This review delves deeply into the core of the software.

We shall analyze the following based on past users’ cumulative years of usage and my vast experience in this business.

  • The Function
  • Cost
  • Likes and dislike

Strap on, and let’s make the most of the moment.

Total coaching

Intro to Total Coaching Personal Trainer Software Review

This article will introduce you to Total Coaching Personal Trainer software.

Iโ€™ll look at the unique features and different implementation methods so you can get a better look and feel of the software without investing just yet.

In the digital age, we know and love that productivity and organizational tools are abundant.

And when it comes to health and fitness client management, many nifty solutions have since cropped up.

The task of organizing and keeping track of numerous clients can be somewhat tedious, and for that reason, client management software such as Total Coaching now exists.

You might think intake and scheduling are a chore, but not so much that you need a whole software suite to handle it.

Well, client management is so much more than just managing appointments.

A plethora of data and events need to be monitored if you truly want to service your clients in a way that puts you ahead of the game.

You need to be able to collate and organize personal data and information such as:

  • Age
  • Weight
  • Height
  • Training history
  • Medical history
  • Personal schedule
  • Family status
  • Employment status
  • Educational background

You will also need to track up-to-the-minute changes and events that will affect how programming is administered and implemented.

Accountability is a huge factor, and when you have more than a handful of clients to micromanage, you will need a productivity tool to take care of that.

As a personal trainer, I can state that having a software system in place is a major benefit, especially once you pass the 5-client mark.

Thatโ€™s why Iโ€™ve taken time to test Total Coaching and other similar fitness client management platforms so you donโ€™t have to shoot in the dark when it comes time to invest in your Business tools.

What is Total Coaching?

Total Coaching is a web-based PT application that allows coaches to manage workout and nutrition plans for more clients in less time.

It has an iOS and Android app making mobile accessibility a piece of cake.

The interface includes a full training log that keeps track of all activities taken by your clients, whether in the gym, at home, or out in nature.

Users can enter their training intensities, resistance loads, rep ranges, and many more useful pieces of relevant info.

As a trainer, you can create custom workouts for your clients using the resources and features available.

With a host of analytic tools and infographic interfaces, you can get an accurate reading of what your clients have been up to and where they regard their goals and habits.

Total Coaching also comes well-equipped to help you deliver nutrition coaching too.

A well-organized nutrition log with a catalog of over 250,000 food items common to the typical Western diet allows you to effectively help plan nutritious, tasty meals your clients can enjoy while getting on track with their diet goals.

As a trainer, you can customize the entire interface so it adopts your visual identity and branding.

This allows your clients to experience Total Coaching not as a web app but as the service they signed up for and are familiar with.

How Much Does Total Coaching Cost?

Total Coaching comes packaged in seven pricing tiers, each with varying perks and features and priced accordingly.

The first package is the Starter plan.

This plan allows you to manage 5 clients as a solo trainer.

I donโ€™t see much use for this outside of minor added convenience since managing 5 clients should be fairly easy in my experience.

Total Coaching Personal Trainer Software Review ([year]) 3

The starter will set you back $19/per month

The next plan is the Starter+ which allows you to manage 10 clients as a single trainer.

This is where Total Coaching starts to make sense.

Managing more than 5 clients can be tedious, especially if you want to do it right.

Starter+ goes for $29/month

Third on the list is Pro. This is where things start to get interesting.

Thatโ€™s because you now have access to multiple trainers.

Great if youโ€™re working as a team and want to maximize the work done by each coach.

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To this end, the Pro plan will allow 3 trainers to manage 20 clients anytime.

Pro costs $49/month

After Pro, we have Pro+, which continues with the trend of multiple trainer access.

This time, however, you will be allowed a maximum of 5 trainers and 50 clients.

All this at a premium of $69/month.

Next, we have the Studio plan.

This one allows a maximum of 10 trainers to deal with 100 clients.

As the name suggests, this plan is best if youโ€™re going into full-scale operations about running a studio or boutique gym.

Studio goes for $99/month

From Studio, we, of course, have, Studio+ (the naming convention is pretty predictable at this point, lol).

Studio Plus ramps things up with a trainer allowance of 15 and a maximum client count of 200.

For all this, youโ€™ll be paying $149/per month

Last but certainly not least is the Enterprise plan.

This is the big daddy of them all.

With a client cap of 1000! And 30 coaching slots, it’s one only those with empire dreams should consider.

I would recommend the Starter+ plan for you as a solo trainer.

It gives you access to a large enough client cap to justify signing up for a client management service in the first place.

What Else Should You Know About Total Coaching?

Total Coaching has a robust mobile access solution in the form of the Total Coaching app.

As I mentioned, it is available on both Android and iOS.

That means your clients can have their programs delivered on the go.

The app is also a communication portal; it now has private messaging with Zoom integration, allowing live consultations and workout sessions.

Overall, the app has a neat, user-friendly interface, one of my favorite aspects of the experience.

What I Liked

User-Friendly Interface For Coaches

Total Coaching Personal Trainer Software Review ([year]) 4

One thing that stood out to me was how easy it was to navigate the features and functions of a trainer on this platform.

This is in comparison to other similar client management apps such as Total Coaching and Trainerize.

This is a big deal because the whole point of PT client management software is to cut down on complexity so you can get straight to business, allowing yourself and your clients to get on track and smash those goals.

Because of this, I see Total Coaching as one of the best client management tools for the trainer with a relatively low-tech acumen.

Workout Templates

Creating workout programs is both a science and an art.

The art of understanding the biomechanical principles and laws of physical exercise.

The science organizes that knowledge into a structured, easy-to-understand program.

The latter is where many personal trainers get stifled.

How do you organize instructions in the right way for maximum effect?

And thatโ€™s where the workout templates provided come in super handy.

They allow you to scale the complexity of your workouts from the fundamental establishment to more personalized goal-specific workouts.

This allows you to service a wide range of client needs and goals without going through the arduous process of creating a program framework each time.

Solid Approach To Nutrition

One big benefit of Total Coaching is the emphasis on nutrition.

With a database of over 250,000 food items and robust functionality for nutrition programming, Total Coaching is one of the best client management platforms for nutrition.

Youโ€™ll have access to food options from across the world, but generally favor a Western-style diet.

It allows you to group food items based on your clientโ€™s preferences and tolerances.

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This opens up the whole nutrition planning aspect of Total Coaching to allow for custom recipes that match what the client wants and what you, as a coach, have determined they need for a healthy diet reset.

Animated Workout Videos

The instructional workout videos are presented in animated form.

Many personal trainer client management platforms present their workout and exercise demos using pre-recorded live-action subjects performing the various exercises.

I love the animated versions so much because they give them more of an approachable look and feel. 

It’s easier to accept and adapt exercises as a rendered model performs them over those performed by a real person.

This is because most clients, especially at the beginning phase of their health and fitness journey, will tend to compare themselves to individuals who are well-initiated in fitness.

After all, a major motivating factor for getting into fitness is achieving a certain look and ability based on a real-world, idealized person.

This can have drawbacks in that some people might feel intimidated by the sight of a fit and toned individual providing them with form and technique demonstrations.

An animated model eliminates this since very few would want to aspire to look like a 3D model.

Visually, the animated demos greatly allow Total Coaching to have a high visual consistency.

Animated figures are also designed to have perfect form, while human subjects will always have some form deviation.

Communication Tools

As I mentioned, Total Coaching has proper communication functionality.

The private messaging feature allows you to stay in touch with your clients in real time, improving the quality of constant data gathering, feedback, and accountability.

You will also have access to video calling through the integration with Zoom.

This feature allows you to conduct full-on, real-time live sessions with your clients while maintaining a degree of command and observation as you would in an in-person scenario.

Awesome Feedback Function

Aside from being able to communicate directly, Total Coaching allows you to receive exercise-specific feedback from your clients as they go through the motions.

As an online trainer, you donโ€™t have your eyes and hands on the ground, allowing you to gain appropriate feedback from observing.

This feedback feature allows your clients to report on each exercise as they complete it so you can manage and modify it accordingly.

What I Disliked

Beyond the great services they offer, some areas still need improvements.

Although Total Coaching is an amazing, ergonomic, clean user experience from both ends (client and coach), it does harbor some less-than-necessary features.

Some Features Tend To โ€œBloatโ€ The Experience

These features act as bloat regarding the overall experience and capability of the Total Coaching platform.

For example, the questionnaire tab is useless not because having client intake and data-gathering forms is irrelevant but quite the opposite.

The problem is that the questionnaires tab doesnโ€™t give you access to any workable templates.

Youโ€™re shooting in the dark when figuring out which fields to include in your form.

This is especially inconvenient when looking at the legal questionnaire.

Client limits on all plans

One major gripe with Total Coaching is that all the plans have a maximum client limit.

That means working with more clients; you have to switch plans.

If thatโ€™s not enough, your ultimate limit is 1000 clients on the Enterprise plan.

This might sound like a lot, but what if you land 1001 clients, or 1002, etc….โ€ฆ

See what Iโ€™m getting at?

A limit greatly reduces what can be achieved as a business, no matter how big or small.

One solution would be a commission-based structure where a percentage is deducted for however many clients you round up.

That way, as a trainer, you can operate your business with zero limits while Total Coaching still makes decent margins.

No Notifications For Missed Appointments

Life happens, and when it comes to personal training, thatโ€™s the code for a client missing a session.

I found this odd since the notification feature is useful when allowing clients to provide various forms of useful feedback.

Being able to track missed training appointments is crucial to monitoring the overall progress that a client is experiencing.

A client management tool such as Total Coaching not having access to this simple feature is quite a miss.

I would suggest an update to include this feature.

Non-functional Award System

Hereโ€™s an interesting feature with a good concept, the Total Coaching Award System.

The point is to challenge your clients to hit certain milestones and achievements to win awards.

This gamification idea can be immersive and highly engaging, incentivizing your clients to work harder and more consistently toward their goals.

The problem is the award system isnโ€™t altogether there, meaning it doesnโ€™t quite work as youโ€™d figure it should.

The implementation is vague and comes off as a directionless afterthought, like something tossed in for the kids.

Gamification is a powerful engagement tool; I suggest the dev team look into fleshing it out and making it a worthwhile experience.

Either that or canning it all together since itโ€™s unnecessary and is another example of a bloated feature.

Pros/Cons Short List

So weโ€™ve looked at Total Coaching and some of its highs and lows.

Hereโ€™s a TLDR version of the platformโ€™s pros and cons.

Pros 

  • Clean, simple, effective user interface and engaging user experience
  • A good selection of pricing plan options to choose from
  • A great approach to nutrition resources and coaching
  • Awesome animated exercise guides
  • Robust communication tools such as private chat and Zoom video calls
  • Amazing app integration available on both Android and iOS
  • Easy to track and hold clients accountable
  • Workout templates provided

Cons

  • Some features tend to โ€œbloatโ€ the platform, such as the Award System and the Questionnaire tab.
  • The available packages ultimately have a limit on how many clients you can service, with the maximum possible being 1000
  • No notifications for missed appointments

Is Total Coaching Right For You?

Total Coaching works well; its easy and accessible interface for both you as a coach and your clients makes it an amazing way to get things done.

The mobile app functionality is also a major win, and seeing that most media and information is consumed on mobile platforms, itโ€™s more than appropriate.

You can track your clients online, and they can have their workouts at the gym or even on long trips, eliminating the need for desktop access on both ends of the interaction.

Itโ€™s an ideal investment for your online trainer business and works well with in-person clients.

It isnโ€™t the best option, however, and has some limitations.

Iโ€™ve already spoken about how limiting the packages are, and for me, that puts a spanner in the works.

1000 clients might seem like too many to wrap your head around, but you can and will eventually surpass that with enough work and a big enough vision for your business.

A better solution would have been to have an unlimited approach with a commission structure and to package different plans according to extra added features instead of just client limits.

The exercises are also a bit limiting and require your clients to have access to a fully stocked gym.

It doesnโ€™t have the most at-home-friendly exercise options, although there is an option to add your custom exercises.

Overall, I still think itโ€™s a great platform. It could take over the personal trainer software market with some tweaks and updates since most of its limitations are based on half-baked or unnecessary features.

Features โ€“ 5/5 Stars

This program is comprehensive and hugely customizable.

It has an amazing nutrition aspect and provides a full suite of health and fitness solutions.

Features โ€“ 5/5 Stars

A simple, effective, and attractive user interface for clients and coaches alike.

The robust mobile app further amplifies the user experience.

Support โ€“ 3/5 Stars

It could do with some much-needed updates and optimizations.

Many features seem incomplete or half-developed, meaning they either be removed or at least fleshed out to an adequate degree.

Price -3/5 Stars

The pricing options range from affordable to relatively pricey, but the main drawback is how the plans are packaged and not what they cost.

Overall โ€“ 4/5 Stars

I think Total Coaching offers the best personal training software experience available.

The price may deter some people, though.

Tyler Read - Certified Personal Trainer with PTPioneer

Tyler Read


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