We all want to stay fit and active during the holidays, but sometimes that’s very hard because all we want to do is curl under a blanket, drink something warm, watch magical movies, and enjoy time with our family. Especially now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping up with a healthy routine seems even harder to do.
But, online fitness might change that. With a customized branded app, you can become a part of people’s regular home activities, but only if you have to offer quality, diversity, and fun. Even in the holiday season, when clients tend to get lazy. Here are some fitness tips for personal trainers to keep your client’s motivation on the same level as in the spring.
Organize themed workouts
Once the holiday season starts, we all want to stay at home, decorate it, and enjoy hot teas, cocoa, and family time. Everything is sparkly and magical, so why wouldn’t your workout videos be just like that?
You can create a fresh workout atmosphere by using candle lights instead of the usual light you use. Combine it with a bit more relaxed workout routine and your clients will appreciate the vibe you are sending them.
One more way to get into the holiday theme is to decorate the space where you are shooting your videos or even wear a costume! Creating a fun video will surely keep your clients motivated for holiday workouts. It doesn’t need to be hard – just try to give your routines some meaning. For example, create a routine that Santa Claus does to get ready for Christmas Eve or a routine that will make it easier to decorate a Christmas tree (a lot of stretching, jumping, etc).
Picking a special playlist with songs that will bring joy to your clients is another method to keep them active during the holidays. Make a Christmas-themed playlist, or mix some jazzy and twinkly sounds. You can go even further and make a New Year’s Eve party playlist for your workouts.
In a time when we are physically apart, it is even more important to keep your community together. You can encourage your clients to invite their friends or include their significant others to the themed workouts and maybe get some new clients at the same time.
Start a fitness challenge
People want to experience something new and slightly different now and then. Organizing a holiday fitness challenge might just do the trick and keep your clients motivated and eager to workout during the Christmas season. You can make fun and cool rewards for people who hit the goal – send them funny Christmas e-cards, give them recipes for healthy cookies, write them a letter from Santa Claus, or name a workout after them.
Besides a well-structured fitness challenge, it is important to make progress tracking visually attractive to your clients. People will want to check how they are doing compared to others, so make sure to mention the most successful participants. In addition to the fitness challenge, you can also measure how many classes or sessions they attended or how long they have been working out and reward the most active during the holidays.
At this time of year, we all feel we want to give back to the community and help the ones in need. You can use that feeling to organize a charity challenge and give another dimension to feeling great while working out. You can donate a certain amount of money for each person that checks into a class or for every five-star review that your clients post. Promote these charity challenges and be transparent once you start donating. People want to know how much they have contributed and to whom. Post the challenge results on your social media accounts and send a newsletter to your clients.
Set weekly goals
It doesn’t matter if you are a fitness professional or just an enthusiast, you need goals to keep you motivated and active during the holidays. Especially if people are doing home workouts and depend only on themselves to actually do the routines. So, creating weekly goals will always give your clients something to look forward to.
But, make sure to set some small and achievable goals, because people are very busy at this time of year. Besides buying presents, decorating, and making delicious food, business affairs need to get done before the end of the year, making the holiday season a bit more stressful time of the year. Try to offer a solution for that and make your clients feel good about themselves.
You could prepare shorter, but more intense routines, so your clients can squeeze them in their busy schedules and still stay fit and healthy. Every week, you can focus on a certain muscle area or a type of exercise – you can create improving flexibility week, meditation week, core week, etc. Take into account that people tend to eat more and get a bit lazy during the holiday season, so you can sometimes offer them a bit more relaxed session.
Set reminders for every workout session so your clients don’t forget about them. At the same time, you can promote the goals for the upcoming week and invite new people to join your sessions.
Make a nutrition plan that can work with holiday treats
Advise your clients to enjoy the holidays and their treats, but still keep a healthy diet. The key is in rationing. Besides healthy meals, add time for treats in your nutrition plan. Count on that little extra weight your clients could have gotten and later adjust the workout schedule accordingly.
Also, you can advise your clients which alcoholic beverages to drink during the holidays. Some alcohol can affect their fitness progress more or less. Encourage the clients to eat healthy and mindfully, but still enjoy the holiday season.
Do all that online
You don’t need an actual physical space to keep your clients motivated during the wintertime. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, it is advisable to transfer your business online. And now, with a customized fitness app, you can do everything you want quite quickly.
For instance, the branded fitness app from Lean On Digital enables you to organize digital fitness quite easily. You can make home workout videos, make fitness challenges, track the progress of your clients, offer them a nutrition plan, award them with medals, and much more.
Your clients will appreciate that you are looking after their health and safety.