How to write hooks that stop the scroll.
A hook is the first one to three seconds of your reel, and it decides everything that follows. The rule we teach in the Coachway masterclass is simple: stimulate both the ears and the eyes, go deep on a few repeatable concepts that fit who you really are, and spend most of your content time researching instead of recording. Here is the whole playbook, plus a bank of hook formulas you can steal.
By Markus Evers · Updated June 2026
the short version
A good hook stops the scroll in the first one to three seconds by stimulating both the ears (what you say) and the eyes (what you show) at the same time. Pick two or three concepts that fit your personality, go deep on each, visualise the point instead of just talking about it, and, as we teach in our masterclass, spend roughly 80% of your content time researching. Then write a lot of hooks, because volume is what finds the winners.
What a hook is, and why the opening decides everything.
A hook is the opening moment of a reel - the first frame, the first line, the first thing the eyes and ears land on. People decide whether to keep watching in about one to three seconds. If they keep watching, the algorithm shows your reel to more people. If they swipe, it stops. So the hook is not a nice-to-have. It is the single thing that decides whether the rest of your content ever gets seen.
Here is the part most coaches get wrong. They write a good caption and a useful tip, then they sit on a chair, look at the camera, and say "let's talk about protein." The information might be excellent. Nobody finds out, because the first second gave the viewer no reason to stay. A hook is not the value of the content. It is the reason someone gives your content a chance to deliver value at all.
This article is about that opening moment specifically. It is not about your profile, your niche, or your stories - we cover those in how to structure your Instagram profile and in the wider online fitness coaching guide. Here we stay on hooks, because for a coach below 5,000 followers, the hook is where almost all of the growth is won or lost.
"People have to want to follow you. You cannot force people to follow you."
- from the Coachway coaching masterclass
Stimulate the ears and the eyes at the same time.
This is the one rule that does more work than any other. A reel that travels stimulates two senses at once: the ears, which hear what you say, and the eyes, which see what you show. Most coaches only feed one of them.
A coach sitting on a chair talking about protein is feeding the ears and starving the eyes. The eyes have nothing to do, so they go looking - and the thumb follows. The fix is to give the eyes a reason to stay: movement, a visual, a comparison, food, a demonstration, something happening on screen while you talk. When both senses are busy, the brain stays. When one is idle, it leaves.
You do not need a studio for this. The eyes are easy to feed. Show the thing instead of describing it. Hold up the food. Pour the water. Point at the number. Walk while you talk. The single biggest upgrade most coaches can make is to stop being a talking head and start showing something while they talk.
Ears only - the dead reel.
You, on a chair, explaining a good point to the camera. The words are fine. The eyes have nothing, so attention drifts, and a reel that loses people early rarely gets pushed further. This is the most common reel a coach makes, and the most common reel that flops.
Ears and eyes - the reel that travels.
Same point, but now you are pouring three glasses of water, plating a meal, or holding the food in frame. The eyes follow the action, the ears follow your voice, and the viewer stays long enough for the algorithm to take notice.
Go deep on a few ideas instead of wide on many.
You do not need fifty topics. You need two or three repeatable concepts that fit who you actually are, and you go deeper on each than anyone else bothers to. Depth is what makes people want to follow you, because they sense there is more where that came from.
Pick concepts that match your real personality, not a viral coach you are copying. If you are the nerd who reads every study, your concept is "here is what the research actually says." If your story is a 40kg transformation, your concept lives around that. Trying to be someone you are not leads to burnout and to clients who picked you for the wrong reasons - more on finding your audience in how to attract the right coaching clients and on settling your focus in how to choose a coaching niche.
"It's not how many topics you can cover, it's how deep you go on each."
- from the Coachway coaching masterclass
Going deep is mostly research, not recording. The advice we give in the masterclass is to spend roughly 80% of your content time researching and 20% recording. The hook gets good when you actually know the topic cold - the surprising fact, the thing nobody else is saying, the angle that makes someone stop. You cannot improvise that. You find it before the camera turns on.
Visualise the point - the three-glasses-of-water idea.
A fact spoken out loud is forgettable. The same fact made visible is a hook. This is the visualisation principle, and it is one of the most reliable ways to feed the eyes while you feed the ears.
Say a menopause coach wants to make the point that muscle naturally declines as we age. Instead of just stating it to camera, line up three glasses of water and pour one out for each decade. As you talk, pour some from the first glass for the decade from 30 to 40, then from the second for 40 to 50, then the third for 50 to 60. Now the viewer sees the loss compound in front of them. Same point, completely different reel.
Find the point in research. The 80% of time you spend researching is where you dig up the fact or comparison that is worth visualising. No insight, no visual.
Turn it into an object. Glasses of water, a plate of food, a stack of coins, a tape measure. The point becomes something the eyes can watch change in real time.
Open on the visual, not the explanation. The first frame is the three glasses, not your face. The eyes are hooked before you have said a full sentence.
Food reels, and the two extremes that beat the middle.
If you want one format that works for every type of coach, it is food. Food reels feed the eyes by default, they apply to almost any audience, and people will watch a meal being made even when they would scroll past advice. Rene Macapili built his content around recipes and food this way.
Beyond food, the content that lands sits at one of two extremes. At one end is raw, behind-the-scenes, authentic storytelling - no captions, a real moment, where the viewer becomes part of the story. At the other end is practical visual comparison - this versus that, before and after, the glasses of water, the side-by-side plate. Both work. What does not work is the soft middle: the semi-polished talking-head clip that is neither raw enough to feel real nor practical enough to be useful. That dead middle is exactly where most coaches get stuck.
| The extreme | What it looks like | Why it hooks |
|---|---|---|
| Raw storytelling | No captions, a real moment, you mid-action or mid-thought. The viewer feels they walked in on something. | Authenticity. The eyes and ears get a real human, not a script, and people lean in. |
| Practical comparison | This versus that, before and after, two plates, the glasses of water. A clear visual difference on screen. | Clarity. The eyes get an instant, obvious payoff that the words then explain. |
| The dead middle (avoid) | Semi-polished talking head, decent lighting, a tip read to camera, nothing happening visually. | It doesn't. Not real enough to feel raw, not visual enough to feel practical. The thumb wins. |
See how one coach turned food into a repeatable, high-performing format in the Rene Macapili case study. For the wider funnel - how these reels turn into followers and then clients - read how to grow your Instagram following as an online fitness coach.
Attention-grabs are a metaphor in disguise.
Some of the best hooks open with a physical action that has no business being in a fitness reel - and that is exactly why they stop the scroll. The trick is that the action is not random. It is a metaphor for the point you are about to make.
Throw a wobbling block of jello at the camera, then talk about why crash diets only cost you water and muscle. Smash a carton of eggs at Easter, then explain how people undo a whole week of progress in one weekend. Slather butter on a piece of meat, then make your point about hidden calories. The eyes get an interrupt they did not expect, and the second half of the reel pays it off by turning the stunt into the lesson. Interrupt first, meaning second.
Throw the jello.
A wobbling, splattering object grabs the eyes in frame one. Then: "this is what most of your 'weight loss' actually is - water." The stunt becomes the lesson.
Smash the eggs.
A messy, satisfying interrupt that maps onto a real idea - one weekend can crack a whole week of progress. The mess is the metaphor.
Butter on the meat.
An over-the-top visual that lands a point about hidden calories. The eyes can't look away, and the words give them the reason why.
How one coach turns hooks into a whole funnel.
The hook is the front door, but it only matters if the rest of the path is built to receive the right person. Sandra Rosenkrantz, a personal trainer who works with mothers and women through menopause and coaches around binge-eating and habits, is a clean example of the whole shape working together.
Her reels feed the eyes - food in frame, before-and-after, the visual comparison - and pull in the exact people she can help. Her bio names who she is for and ends with a clear next step, and her lead magnet is a snacking-focused free ebook that fits the binge-eating and habit angle her content already lives in. The follower who came in on a hook self-selects straight into her world.
her carousel, in order
A before-and-after that stops the scroll and proves the outcome is real.
What she actually eats, placed early on purpose to pre-empt the "she must have starved herself" objection before it forms.
Progress over time, so the result reads as sustainable rather than a one-off.
Real client messages, which carry the social proof a stranger needs.
A clear call to action that points the right person to the next step.
The full breakdown of how this comes together is in the Sandra Rosenkrantz case study. The takeaway for hooks: the opening earns the view, but the carousel, bio, and lead magnet behind it decide whether the view turns into the right follower.
A bank of hook formulas, with examples.
When you are stuck on the first line, run your idea through these six shapes. None of them are clever for the sake of it - each gives the viewer a clear reason to stay for one more second. Mix them with a visual and you have a hook.
Curiosity.
Open a loop the viewer needs closed. "The reason you're not losing fat has nothing to do with your training." They stay to find out what it is.
Contrarian.
Say the opposite of common advice, then back it up. "Stop doing cardio to lose weight." It stops the scroll because it pokes at what they thought was true.
If you X, then Y.
Pair a behaviour with a consequence. "If you skip breakfast to save calories, this is probably why you binge at night." Anyone who does X has to keep watching.
Number / listicle.
Promise a finite, scannable payoff. "3 high-protein snacks under 200 calories." The number tells the brain exactly how long this will take, so it commits.
Call out the audience.
Name exactly who the reel is for. "If you're a mom over 40 and the weight won't budge, watch this." The right person feels seen and stops; the wrong person scrolls, which is fine.
Visual-first.
Lead with the action, let the words catch up. Open on the three glasses of water or the food in the pan, and the eyes are hooked before the first sentence finishes.
One thing these formulas deliberately leave out: a call to action. You do not put a CTA in a value or viral reel. Reels that send people off the app to "link in bio" or "DM me" tend not to get the same reach, and a sales line in the first seconds usually kills the very attention you worked to earn. Convert on your profile and in your stories instead - the reel's only job is to get the right person to follow.
Write a lot of hooks - aim at your 100th post.
No one writes a perfect hook on the first try, and you do not need to. You need volume. Try a lot of hooks and concepts, look at what gets the right views, and lean into whatever sticks. The first post does not matter. The pattern across fifty does.
Below 5,000 followers, about half the job is simply getting comfortable on camera and not caring what family and friends think - because honestly, no one cares as much as you fear. In our experience, posting around seven to ten times a week is what gets the reps in. The biggest coaches we work with are closer to 100 posts a month, three to four times a day. And stop optimising the wrong things: timing and hashtags barely move the needle. As we like to say, hashtags are the new creatine - everyone obsesses over them and they are not the thing that matters. The thing that matters is reps.
"Think about what your 100th post will look like, not your 1st."
- from the Coachway coaching masterclass
Hooks win the followers - the platform turns them into clients.
Writing hooks is the front of the funnel. Once the right people follow you, the work shifts to nurturing and delivering - and that is where running everything in one place stops the leaks. Coachway is built so the time you save on admin goes back into making content.
one inbox
One inbox to convert.
The Power Panel keeps DMs, replies, and client messages in a single unified inbox, so the followers your hooks earned do not slip through the cracks between apps.
branded app
A branded app, not a logo.
Your meal planner, workout builder, and check-in forms live in a client app under your name - the depth that makes a follower trust you enough to actually buy.
automations
Automations buy back time.
Automated reminders and follow-up messages mean less time on busywork and more on the 80% research that makes your next hook land. You keep your own Stripe, with predictable per-client pricing.
Pricing stays predictable at every tier: EUR 69 per month for up to 5 clients, then EUR 9 per additional client. Coaches keep their own Stripe so payments flow directly to them. See the full breakdown on the pricing page, or read how the funnel fits together in how to get online coaching clients.
Frequently asked questions about writing hooks.
How long should a hook actually be?
The hook is roughly the first one to three seconds - the first frame and the first line. That is the window where a viewer decides to stay or scroll. You do not need the whole opening sentence finished; you need the eyes and ears given a reason to stay before that window closes. If the first three seconds are just you settling into a chair, the hook is already gone.
Why do my reels flop even when the advice is good?
Almost always because the reel only feeds the ears. You are sitting on a chair saying something useful, but the eyes have nothing to do, so people scroll before the advice ever lands. Add a visual to the opening - food, a comparison, a demonstration, the three-glasses-of-water trick - so the eyes and ears are both busy. The information was never the problem. The opening was.
How many different topics should I post about?
Two or three repeatable concepts is plenty - the goal is depth, not breadth. It is not how many topics you can cover, it is how deep you go on each. Pick concepts that fit your real personality, and go further on them than anyone else does. That depth is what makes people decide to follow you, because they sense there is more good content where that came from.
Should I put a call to action in my reels?
Not in a value or viral reel. Reels that try to push people off the app tend not to get the same reach, and a sales line in the first seconds usually kills the attention you just earned, whether it is a "DM me" or "link in bio". Let the reel do one job - get the right person to follow you - and do your converting on your profile and in your stories, where nurturing and CTAs belong.
Do I really need fancy editing or stunts to make hooks work?
No. The two things that work are the two extremes: raw, authentic storytelling with no captions, or a clear practical comparison. Both are cheap to make. Throwing jello or smashing eggs is just a fun pattern interrupt, but a plate of food, two side-by-side examples, or three glasses of water does the same job. What does not work is the polished middle - the semi-produced talking head with nothing happening on screen.
How do I get better at hooks when mine aren't landing yet?
Volume and research. Spend about 80% of your content time researching so you have something genuinely worth hooking people on, then post a lot - in our experience, around seven to ten times a week gets the reps in - and try many different hooks. Look at what gets the right views, not just any views, and double down on those. Think about what your 100th post will look like, not your first. The winners reveal themselves once you have enough reps.
Part of the pillar guide
This guide is one chapter of how to grow an online coaching business - the full roadmap from your first clients to a sustainable full roster.
Keep reading
all guidesHow to make a full-time living as an online fitness coach
The honest math behind replacing your salary online: clients x price x retention, the first-10 and first-30 milestones, the model choices, and the time-vs-money trap nobody warns you about.
Read the guideHow to coach clients on GLP-1 medications (Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro)
An evidence-informed guide for online coaches: your real role, preserving muscle, protein, side effects, expectations, and where the medical line is.
Read the guideHow much do online fitness coaches make?
The honest range from beginner to established, the three levers that set your income (price x retention x roster), the per-client math, and a calculator to model your own.
Read the guideSee what Coachway can do for your coaching business
Coachway was built after working with 150+ coaches who all had the same frustrations - slow platforms, clunky workflows, wasted hours. Book a demo and see what we fixed. 15 minutes, and you'll know if it's the right fit.
