The Madlab PCDP’s Role in Developing Career Coaches who Earn a Professional Wage

THE MADLAB PCDP’S ROLE IN DEVELOPING CAREER COACHES WHO EARN A PROFESSIONAL WAGE.

We get a lot of questions about what exactly it is we do at Madlab, so it’s time to explain our role in the broader picture of becoming a professional coach.

First, what we are not:

We do not hand out meaningless personal training certificates showing you have completed a weekend course and can now legally train clients.

This is not to poo poo certifications and formal education, as they are a key in developing professional coaches—coaches who can help bridge the gap between the current, reactive healthcare model that focuses on treating existing illnesses and move to an approach where we use fitness and nutrition (and fitness coaches) to prevent health problems in the first place.
That being said, technical education is only the first small step in becoming a professional coach.

Sidenote: If you are looking for a great course and certification that dives into the science—anatomy, physiology, energy systems—and helps you develop the skills to become a great technical coach with the ability to design effective individualized training programs for clients, the OPEX Fitness Coaching Certificate Program (CCP) is an amazing one. It takes a number of months to complete and is a significant financial commitment, but you will come out in a great place to effectively work with clients.

What we do best:

Our role in developing professional coaches is about teaching best practices that help coaches develop real-world skills to build and retain clients long-term, so they can pursue a full-time career in the industry that allows them to make a professional wage.

Why is this so important?

Right now (depending on where you get your data), the average functional fitness coach or personal trainer makes less than $30,000 a year, meaning many have to pursue second jobs to get by.

This leads to serious coach churn, and the sad reality is most coaches, or personal trainers don’t last more than two years in the industry, either because they can’t make enough money or because they burn out from having to work too many hours to make a decent living.

This is where we come in:

The Madlab Professional Coach Diploma Program (PCDP) is for aspiring and current coaches to put them on a path to earn $60,000 to $100,000-plus at a gym that follows the Madlab coach compensation model, working a manageable, sustainable number of on-floor hours.

And the two keys to doing this are not typically found in coaching courses. They are:

Mentorship from senior coaches (to guide and hold coaches accountable).

Practical Apprenticeship Program (where coaches build their book of clients and graduate from junior apprentice to senior apprentice to associate coach based on their ability to bring on and retain clients (aka based on their ability to make money in the real world).

Real-world results:

Madlab School of Fitness in Vancouver, B.C., has been around since 2005. Today, we have five full-time coaches, who have been coaching with us for 16, 15, 14, 10 and 9 years respectively, two part-time coaches who have been here for 14 and 12 years respectively, and two up-and-coming apprentice coaches, one of whom is set to graduate to associate coach this year.

Chris Spigner, a full-time coach who has been earning a professional wage since 2014 at 7 Mile Strength and Fitness in Grand Cayman, a long-time Madlab gym, put it this way: “The MadLab system has been invaluable to me. I can’t imagine doing it any other way,” he said.