How To Livestream Your Fitness Classes: Step-by-Step Guide

If you’re wondering how to livestream your fitness classes, our step-by-step guide will break this process down for you! 

• Step 1: Decide On The Kinds Of Fitness Classes You'll Livestream
• Step 2: Achieve The Right Qualifications For Live Streaming Fitness Classes
• Step 3: Choose Where You'll Run Your Livestream Classes
• Step 4: Pick Out Your Fitness Livestream Software
• Step 5: Finalise The Pricing Structure For Your Livestream Fitness Classes
• Step 6: Source Your Clients For Your Fitness Livestream
• Step 7: Top Tips For Delivering Effective Livestream Fitness Classes

Before we get started, why not complete a Level 4 Personal Trainer Course to grow your customer base. Learn more in our course prospectus here.

How To Livestream Your Fitness Classes: Step-by-Step Guide

There’s more involved in live streaming fitness classes than just standing in front of a camera. From deciding what classes you’ll run to your choice of software, our steps will break everything down for you!

Step 1: Decide On The Kinds Of Fitness Classes You'll Livestream

While this may be the most obvious step, it’s important you decide on the right classes you want to live stream. As you’ll no longer have face-to-face contact, it’s crucial you only hold fitness classes you’re passionate about and already have expertise in.

For example, someone delivering livestreamed Zumba sessions who's been a Zumba instructor for 7 years sounds much better than someone who’s studied boxing, but chooses to livestream pilates. 

Having plenty of experience is great for making you stand out, plus, by doing this, you’re also more likely to stay energised, and will find it easier to motivate your fitness class members.

Choosing classes you think will be popular but don’t necessarily enjoy yourself will make it harder to stick with, especially if you aren't used to conducting classes through live streams.

Some questions you should ask yourself before streaming fitness classes live from home include:

• What gym equipment is available to me?
• How much space do I have for my classes?
• How much will it cost to buy necessary equipment?

By asking yourself these questions, it allows you to decide how ambitious you want your classes to be and what exactly you have at your disposal to attract clients. A good idea is to start off with simple classes and see how popular they become.

This reduces the risk of spending lots on expensive equipment only for you to decide live streaming exercise classes aren’t for you. It’s better to see how popular your first few classes are and go from there.

Conducting competitor research by searching for other classes that occupy a similar specialism to what you choose to work in is important here. It’s crucial when it comes to livestreaming classes as it can help you gauge what’s popular and what the public is looking for.

Step 2: Achieve The Right Qualifications For Live Streaming Fitness Classes

The qualifications required to live stream fitness classes are no different than if you were to hold classes in person.

You need to at least be qualified as a Level 2 Fitness Instructor to legally run these sessions.

However, to expand your skills and knowledge, and provide the best classes to your customers, completing a Level 3 Personal Training Course or Personal Training Diploma (which combines Level 2 and 3) is ideal. 

These qualifications are important for several reasons, such as:

• Providing a greater understanding of proper technique and form
• Upholding customer safety during classes
• Helping you develop a successful personal training business model
• Getting insurance as a personal trainer

When it comes to insurance, having a qualification that’s regulated by Ofqual and governed by CIMSPA means you’re eligible for personal trainer insurance. 

Most insurance providers recognise the popularity of online training such as live streaming fitness classes, and will therefore offer insurance that covers this as standard.

This means providers such as Insure4Sport have extended their insurance to cover online classes too. However, this insurance only covers live classes and pre recorded videos shared directly with customers, not public videos:

 The most basic insurance that will cover you when streaming fitness classes at home are:

• Public Liability Insurance: Sometimes things will go wrong during a session and this can’t always be helped. This is the most important insurance as it covers you against customers if they injure themselves during a session.
• Professional Indemnity Insurance: This protects you when providing advice to class members as even the best personal trainers can give incorrect information. This stops claims if clients are looking to hold you accountable for injuring themselves after performing an exercise you told them to do.

Before setting anything else up, ensuring you have the right personal trainer qualifications and insurance should be a top priority when you start asking ‘how to livestream a fitness class’.

Step 3: Choose Where You'll Run Your Livestream Classes

To effectively live stream fitness classes, you’ll need to plan everything from equipment to where exactly you’re going to hold them.

Let’s break these down in more detail!

#1 - Decide On The Equipment You’ll Use For Live Streaming Fitness Classes

This is the most crucial part of streaming fitness classes online as reliable equipment is key to holding successful sessions. 

Your exercise equipment and the technology you use to stream must both be high quality to reduce the risk of issues arising.

To film yourself, you may have a camera that’s

• Built into your laptop
• Built into your phone
• Attached separately to either of the above

If you decide to attach a camera to your laptop, check out our list of the best cameras for Zoom fitness classes. 

Webcams such as the Logitech C920S or the Razer Kiyo streaming camera with ring lighting are great options for live streaming exercise classes!

You’ll also require a microphone. These are often built into your laptop and phone, or you can wear a microphone headset to increase your volume.

A laptop that can run your videos smoothly, without lagging or distorting the image quality, is ideal. 

Low-quality videos that constantly buffer or pause will seriously break the flow of a workout, and will likely frustrate class members as they try to follow your instruction.

Aside from your tech, you’ll also need to ensure any exercise or gym equipment you decide to use is reliable. Even if you decide to look for places to rent gym equipment, you should always check everything works correctly. 

Faulty equipment you have to keep fixing or adjusting during class is likely to make you look unprofessional. This doesn’t mean you need the most expensive products but just ones you can rely on for an effective session.

#2 - Decide On The Location Of Your Live Stream Exercise Classes

Wherever you choose to live stream your fitness classes from, you need to present yourself as a professional. This means your workspace should be too, even if you decide to build your own home gym.

If you have enough room at home, you should dedicate an area to live streaming fitness classes. This should be a place free of clutter, with enough room to perform and demonstrate exercises to your class.

You’ll also need a place large enough to stand a tripod or your laptop with enough distance that you fit within the screen so customers can clearly see what you’re doing.

If you work solely as a livestream instructor, you can convert a spare room or garage into your own fitness studio. 

However, if you work at a gym and combine online and in-person sessions, you may ask to use the space to hold these classes.

This is ideal if you don’t have enough room at home as it gives you a professional work environment to live stream exercise classes from.

#3 - Ensure Lighting Is Correct When Live Streaming Fitness Classes

A well-lit space is crucial so class members can clearly see you demonstrating exercises without being too pixelated or dark. Rooms with plenty of direct, natural lighting are great for this!

However, if you live stream exercise classes in the early morning or evening during winter, it’s going to be dark. This means you’ll need to invest in some good lighting, preferably white light as this is best for a clear image.

You can buy ring and panel lights separately, or some webcams even have these lights built in, like the Razer Kiyo webcam mentioned earlier:

Combining this equipment can save you money and time you’d need to spend adjusting the light separately to make sure it’s directly on you.

Step 4: Pick Out Your Fitness Livestream Software

When streaming fitness classes live from home or a studio, you’ll need to decide on the best software to do this. For convenience, you’ll want something simple and easy to navigate, especially when you have your live classes planned.

While there are various options available, Uscreen is one of the best platforms to live stream fitness classes on. 

With its five-star streaming service, you can broadcast your fitness classes on any device, meaning you aren’t restricted to just a phone or laptop if your equipment is faulty.

All live videos are recorded and on-demand after the event. Uscreen also allows you to store and post the pre-recorded videos for customers to view after sessions.

Other features of this platform include:

Examples of popular users on the platform who live stream online fitness classes include Gymbox and Sersana Home: 

As you can see, these are very different types of live streaming classes, meaning you can choose the type of fitness you specialise in, or ones you simply enjoy the most.

The pricing for Uscreen differs depending on what features you want to use. Basic features range from $79 per month (just under £65) up to $159 per month (£130) per month.

They also offer a free trial version for those who may want to try out the service without committing to payments.

However, if you’re not set on using Uscreen, here’s a few alternatives you could consider:

• gymGO: This shares many of the same features as Uscreen, allowing users to livestream classes to multiple people as well as upload videos. However, it costs more a month to unlock more features.
• YouTube: Live streaming on this platform is a relatively new feature. It’s free to live stream fitness classes but you’ll need a Google account to do so. This feature must be enabled but to live stream on a mobile device, you must have at least 1,000 subscribers.
• Twitch: Although this is less known for live streaming fitness classes, Twitch is a completely free platform. There’s also not a limit to how many people can watch the live stream. However, Twitch is slightly more advanced than other similar platforms so may be harder to adjust to if you’re a beginner.

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If you’re looking for some of the best equipment to use when live streaming your fitness classes, check out these articles:

• 13 Best Laptops For Zoom Fitness Classes
• 11 Best Cameras For Zoom Fitness Classes
• 23 Best Free Personal Trainer Software Options

Step 5: Finalise The Pricing Structure For Your Livestream Fitness Classes

When live streaming exercise classes, you need to decide how you’re going to price the classes and the payment methods you’ll use. 

Customers often have the choice of paying per session or by signing up to a subscription package. These packages are often structured differently, but follow set patterns, like:

• Weekly
• Monthly
• Yearly

When live streaming fitness classes, offering “bulk-buy'' classes is the best way to go about deciding how much you want customers to pay as this can earn you more money in the long run, even if you’re offering a slight discount.

As live streaming exercise classes means less overhead costs than in-person classes as you don’t need to rent gym space, this is also something to keep in mind when determining prices.

If we take a look at Ten Health & Fitness, they offer 1 class for £10 or a block of 10 classes for £90:

Similarly, Mind Body Online offers various live stream classes of different classes. The HIIT classes vary between $15 to $25. If we convert this, it is between £12 to £20, standard for these kinds of classes.

While deciding how much to charge for classes is largely down to you, if we take these examples as an average, you should charge between £10 to £20. 

As a beginner, you should charge on the lower end of the pricing spectrum.

If you begin by charging £9 per class or £80 for 10 classes, you’re less likely to put people off when first starting out. By having package deals, customers are more likely to commit rather than paying for one off weekly sessions.

It’s also a good idea to reduce the number of options customers may have. Instead of having a lot of different prices, having packages is less likely to put clients off if they feel overwhelmed.

By choosing to process payments through Uscreen, this also provides a hassle free service with a range of different options:

As Uscreen has the option for paying through PayPal, this allows users to feel safe as their bank details are never revealed during a payment or transfer.

It’s also free to set up a PayPal account, ideal for beginners or those with minimal funds setting up their livestream business.

Step 6: Source Your Clients For Your Fitness Livestream

Now you’ve figured out where your classes will be held and what platform you’ll use, it’s time to find out how to source customers when live streaming fitness classes. 

In this section, we’ll break down some fitness marketing tips to help you develop your brand and market yourself.

#1 - Ask Existing Class Goers To Attend Live Stream Fitness Classes

Depending on the kind of fitness work you’ve done, it’s likely you may have taught some in-person classes. If you’re currently employed by a gym, this is ideal for sourcing clients for your live stream classes right off the gym floor.

This can even be something as simple as a short statement at the end of an in-person class to let people know you have services to offer outside of the gym.

However, if you’re solely an online personal trainer or fitness instructor, you may choose to contact previous clients or class members to attend your classes.

This can be done through:

• Emails
• Bulletins or newsletters
• Social media messages

This should only be done for previous clients who have consented to emails or messages by signing up for them. The last thing you should do is inundate clients with emails they may regard as spam.

The best way to source clients for classes is by actually speaking to them in person, preferably if they already attend classes you hold in a gym or studio. 

This is where you can use your skills from rapport building as a personal trainer or fitness instructor to promote your services by communicating with people who already know you on some level.

#2 - Use Social Media Channels To Source Clients For Live Stream Exercise Classes

If your goal is to live stream fitness classes, it’s a good idea to make your presence known on social media such as Instagram and build a platform there.

Some features of Instagram you can utilise for your business include:

• Bio links
• Business account settings
• Pinned posts

Each of these features offer a significant boost in how you engage with your customers, and helps you decide the kind of content you want to produce, and how you want that content to reflect on what you offer.

For this, you could take inspiration from some of the best fitness instagram accounts and see the kind of content they post to optimise their accounts.

Let’s take a look at the account of @livestreamingfitness, where you can see how they engage users through their post captions. This user is both sharing her own story while also promoting her live streaming services:

By posting regularly and promoting your livestreams through posts, it's much more likely people will be attracted to checking out what you can offer them.

Another great idea for content is to post success stories and transformations. Using visual posts is much more effective for attracting clients and adding credibility to your live stream classes than written reviews.

As you can see from the Instagram page of Nick Screeton from LEPFitness, he posts incredible transformations as evidence of his success at helping people reach their goals:

Some other simple social media ideas may include:

• Educational or instructional videos about performing various exercises
• Quick Instagram reels recorded during your online classes
• TikTok videos to convey your character and personality

One of the biggest tips for live streaming fitness classes is to build an online presence outside of your videos and utilise it by providing engaging content to get more reach in the fitness community.

#3 - Utilise Paid Advertisements To Promote Live Stream Exercise Classes

Another way to promote your live stream classes is through paid advertisements with platforms such as Google Ads. 

Even with great search engine optimization (SEO), it can take a long time for a website or business page to rank on the first page of Google as it's highly competitive.

Google AdWords is an advertising service that allows businesses to display ads either at the top or bottom of Google’s search results pages.

This works on a pay-per-click (PPC) model, meaning businesses only pay when action has been taken by users clicking on the ad.

This is a great way to target people who are specifically looking for live stream fitness classes. For example, if someone searches this on Google, they will find a series of ads tailored to this search:

This makes it easier for people to find your live stream exercise classes and the more your business grows, the more you can pay for your ads to appear higher up on the results page.

Another service to utilise is Facebook Ads. This works differently to Google Ads as they don’t necessarily appear based on searches but will show up in the sidebar or news feed of Facebook users.

However, a great feature is how they can be specifically targeted to match up with the profiles of your ideal demographic. 

Users can be directly targeted by:

• Age
• Location 
• Gender 
• Interests

For example, check out this Facebook Ad below to see how effective tailoring ads can be:

By targeting specific groups with offers or deals (such as free sessions for 2 weeks) means you're attracting people who are more likely to be interested in attending your live stream classes.

These ads work similarly to Google Ads as you can either be charged in cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-mile (CPM) where you’re charged for every 1000 views of your ad.

#4 - Run A Bring-A-Friend Scheme For Your Live Stream Fitness Classes

As this is a great way to get clients as a personal trainer, you should also use this strategy to source more clients for your live stream exercise classes.

Nielsen, a global provider of insights surrounding consumers, found that 92% of consumers in their survey trust word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family more than they’d trust advertisements. 

Bring-A-Friend or Refer-A-Friend is a way to encourage current class members to invite their friends or family to attend their classes. This is an effective marketing strategy as you’re utilising trusted relationships you’ve already built with current customers.

It’s also great for providing the reader with a really good lead and customer data you can use for marketing purposes to see what customers respond to the best.

Some incentives you may offer customers to take part in your bring-a-friend scheme are:

• Membership discounts
• A free class
• Discounted or free PT session outside of class

This might look something as simple as this:

At Forever Fitness, we’re all about building a community. Bring a friend to our next HIIT class and get your class for free!

You should also decide on how you want to give these rewards out, will it be:

• For every new person a customer brings
• After every 3 new customers
• For recommending 5 new customers

By offering these rewards in bulk, it reduces the risk of you losing money if the scheme becomes popular and you’re constantly giving customers discounts or free sessions.

However, you should keep in mind to have a successful bring-a-friend scheme, you must already have a base of customers who enjoy your service enough to recommend friends and relatives.

Step 7: Top Tips For Delivering Effective Livestream Fitness Classes

To successfully live stream your exercise classes, there’s a few final things you need to do to ensure customers get the most out of these classes!

#1 - Check Your Equipment & Software Work Before Each Livestreamed Class

As mentioned earlier in the article, you should always test your equipment before each session to ensure everything is working correctly. You should give yourself enough time to check gym machines and your WiFi is set up. 

Unless there are any major problems, half an hour before a session starts should be plenty of time to fix or resolve issues. 

Test out the equipment you’re going to be using and have the live streaming platform ready at least 5 to 10 minutes before you start.

This will save a lot of stress rather than only checking everything when the class has already started and having to sort it out when customers are ready to begin their workout.

#2 - Let Your Customers Know If You’re Recording Them

While it may not seem like a major issue for you as you’re the one hosting the live stream fitness class, some customers may feel uncomfortable with the session being recorded.

While it’s a great feature to have for customers who may not be able to attend a class on a particular day, always tell attendees if you’re going to record the session for future content. 

Some people may be self conscious or simply don’t want the workout to be recorded, especially if this video may be posted to another site or larger platform.

This means it’s always important to inform everyone if you’re both recording and posting snippets of your classes to social media. While some people may not care, it could be distressing to others.

Customers may have personal or even legal reasons for why they don’t want the session to be filmed. You may choose to inform each attendee before the class privately to avoid them feeling uncomfortable discussing their reasons in front of the class.

#3 - Ensure All Clients Can See & Hear You Clearly

Similar to our first point, you should also check both your microphone and video work. As it’s a live stream, it’s unlikely you will be able to see or hear attendees. 

Check your icons aren’t set to mute,and once the class has started, ask everyone if they can see and hear you.

If your livestreaming platform has the option, ask class members to reply to this in the chat box. Always double check this with members before you start each session, even if you’re certain it’s working.

#4 - Ask For Feedback From Customers After Live Stream Classes

At the end of each fitness live stream, ask members for feedback. This can be about aspects of the class they enjoyed and also what they think needs to be improved.

This allows you to keep members engaged and stops the risk of losing customers who may not be enjoying the class or the type of workouts you’re offering.

Asking for feedback allows you to:

• Adapt and change classes to reflect what customers want
• Tailor workouts to what’s popular
• Influence planning and the equipment you need

You can either encourage feedback by having class members tell you after the session or do it privately through email. It could also be done on social media platforms through direct messages.

Before You Go!

Now you know how to livestream fitness classes, it’s time to put our steps into action and increase your customer base by appealing to a wider audience.

To continue growing your number of members by live streaming exercise classes, check out our range of Level 4 Personal Trainer Courses. 

From qualifications in sports nutrition to obesity and weight management control, we’ve got plenty to help you set your fitness classes apart from the crowd! Download our course prospectus to find out more.