The line between personal training and health coaching can sometimes feel a bit hazy, especially as clients come to expect increasingly more from their experiences working with pros in a fitness setting. In many ways, the days of a client performing a couple of one-hour workouts with their trainer each week have fallen by the wayside. Instead, many clients want and expect their personal trainer to work with them on other elements of health besides physical activity and exercise, such as stress management and sleep hygiene, and to incorporate tools like wearable devices into their services. If clients want a more holistic, full-service relationship with their trainer, including the incorporation of behavior-change principles, where exactly is the line between the health coaching and personal training professions most appropriately drawn? And, how will becoming a health coach add even more value to the meaningful work you are already doing as a personal trainer?

In this article, we will explore those questions and offer insight from a few long-time ACE Certified Professionals. To be clear, all ACE Certified Personal Trainers can take a client-centered approach to personal training, as outlined in The Exercise Professional’s Guide to Personal Training (i.e., basics of behavior change and effective communication, goal setting and teaching techniques). This article focuses on personal trainers who want to expand their knowledge base, client pool and earning potential by also becoming an ACE Certified Health Coach and explores how to merge those two distinct disciplines into a cohesive business model that drives success for both the professional and their clients.

Chris Gagliard, MS, ACE Scientific Education Content Manager, explains the difference between being a personal trainer who sometime incorporates behavior-change principles into their work and becoming a health coach: “Both personal training and health coaching are most effective when a person-centered approach is utilized. However, in personal training, an expert role is primarily used as the professional leads the session and a specific workout to accomplish both short- and long-term health and performance goals. While the personal trainer does take into consideration the client’s goals, values, feedback, likes and dislikes, they are largely making decisions about how the exercise session is structured and what takes place during that session.” Health coaching, Gagliardi explains, “is an opportunity for the client to take the lead and to select the session focus. During a health coaching session, we rely more on the client’s expertise to help determine what is possible, when it is possible and how it will be achieved.”

Another important difference, and you will see this reflected in our experts’ responses below, lies in the expanded focus of the work, from the health- and fitness-related benefits of physical activity (in personal training) to the interrelated components of the ACE 7 Core Drivers of Healthy Living (in health coaching). Being both a personal trainer and health coach enables you to empower clients to transform themselves as the two of you build a deeper and more meaningful relationship that is centered on all aspects of health and wellness.

Watch: Expanding Your Personal Training Career With Health Coach Certification
Explore how becoming an ACE Certified Health Coach can help personal trainers broaden their services, support clients beyond exercise and build a more holistic, client-centered business.

Introducing Our Experts

To gain some real-world insights into what it means to serve clients as both a personal trainer and health coach, we spoke to three pros doing just that and asked them to answer questions about their experiences.

Angel Chelik, MS, has been educating individuals about health and wellness for over 25 years. She utilizes her expertise as an ACE Certified Health Coach, Group Fitness Instructor and Personal Trainer to educate and inspire people to lead healthier, happier lives. Based in San Diego, she also owns a corporate wellness company, Workbetter Wellness.

Jen Kates, Pn2 Master Health Coach, NASM-CPT, ACE Certified Health Coach) has been a coach in the fitness industry for over 15 years. She's the host of the podcast Making Shift Happen and the owner of Shift Human Performance.

Jonathan Ross is an award-winning personal trainer, creator of Funtensity, brain-fitness expert and author of the Alzheimer’s Fitness Specialist Course.

How has incorporating health coaching and behavior-change principles transformed your approach to personal training?

Jonathan Ross: Before anyone exercises, they must choose to. It may sound obvious when stated that way, but it is not. Before incorporating health coaching and behavior-change principles into my practice (in the very early days of my career), I naïvely assumed that with the “right” exercise plan, everything would fall into place for people. That never happened. The act of choosing to exercise or not—and all the emotional and psychological reasons why people do or do not—is the prerequisite for leading lasting change in pursuit of fitness.

Jen Kates: Incorporating health coaching and behavior-change principles into my personal training has allowed me to holistically approach my clients with a wider lens. I am able to fully explore their overall health and wellness needs and goals outside of their strength and fitness goals. Plus, I find myself utilizing behavior-change principles to help them get to all their goals, including our work together inside the gym. 

Angel Chelik: I started personal training over 20 years ago. Back then, having discussions with clients around behaviors and/or patterns that they thought were unhealthy or negatively impacting them was always something that we did. But, it was discussed in a more casual way and was something clients wanted to talk about once they felt more comfortable with me. Now, it is part of my intro session. In fact, sometimes this portion of education takes up the whole hour and we don’t even have time for movement screens, etc. I think this is a testament to how much more open people are to talking about their mental health and asking for help when needed. Teaching clients behavior-change strategies, having them self-assess their habits and helping them determine appropriate goals is the foundation of our program.

Have you noticed changes in the way your clients respond to your training since you added health coaching to your repertoire?

Jen Kates: Yes! They’re able to really home in on their areas of opportunity and where they may need to shift things around when they encounter hurdles. I find that they really love to work on the mindset piece in all of this, and that helps them get clarity and get to their goals that much better. 

Jonathan Ross: They are more honest with struggles and more open to ideas for solutions to them as well as non-traditional approaches to exercise. Treating people like human beings and not “clients who need to exercise” levels the relationship to be more collaborative and less authoritative. Through effective coaching, clients are kinder to themselves when they fall short on something (instead of berating themselves harshly for a missed workout or an unwise food choice), more accepting that every small action has benefit (instead of feeling like whatever they do is never “enough”), and they are definitely having more fun being physically active (both in workouts and in general physical activity.)

There are no fish that hate swimming in water. Similarly, no humans naturally hate physical activity—it is always a learned response. When someone discovers enjoyable forms of physical activity, it changes their perception of it more favorably.

Angel Chelik: Since implementing behavior-change strategies, I feel like my clients take more accountability and responsibility for their actions. One of my favorite and most valuable tools I use is teaching them about habit loops. It’s easy for clients to recognize a bad habit (drinking wine each night once their kids go to bed), but having them come to the conclusion on why they feel that they need to do it (they need a way to relax and destress) and then coming up with a healthier option to get that same feeling or reward (sit in the hot tub for 20 minutes), is a pretty powerful skill set to see in action.

Did you have any business-related challenges after first adding health coaching to your repertoire? If so, how did you overcome them?

Jen Kates: No, I didn’t have any challenges other than trying to determine how to package it with my personal training as an all-in-one service. 

Jonathan Ross: Big time. When I started learning about the concept of “coaching,” I realized I had already been naturally adjusting how I approached clients in that direction even before formally learning about “coaching.” It seemed I was just wired to want to go more deeply into changing people’s health behaviors and attitudes about “fitness.” However, many people thought of me as “just a trainer,” so were at times confused about the focus on non-exercise health behaviors like nutrition, sleep habits, time and stress management, etc. As a result, I had to start being more explicit about the “full-spectrum” approach I would use with them at the outset.

Secondly, coaching is more intensive emotional and mental work. In essence, you are mentally “parachuting” into someone’s world and all the challenges and opportunities for success or failure with health and it can take more out of you as a professional. It is far more challenging (and thus more rewarding) to take a deep dive into someone’s 24-hour lifestyle than just teaching someone how to exercise.

Did you change the services you offer to clients after adding health coaching to your business? If so, what changes did you make and how have you handled pricing?

Jen Kates: I notoriously under-charged for the first several years of my business. You have to remind yourself that you are charging for a service that you have experience in managing and making easier for your clients. Be sure to charge your worth! I offer three different packages: one is personal training only, one is health coaching only, and the third package is my combined all-in-one package that includes both personal training and health coaching. This allows the client to choose which one works best for their budget and their goals. 

Jonathan Ross: First, I started referring to myself as a “full-spectrum fitness coach,” since when I started incorporating health-coaching practices into my fitness training, it was mostly in a health-club setting and also a couple of decades ago when people were not as clear nor as accepting of the term “health coach” as they are now.

Second, since pivoting to my leadership work in the fitness industry, my advice to other professionals has been, “charge more and be worth every cent.” In practice, that means you are so much more than a workout leader. That knowledge of what to do, combined with the confidence and belief that they can do it, greatly amplifies the impact you have. The result is that you need less session frequency with people over time. This lowers their total expense while allowing you to charge rates commensurate with the quality of the work you do and make a living doing it.

I’ve tripled my rates over the nearly 30 years I have been in the industry (from $55 to $150), but I probably am “cheaper” now than I was at the beginning. People used to hire me two to four times per week to run them through a workout. Now, we might start with a higher session frequency for two or three weeks to cover everything we need to, but in a short period of time I am seeing them every two to six weeks for a single session. This also expands the total number of clients you can take on, which helps minimize the negative financial impact of having a single client drop off your schedule.

Can you offer two or three ways your career changed after adding health coaching to your skill set?

Jonathan Ross: I started getting “better” clients! People got better and more lasting results when I shifted the responsibility for their success to them while building their confidence in their ability and their understanding of how all behaviors in a day accumulate and that “your body builds itself from your habits.”

At one point, I was charging a high enough rate compared to other pros in my area that people were only inclined to work with me once they were truly ready to focus on more than “just the workout.” This made my work more enjoyable and more successful, which began having a snowball effect in terms of starting to get a lot of unsolicited word-of-mouth referrals. I’ve honestly not had to ask for referrals in about 25 years. I remember doing that a couple times very early in my career during slow times but have not had to since.

Angel Chelik: I think it has elevated the relationships I have with clients, which leads to more trust/rapport and thus a longer tenure with them. I’ve been working with some clients for 15 years. That’s 15 years of being with them through the ups and downs of life—marriages, children, career changes, deaths, etc. When you can teach clients tools to help them navigate all these events, and they become proficient at using them, the coaching gets easier. We sit down, we discuss what worked in the past and what they can do in the present situation. But they are always the ones in the driver’s seat, choosing the path forward.

Is there anything else you’d like to share about your experience as a health coach and personal trainer that might be helpful to our readers?

Jen Kates: Remind yourself that you’re doing the intense work with your clients who are seeking a transformation of some sort in their lives. So, be sure to charge your worth, help your clients get incredible results, and live in alignment with your values as a human and a coach along the way, and you will endlessly enjoy being a health coach and personal trainer for as long as you imagine. 

Jonathan Ross: People do not prioritize exercise to the same degree that we do—they value it, but they are also trying to fit it into work, family and everything else that matters to them. When you realize this, you start adapting your practice to fit peoples’ lives instead of having your programming take over their lives.

Angel Chelik: In addition to working one-on-one with my clients, I have found success in creating and delivering corporate workshops on various health coaching topics, such as changing habits and recognizing cognitive distortions and learning how to reflect, respond and reframe them. While these workshops are sometimes used as a “Lunch and Learn,” they are more commonly utilized during wellness events or even wellness retreats. I make sure to use breakout groups so people can have a chance to practice and implement what we are discussing.

Final Thoughts

To wrap up this important conversation, we asked Gagliardi how incorporating health coaching into an existing personal training business might impact the professional from a business and career longevity perspective. Here’s what he had to say:

“It’s all about widening the net. Physical activity is crucial to leading a healthy lifestyle, but it is only one aspect of wellness. Health coaching empowers the client to set and reach goals around all aspects of wellness based on the behaviors they are ready and willing to change. Incorporating health coaching can broaden the range of services that you offer and enhance/supplement the services you already provide as an exercise professional.

Personal training can be physically demanding on the professional as well as the client. Health coaching sessions are not only extremely impactful from a change perspective but can offer a revenue stream that is not as physically demanding.

It is amazing to see what happens with clients when they move beyond physical activity and begin to focus on changing other aspects of wellness. Supporting clients through the ACE 7 Core Drivers of Healthy Living can be a real game changer for the professional and the client alike.  

Perhaps we can all relate to the scenario where a client is putting the time in at the gym, but the behaviors taking place when away from the gym are counterproductive to the work being done to become more physically active. Health coaching allows the focus to shift away from the work being done in the gym and to shine a spotlight on other aspects of wellness that are shaping a client’s health during all the other hours in the day.

When done together, health coaching and personal training are a match made in heaven for impacting your current business structure and the lives of those you serve.”