How Online Coaching Helps Me Train My Athletes Remotely: A Physical Therapist’s Guide to Maximizing Home Exercise Programs with TrueCoach and YouTube Integration
As a physical therapist and coach, keeping my athletes and patients engaged, motivated, and progressing toward their goals has always been a top priority. However, the dynamic nature of today’s world has made it increasingly challenging to offer the same level of personalized attention in person. Whether it’s because of scheduling conflicts, distance, or even global events like the COVID-19 pandemic, finding new ways to deliver high-quality, customized training and rehabilitation remotely has become essential. Fortunately, online coaching platforms like TrueCoach have revolutionized how I interact with my clients, enabling me to effectively guide athletes, patients, and clients through home exercise programs with ease and precision.
In this blog, I’ll break down how online coaching helps me train athletes remotely, how I use it in my physical therapy practice for Home Exercise Programs (HEPs), and how platforms like TrueCoach seamlessly integrate features like video links from the KRU Lab YouTube page to create a holistic, personalized training experience.
Accessing a Global Market Through the Use of Remote Coaching: Why It’s the Future
Over the last decade, online coaching has evolved from a niche offering to a mainstream approach embraced by trainers, therapists, and athletes alike. For many, the convenience of training from home or any location with internet access makes online coaching an appealing alternative to traditional face-to-face sessions. Additionally, this model supports a broader demographic of clients—from professional athletes with demanding schedules to everyday individuals who struggle to carve out time for in-person appointments.
The Benefits of Remote Coaching for Athletes:
Accessibility: Athletes can access their workout programs from any device, at any time, without the need for physical meetings.
Customization: Through platforms like TrueCoach, I can design individualized training programs that cater to an athlete’s unique goals, injuries, or sport-specific needs.
Progress Tracking: Online coaching tools allow both the coach and athlete to track progress through metrics like reps, sets, and weights used during each session.
Flexibility: Athletes can work out on their schedule, adapting their routines to their personal lives without sacrificing the quality of their training.
Ongoing Support: Communication is constant and more accessible. Instead of waiting for the next in-person session, athletes can message me within the platform for immediate feedback or clarification.
How I Use Online Coaching as a Physical Therapist for Home Exercise Programs (HEPs)
As a physical therapist, online coaching tools also provide a significant advantage when it comes to prescribing and managing home exercise programs (HEPs). While in-clinic sessions are invaluable, the real challenge is ensuring that patients adhere to their HEPs consistently outside of therapy. Online coaching platforms help bridge this gap by making it easier for patients to follow through with their exercises and stay accountable.
Here’s how I incorporate online coaching into my physical therapy practice:
1. Creating Tailored Home Exercise Programs
For patients, the most effective recovery often takes place between visits. Home exercise programs are essential for maintaining the benefits of therapy and encouraging long-term progress. Using TrueCoach, I can create detailed exercise routines tailored to each patient’s specific injury, pain points, and physical limitations. Instead of handing out a generic sheet of exercises (which often gets lost or misinterpreted), I provide a digital program with step-by-step instructions, ensuring my patients have clear guidance.
2. Improved Compliance and Accountability
One of the main struggles patients face with HEPs is compliance. With traditional paper-based programs, it's easy for patients to forget exercises or perform them incorrectly. TrueCoach allows me to upload instructional videos, track compliance, and send reminders—all features that keep patients accountable. They can log their workouts and provide feedback on how they’re feeling, making it easy for me to adjust the program if necessary.
3. Providing Visual Guidance through Video Links
Perhaps one of the most powerful features of online coaching is the ability to link video demonstrations to each exercise. I have found this particularly useful in my practice. Instead of explaining complex movements in words or images alone, I link videos from the KRU Lab YouTube page directly into the TrueCoach platform.
By embedding these videos, patients can watch professional, high-quality demonstrations of each exercise, ensuring they understand proper form and technique. This reduces the risk of injury and ensures better results. Plus, by using YouTube as a resource, I can curate an extensive video library over time, making it easier to share the right content with future clients and patients.
Using TrueCoach to Program Reps, Sets, and Progressions for My Athletes
TrueCoach is more than just a communication tool—it’s a powerful programming platform that allows me to create detailed, structured plans that my athletes can follow with precision. Here’s how I make the most of the platform’s features:
1. Customizable Workouts with Specific Reps and Sets
For my athletes, one-size-fits-all programming isn’t an option. Whether they’re training for strength, endurance, flexibility, or sport-specific skills, each workout needs to be designed with their individual goals in mind. TrueCoach allows me to create customized workouts that specify exact reps, sets, rest times, and even tempo for each exercise. These details are crucial, especially when working with athletes who are pushing their limits or recovering from injury.
For example, if I’m working with a sprinter recovering from a hamstring strain, I might design a program with incremental progressions that focuses on building isometric and eccentric strength as well as lengthening tissue. I can set precise parameters like frequency, tempo, rest periods, supersets, circuits, as well repetitions and set schemes. Most of my programming is based off of variable resistance and conjugate method training. Online platforms allow my clients and patients to understand this schema from a distance as they follow along with KRU Lab’s instructional videos.
2. Tracking Performance and Making Adjustments
One of the great things about TrueCoach is that it allows athletes to log their workouts, including how much weight they used, how they felt, and any issues they encountered. This gives me real-time feedback, so I can adjust the program as needed. If an athlete is struggling with a particular exercise or experiencing discomfort, I can modify the sets, reps, or even the exercise itself to better suit their needs.
For physical therapy patients, this level of feedback is equally valuable. Sometimes, an exercise that seemed appropriate during an in-person session turns out to be too challenging at home. With TrueCoach, I can quickly make adjustments to ensure the patient stays on track with their rehabilitation.
3. Progressions for Long-Term Development
Whether working with athletes or physical therapy patients, long-term progress is key. I use TrueCoach to build in progressions that help clients gradually increase intensity, volume, and complexity over time. This might involve increasing reps and sets, adjusting weights, or adding new exercises that build on previous movements. Progressions are crucial for preventing plateaus and keeping clients engaged.
In TrueCoach, I can map out several weeks (or even months) of training in advance, with the ability to tweak the program based on how the client is responding. This ensures that every athlete or patient has a clear path toward improvement, whether their goal is to return to sport or simply recover from an injury.
The Role of Instructional Videos in Online Coaching: Leveraging YouTube and TrueCoach Together
Video content has become a cornerstone of online coaching. In my experience, athletes and patients often struggle to remember proper form after a session. Having access to clear, concise video demonstrations is invaluable in reinforcing the techniques I’ve taught during in-person meetings or virtual consultations.
By linking instructional videos from the KRU Lab YouTube page directly to TrueCoach, I ensure that my athletes and patients have access to high-quality demonstrations 24/7. Here’s why this is so effective:
1. Visual Learning
Most people are visual learners. A written description of an exercise might suffice for some, but the majority of clients benefit far more from seeing the exercise performed. Video demonstrations provide clear visual cues that can make the difference between doing an exercise correctly or risking injury.
2. Consistency
As a coach and therapist, I want to ensure my clients are performing exercises the right way every time. By creating or linking to consistent, high-quality videos, I remove the guesswork from their training or rehabilitation program. They can watch and rewatch the videos as needed, ensuring they feel confident in their execution.
3. Building a Content Library
One of the great benefits of leveraging YouTube is that it allows me to build a growing library of content that I can use for future clients. Whether it’s basic exercises like squats and lunges or more complex rehabilitative movements, having these videos readily available speeds up the programming process. Plus, the YouTube channel serves as a branding tool for KRU Lab, showcasing our expertise and helping potential clients find us.
Technology Has Opened the Door for Training and Physical Therapy to Reach Our Global Following
Online coaching is no longer just an option—it’s becoming a necessity for trainers, coaches, and physical therapists alike. Platforms like TrueCoach, combined with video resources like the KRU Lab YouTube page, enable me to deliver highly personalized, effective training and rehabilitation programs to clients no matter where they are. The ability to customize workouts, track progress, and provide visual guidance ensures that athletes and patients get the support they need, whether they're aiming for peak performance or recovering from injury.
As technology continues to evolve, I have no doubt that online coaching will play an even larger role in how we train, rehabilitate, and empower our clients. And with tools like TrueCoach and YouTube at our disposal, the possibilities are truly endless.