website and hit the button. 

All this takes is having Google Tag Manager installed on your website and following the steps listed in this blog. If you don’t yet have Google Tag Manager installed on your website, you’ll need to do that first. This is essentially the same process you followed to install Google Analytics, requiring you or your website manager to drop in a few lines of code into your website.  

// Are ‘Qualifiers’ Helping or Hurting the Industry?

No female strength and conditioning coach wants to be a diversity hire; what we want is to stand on our own merits as a coach. 

Not a female coach, but a coach. 

If we continue to highlight gender differences, it can give fuel to the idea that we are not equal.

However, without showcasing these women breaking barriers, none may follow. If you can see it, you can be it holds strong in this example.

Women have made huge strides over the years, but there is still work to do. We cannot sit back as victims and accept the world is against us. 

We need to be better at recognizing and communicating the advantages female coaches provide to overcome the predominant male perspective.

A case of Mistaken Identity

Every female strength and conditioning coach I have met, has a story of mistaken identity; often more than one. 

Most females are mistaken for a fan, a girlfriend or a “more typically female” role such as massage therapist.

Personally, during my strength and conditioning internship within the Australian Football League (AFL) a player asked if I would consider being the dietitian after I finished.

I had worked with this player for five months as a strength and conditioning coach; yet the perception remained that coaching is a man’s role and not a female role. 

Sadly, this happens regularly. 

I have been told of a situation when a female coach, dressed in full team kit, was asked by fans whether she was a girlfriend of one of the players. 

Nearly every female coach I have talked to has a story about another coach disregarding them and introducing themselves to a male assistant or intern with the assumption that the male coach was the lead when in fact she was. 

These assumptions or cases of mistaken identity can be a huge challenge to women feeling accepted in an arena dominated by masculinity.

a sense of belonging and self-actualization

According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, after physiological and safety the next steps to self-fulfillment are “belonging and love”, “esteem” and “self-actualisation”. 

As a female coach, the marginalization of women in sport can challenge the feelings of belonging and love, esteem and self-actualisation. 

When attempting to explain the small number of female strength and conditioning coaches within the industry, I often hear it said that women may not want to be strength and conditioning coaches. 

Whilst this may be true, if you were looking to join a group that appears to not want you involved in their circle, you might not want to stay. 

Instead of accepting there are few women, we should be investigating the barriers and opportunities in place and ways we can increase diversity.

At times it can be a drain never working with another female coach. 

No woman, no matter how hard they try, will be “one of the boys” and many will always try to feel accepted into a club that often ostracizes those who are different. 

For many years, coaches have been using “the beer test” to assess if they would like to hire someone.

While this is not explicitly male, these comments are laden with bias.

Learned stereotypes and Projection bias

Through many blogs, conferences, and speeches there is a woven thread of male dominated language (he, him, his) embedded to describe coaches. We have been indoctrinated to believe that not only will men make better coaches but are the only coaches. 

This is commonly seen through conferences (and more recently webinars) where there are no women represented. It is understood that diversity and inclusion are always critical for talent acquisition, creativity, and performance. 

Unconscious bias is an involuntary decision based on learned stereotypes and cultural expectations.

Projection bias is when people (generally in power) assume their own way of thinking and doing is typical or normal, which is amplified by confirmation bias. 

These are a subtle but powerful barrier that affect our assumptions, interactions or organizational structure unintentionally promoting men and disadvantaging women. 

This is an automatic process triggered by our brains “thin-slicing” and needs to be understood and recognized to encourage real inclusion and diversity. Being a coach, often means the maleness is implicit and unquestioned. 

Being male is the default and when a coach is female, it creates a norm violation which is often associated with a powerful negative emotion.

Are we limiting our opportunities?

A recent study by Harvard found women outscored men on 17 out of 19 capabilities differentiating excellent leaders from average or poor ones. However, when it comes to confidence, men excel.

Higher confidence or self-promotion (that can be backed up with performance) can be linked to more career opportunities. 

Research found men rated their performance 33% higher than equally performing women. 

The researchers explored self-promotion with and without reward (Strategic intervention), privately, and with added ambiguity, in every setting no matter the changes. 

The gap was persistent. 

Previous studies link this to backlash for women who self-promote “too much”. 

This is often highlighted in high school, where fitting in, is essential. Like many strength and conditioning coaches, I was a terrific trainer but a not so talented athlete. 

I needed to work my butt off to achieve good results and when I did, I would share my joy with my friends. If this was overheard, it was mocked, and I was told I was arrogant.  Trying too hard and caring too much was scorned. Fitting into the pack, and not standing out was important. 

There are many ways as female coaches we can help ourselves get ahead and stop sabotaging our careers that the system did not create. 

How many strength and conditioning coaches have applied for a role they are not qualified for?

Many of us have also seen a coach hired who did not necessarily tick every box but got hired for the job. 

Research has indicated that men apply for roles when they meet 60% of the criteria, whereas women will only apply if they meet 100% of them! Unless women tick every box on a job application (and then some), they will not apply. 

Are we depriving ourselves of possible opportunities? Definitely!

Coaching ability is not dictated by gender

Be open to promotion and putting yourself forward for opportunity. We as females need to step up and not wait for others to do it for us. 

As a young coach, I was jealous of how close so many male coaches were to each other and how strong their networks were. Instead of waiting for someone to invite me into their network, I went up and talked to them. 

I recently created a free monthly forum for female coaches worldwide, to network, upskill and have a sounding board. 

Being the first female to occupy a position, takes an extraordinary person to break through the ceiling and weather the challenges that come with it. 

Although there have been challenges being female in a male environment, I would not change my experiences. They have given me an opportunity to learn more about myself and my strengths. 

They have also made me a better, smarter, more self-aware coach and person. 

Having to work harder than those around me to give myself the best opportunities has given me the insight and intelligence to be the best coach I can be.

where do we go from here?

So back to the initial question- is being called the first female helping or hurting us? 

After seeing a debate on twitter, I did a very scientific Instagram poll to see what my followers thought. 

Overwhelmingly, the reaction was that it is helping, which opposed the twitter debate. 

On the one side, it educates and highlights the shortfall in gender equity and shines a light on those breaking the ceiling. 

On the other side, others believe it is an insult disguised as praise and can show intentional or unintentional prejudice. 

In this present time in sport, I believe it is more important to help those who did not think it was possible as well as to open eyes and opportunities for young women. 

I think it is necessary, until there are enough women in sport, and inclusion and diversity are common.

Once that has occurred, we can retire the qualifier of ‘first female’ and just be coaches.