Online coaching glossary
Plain-English definitions for the words that come up when you run an online coaching business: the software terms, the growth and content terms, the numbers you should actually watch, and the training and nutrition language you use with clients every day. No jargon for the sake of jargon. Just clear answers, grouped so you can find what you need fast.
By Markus Evers · Updated June 2026
the short version
An online coaching glossary is a single reference page that defines the core terms of the trade: the platform and software words, the growth and content words, the business metrics, the training terms, and the nutrition terms. We grouped ours into clear sets so you can scan to the part you care about, and many entries link to a full guide where you can see the idea in practice.
Five groups, one page.
We kept this simple. Most of the language around online coaching falls into a handful of buckets: the software you run on, how you grow, the numbers worth watching, and the training and nutrition terms you use with clients every day. Almost every problem you hit lives in one of them, so that is how we split it.
Platform and software
The tools you deliver coaching through: the app your clients log into, the inbox you reply from, the forms you collect check-ins with, and how all of it is priced.
Jump to these terms →Growth and content
How people find you and decide to work with you: the niche you pick, the content you make, the hooks that stop the scroll, and the proof that closes.
Jump to these terms →Metrics
The numbers that tell you whether the business is healthy: recurring revenue, churn, retention, lifetime value, acquisition cost, and how many clients you can hold.
Jump to these terms →Coaching and business model
The shape of the business itself: the offer you sell, the niche you own, how you onboard and keep clients accountable, and where your scope of practice ends.
Jump to these terms →Training
The language of the workouts you write: progressive overload, RPE and reps in reserve, supersets, tempo, deloads, periodization, and the rest.
Jump to these terms →Nutrition
The words behind every meal plan: macros and micronutrients, TDEE and maintenance calories, deficits and surpluses, protein targets, reverse diets and refeeds.
Jump to these terms →Platform and software
The tools you deliver coaching through: the app your clients log into, the inbox you reply from, the forms you collect check-ins with, and how all of it is priced.
Jump to these terms →Growth and content
How people find you and decide to work with you: the niche you pick, the content you make, the hooks that stop the scroll, and the proof that closes.
Jump to these terms →Metrics
The handful of numbers that tell you whether the business is healthy: recurring revenue, churn, retention, lifetime value, and how many clients you can actually hold.
Jump to these terms →The tools you deliver through.
These are the words you will run into the moment you start comparing software and setting up how clients experience your coaching.
Online coaching platform
The software you run your coaching business on, where you build programs, send check-in forms, message clients, and give them an app to log into. It replaces the patchwork of spreadsheets, chat apps, and PDFs most coaches start with.
See in practiceCheck-in form
A structured form your client fills in on a set rhythm, usually weekly, with their weight, photos, training, sleep, and how the week actually felt. It is how you stay close to someone you never see in person and spot problems before they quit.
See in practicePower Panel / unified inbox
One screen that pulls every client conversation, check-in, and to-do into a single view, so you are not jumping between five apps to coach ten people. In Coachway this is the Power Panel: you sit down once a day, work the list, and you are done.
Branded client app
The mobile app your clients use day to day for their program, meal plan, messages, and progress, carrying your name and look rather than feeling like generic software. It makes a one-person coaching business feel like a real, finished product.
See in practiceWhite-label app
A client app that carries your brand instead of the software company's: your logo, your colours, and your name on the app the client uses. White-label just means the platform runs underneath while your name is the one the client sees.
See in practicePer-client pricing
A pricing model where you pay for the software based on how many active clients you coach, on a flat per-client model rather than a percentage of what you charge them. Coachway is EUR 69 a month up to 5 clients, then EUR 9 per additional active client: predictable per-client pricing, never a percentage of your coaching revenue. You keep your own Stripe.
See the pricingAutomations
Rules that handle repetitive steps for you: a welcome sequence when someone signs up, a nudge when a check-in is overdue, a reminder before a renewal. They protect the parts of coaching that are easy to forget when you get busy, especially onboarding.
See in practiceAsync coaching
Coaching that happens without you and the client being online at the same time, through messages, voice memos, and check-ins answered when each of you has a moment. It is what lets one coach support clients across time zones without living on a calendar of live calls.
How people find you and decide.
This is the language of getting attention and turning it into clients. Most of it lives on Instagram, and most of it comes down to one idea from our masterclass: you cannot monetize an audience you do not have.
Niche
The specific group of people you choose to coach and be known for: busy men over 40, mothers in menopause, career people short on time. As we say in the masterclass, if you try to stand for everyone, you are not going to stand for anything.
See in practiceIdeal client
A clear picture of the one person you most want to help: their pain, their dream outcome, where they are stuck. When your content speaks straight to that person, the right people follow and the wrong ones scroll past. They pick you, not the other way around.
See in practiceContent funnel / content onion
The path from stranger to client across five layers: eyeballs, relation, social proof, sales, and delivery. The top brings reach, the middle builds trust, the bottom converts, and delivery feeds referrals. Nail the first four but coach poorly and the whole thing stalls.
See in practiceHook
The first second or two of a reel: the line or visual that stops someone mid-scroll. A good hook stimulates the ears and the eyes at once, not just a talking head on a chair. In our experience, below around 5,000 followers, testing hooks at volume is most of the work.
See in practiceLead magnet / freebie
Something useful you give away in exchange for a comment or a follow: an ebook, a guide, a starter plan. Coachway coach Sandra Rosenkrantz uses a snacking-focused free ebook as her lead magnet, with a pinned comment-for-the-free-ebook post, and a single well-targeted freebie like that can pull a flood of comments in a day.
Before-and-after
A side-by-side showing a client's transformation, the single most persuasive piece of proof in fitness coaching. In our experience, coaches who are willing to share them tend to convert far more easily than those who never do.
Story selling
Selling through your Instagram stories instead of hard pitches in posts. In our experience, a meaningful share of clients come from stories. The shift that works is calm and serious: less look-at-this-amazing-client, more quietly handling the doubts people actually have.
Objection handling
Answering the reasons people hesitate, like it is June so it is a bad time to start, or my partner will not get it, before they ever say them out loud. Write down every objection from your sales calls and pre-handle them on stories. Handling objections before they are voiced tends to bring you warmer, more qualified leads.
Sandra's whole funnel shows how these terms work together. Her bio is shaped to one promise: she helps mothers and women through menopause, she is a personal trainer, and she coaches around binge-eating and habits, with a clear call to action. Her lead-magnet carousel opens on a before-and-after, then slide two shows what she actually eats to pre-empt the she-starved-herself objection, slide three tracks progress over time, then client messages as social proof, then a CTA. You can read the full breakdown in the Sandra Rosenkrantz case study, or the deeper playbook in our guide to growing an Instagram following as an online fitness coach.
The numbers worth watching.
You do not need a dashboard with forty charts. A coaching business really only grows three ways: more clients, a higher price, or clients who stay longer, and these few numbers tell you which lever to pull.
MRR (monthly recurring revenue)
The predictable income you bring in each month from active clients. If you coach ten people at EUR 200 a month, your MRR is EUR 2,000. It is the number that tells you whether the business is actually a business or just a string of one-off sales.
Churn
The rate at which clients leave. High churn is the quiet killer of online coaching: you sign two clients a month, two leave, and the business never really grows. Lowering churn is usually cheaper than finding new clients, and it starts with onboarding.
Client retention
How long clients stay with you, the flip side of churn. Take a simplified, hypothetical example: a coach who signs about 2 clients a month whose clients stay around 5 months with no referrals tends to stall near 10 clients. A coach whose clients stay around 8 months and who earns roughly a third of new clients through referrals can grow past 24, on the same acquisition effort. It is an illustration of how retention compounds, not a guarantee or a benchmark. Retention is where the money is.
See in practiceLTV (lifetime value)
The total a client is worth to you across their whole time with you: monthly price multiplied by how many months they stay. You raise it two honest ways: be exceptional so people stay, or sell longer packages, like a 6-month plan at EUR 200 a month.
See in practiceClient capacity
The number of clients you can coach well at once before quality drops. It depends on your delivery style and your tools: a unified inbox and check-in forms push the ceiling higher. Knowing your real capacity tells you when to raise prices or hire help.
See in practiceOnboarding
Everything in a client's first days with you: the welcome, the plan, the first win. It is the single most worthwhile thing to get right, and the first week matters most. A small early win, like having them grocery shop and send a photo back, sets the whole package up to last.
See in practiceReferral rate
The share of new clients who come from existing clients recommending you. In our experience, somewhere around 20 to 30 percent is healthy; if it is consistently down in the 5 to 10 percent range, that often points to something in delivery being off. Referrals are the cheapest clients you will ever get: one turns into two, into four, into eight.
CAC (customer acquisition cost)
What it costs you, on average, to land one new client: total spend on ads, content, and tools divided by the number of clients that spend brought in. If you put EUR 300 into ads in a month and sign three clients, your CAC is EUR 100. It only makes sense next to lifetime value, because a high CAC is fine if clients stay long enough to pay it back several times over.
ARPU (average revenue per user)
Your total monthly coaching revenue divided by the number of active clients, telling you what the average client pays. If five clients bring in EUR 1,000 a month, your ARPU is EUR 200. Raising it through better packaging or higher prices grows the business without adding a single new client.
See in practiceShow-up rate
The share of booked sales or discovery calls where the person actually turns up. A low show-up rate quietly wastes your week, and it usually improves with reminders, a short pre-call message, and booking calls close to when the person reached out rather than days later.
See in practiceCheck-in completion rate
The share of clients who actually submit their check-in each cycle, usually weekly. It is an early warning signal: when someone stops checking in, they are often on their way to quitting, so a falling completion rate is worth acting on before it turns into churn.
See in practiceAdherence
How closely a client follows the plan you set, from training sessions hit to calories and protein logged. Adherence, not the cleverness of the program, is what drives results in online coaching, which is why coaches design plans a client can realistically stick to rather than the theoretically optimal one.
See in practiceRefund rate
The share of clients who ask for their money back, usually early in the relationship. A spike in refunds points to a mismatch between what was sold and what was delivered, or a weak first week, and it is best fixed by setting clear expectations on the sales call and nailing onboarding.
See in practiceThe shape of the business.
These are the words for the offer you sell and how you run the relationship: how clients find you, how you bring them on board, what keeps them accountable, and where your responsibility as a coach ends.
Weekly check-in
The set rhythm, usually once a week, where a client reports weight, photos, training, and how the week went, and you review it and adjust the plan. It is the heartbeat of online coaching: the regular touchpoint that keeps people accountable and on track between sessions.
See in practiceClient onboarding
The structured first few days of a new client's journey: the welcome, gathering their details, setting up their plan, and delivering an early win. Strong onboarding is the highest-leverage thing a coach can fix, because the first week shapes whether the client stays for months or quits early.
See in practiceLead magnet
Something genuinely useful you give away free, such as an ebook, recipe pack, or starter program, in exchange for a comment, follow, or email. It turns passive followers into identifiable leads you can actually talk to, and a single well-targeted freebie can pull a flood of responses in a day.
See in practiceDrip campaign
A pre-set sequence of messages, videos, or resources released to a client on a schedule rather than all at once. Coaches use drips to onboard new clients and deliver content over time without sending everything by hand; well-built drips skip a message if it would clash with a live conversation.
See in practiceDiscovery call
A short, no-pressure conversation with a potential client to understand their situation and decide together whether coaching is the right fit. It works best as a genuine consultation, not a hard pitch: you ask more than you tell, and you are willing to say it is not a fit.
See in practiceCoaching niche
The specific group of people and problem you choose to focus on, such as busy parents losing fat or runners building strength. A clear niche makes your content sharper, your marketing easier, and referrals more likely, because people know exactly who to send your way.
See in practiceCoaching offer
The packaged promise you sell: who it is for, what outcome it delivers, what is included, how long it runs, and the price. A strong, specific offer, a clear result for a clear person in a clear timeframe, converts far better than a vague promise to help anyone get fitter.
See in practiceGroup coaching
Coaching several clients together in a shared program or community rather than purely one to one. It lets you serve more people at a lower price per client and adds peer accountability, while the individual attention per client is naturally lighter than in private coaching.
See in practiceHybrid coaching
A model that blends personalised one-to-one coaching with group or self-guided elements, such as a custom plan plus a shared community and live calls. It aims to keep much of the personal touch while raising the number of clients a single coach can support.
See in practiceAccountability
The structure that keeps a client doing the work between sessions: regular check-ins, clear targets, and a coach who notices and follows up when they slip. For most clients accountability, not information, is what they are really paying for, because they already know roughly what to do.
Scope of practice
The boundary of what a coach is qualified and allowed to advise on. A fitness coach can guide training, general nutrition, and habits, but clinical issues such as diagnosing conditions, prescribing for medical diets, or treating eating disorders belong with a doctor or registered dietitian. Staying in scope protects both the client and the coach.
The language of the workouts you write.
When you build a program you are speaking a specific language. Coachway's workout builder supports these directly, so the terms below are not just theory, they are the controls you set per exercise and per set.
Progressive overload
Gradually increasing the demand on the body over time, by adding weight, reps, sets, or improving technique, so the muscles keep being challenged enough to adapt. It is the single most important principle in strength and muscle training; without it, progress stalls.
See in practiceRPE (rate of perceived exertion)
A 1 to 10 scale for how hard a set felt, where 10 means no reps left in the tank and 8 means you could have done about two more. It lets you prescribe effort rather than a fixed weight, so training auto-adjusts to how strong the client feels that day.
See in practiceRIR (reps in reserve)
The number of reps you could still have done at the end of a set before failing. RIR 2 means you stopped two reps short of failure. It is the flip side of RPE, RPE 8 is about 2 reps in reserve, and a precise, practical way to control training intensity.
AMRAP
Short for as many reps (or rounds) as possible. As a set, it means doing as many quality reps as you can with a given weight; as a workout format, it means as many rounds as possible of a circuit within a set time. It is used to push effort, measure progress, and add conditioning.
See in practiceEMOM
Every minute on the minute: you start a set number of reps at the top of each minute, then rest for whatever time is left until the next minute begins. It is a simple way to build work capacity and keep training density high without watching a stopwatch between every set.
Superset
Two exercises performed back to back with little or no rest in between. Pairing opposing muscle groups, like a push and a pull, saves time and adds volume; pairing the same muscle increases intensity. It is a common tool for getting more work done in a shorter session.
See in practiceTempo
The speed of each phase of a rep, usually written as four numbers for the lowering, bottom pause, lifting, and top pause, for example 3-1-1-0. Controlling tempo increases time under tension and technique quality, and is a way to make a lift harder without adding weight.
See in practiceDeload
A planned lighter week where you reduce weight, volume, or both to let the body recover and adapt before pushing hard again. Deloads prevent the accumulated fatigue and nagging aches that otherwise stall progress, and are usually programmed every few weeks of hard training.
1RM (one-rep max)
The most weight you can lift for a single rep of an exercise with good form. It is a benchmark of maximal strength, and many programs prescribe working weights as a percentage of 1RM, such as sets at 75 percent, to dial in the right intensity.
Hypertrophy
The growth of muscle size, the goal of most physique and body-composition training. It is driven mainly by training a muscle through a full range of motion with enough volume and effort, close to failure, plus enough protein and recovery to rebuild.
Periodization
Organising training into phases over weeks and months, each with a focus such as building muscle, gaining strength, or peaking, rather than doing the same thing year-round. Structuring training this way manages fatigue and keeps progress coming when a single approach would plateau.
Working set vs warm-up set
A warm-up set is a lighter set that prepares the muscles and joints and grooves technique; a working set is the hard, near-maximal set that actually drives adaptation. Only working sets count toward training volume, so coaches track the two separately.
See in practiceThe words behind every meal plan.
Nutrition coaching runs on a handful of numbers and ideas. Get these right and the meal plan almost writes itself; the Coachway meal planner does the macro and micronutrient maths so you can focus on whether the client will actually eat it.
Macros (macronutrients)
The three nutrients that supply calories: protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Tracking macros, rather than only total calories, lets you make sure a client eats enough protein to hold onto muscle while still hitting their calorie target for fat loss or gain.
See in practiceMicronutrients
The vitamins and minerals the body needs in small amounts, such as iron, vitamin D, and magnesium. They do not provide calories, but a diet low in micronutrients can hurt energy, recovery, and health even when calories and macros are on point.
See in practiceTDEE (total daily energy expenditure)
The total calories a person burns in a day, combining their resting metabolism, daily movement, exercise, and the energy used digesting food. It is the anchor number for nutrition coaching: eat below TDEE to lose fat, above it to gain.
BMR (basal metabolic rate)
The calories the body burns at complete rest just to keep you alive, breathing, circulating blood, and maintaining temperature. BMR is the largest part of total daily energy expenditure and the baseline from which a client's full calorie needs are estimated.
Calorie deficit
Eating fewer calories than you burn in a day, which is the fundamental requirement for fat loss. A moderate deficit paired with enough protein and resistance training lets a client lose fat while holding on to muscle, rather than crashing and rebounding.
Calorie surplus
Eating more calories than you burn, the requirement for gaining weight. A controlled surplus alongside progressive resistance training is how clients build muscle; too large a surplus just adds unnecessary fat alongside it.
Maintenance calories
The number of calories that keeps a person's weight stable, equal to their total daily energy expenditure. Knowing maintenance is the starting point for any plan: subtract from it to lose fat, add to it to gain, and return to it to hold a result.
Protein target
The daily amount of protein a client aims for, often set around 1.6 to 2.2 grams per kilogram of bodyweight for someone training. Hitting the protein target is what preserves muscle in a deficit and builds it in a surplus, which is why coaches treat it as the priority macro.
See in practiceReverse diet
Slowly increasing calories after a fat-loss phase, in small steps, to bring a client back up toward maintenance while limiting fat regain and recovering an under-fed metabolism. It is the bridge that keeps a hard-won result from snapping back the moment the diet ends.
Refeed
A planned day or two of eating at or near maintenance, usually by raising carbohydrates, in the middle of a fat-loss phase. A refeed can ease the physical and mental strain of dieting and support training, without undoing the overall weekly deficit.
Most of these words touch the same panel.
Definitions are tidy on paper. In real life, check-ins, retention, onboarding, and capacity all happen in the same place every day, which is exactly what a coaching platform is for.
Check-ins and the inbox
Check-in forms land in the Power Panel next to every client's history, so you read, reply, and adjust the plan in one pass instead of hunting through chat threads.
Onboarding and retention
Automations protect the first week: the welcome message, the check-in reminders, the early-win nudge, so the part that drives retention does not slip when you are busy signing the next client.
Capacity and cost
A branded app, meal planner, and workout builder let you coach more people without working more hours, and per-client pricing means the cost grows in step with your client list, not ahead of it.
"One turns into two, into four, into eight."
- from the Coachway coaching masterclass, on referrals and retention
Frequently asked questions.
Which metric should I watch first as a new coach?
In our experience, below about 5,000 followers the metrics matter less than the content itself: what counts most at that stage is how consistently you post and how comfortable you get on camera. Metrics like MRR, churn, and LTV matter once you have clients to retain. Watch retention and referral rate first; those two tell you whether your delivery is good enough to compound.
What is the difference between churn and retention?
They are two sides of the same coin. Retention is how long clients stay with you; churn is the rate at which they leave. If clients stick around eight months on average, your retention is good and your churn is low. Take a simplified example: a coach who signs about 2 clients a month whose clients stay around 5 months with no referrals tends to stall near 10 clients, while the same coach whose clients stay around 8 months and who earns roughly a third of new clients through referrals can grow past 24. It is an illustration of how retention compounds, not a guarantee or a benchmark.
What does "white-label" actually mean for my app?
It means the app your clients use carries your brand, not the software company's. The platform runs underneath, but your logo, your colours, and your name are what the client sees and feels. For a one-person coaching business that is a big deal: it makes you look like a finished, professional product rather than someone running clients through generic software.
How is per-client pricing different from a revenue cut?
Per-client pricing charges you a flat amount for the software based on how many active clients you coach. With Coachway, that is EUR 69 a month up to 5 clients, then EUR 9 per additional active client. It is predictable per-client pricing, and it is never a percentage of what you charge your clients. You keep your own Stripe, so raising your prices does not raise your software bill. The full breakdown lives in our guide to what online coaching software costs.
Why does the content funnel include delivery?
Because the funnel does not end at the sale. The fifth layer of the content onion is delivery, the actual coaching, and it feeds the top of the funnel again through referrals and the transformations you get to show off. You can be brilliant at reach, proof, and sales, but if delivery is weak, clients leave, referrals dry up, and growth stalls. Good delivery closes the gap.
keep reading
guide
What an online coaching platform is.
The full walk-through of what the software does and how to pick one that fits how you coach.
guide
How to grow an online coaching business.
The content onion, the funnel, and the three ways a coaching business actually grows.
guide
How to retain online coaching clients.
Why the first week decides everything, and how onboarding turns into referrals.
guide
What online coaching software costs.
A plain breakdown of pricing models, including predictable per-client pricing.
See what Coachway can do for your coaching business
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