How to train small group / semi private clients

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Random circuits look creative, but they usually produce one thing fast: tired clients who are not getting stronger. We break down a clean, repeatable way to design small group training programs using movement patterns and a simple circuit template (CCA) that you can run in almost any environment, from a fully equipped gym like Lifetime or Equinox to a smaller studio with limited stations. If you coach personal training and want better flow, better progressions, and fewer “what do I do next?” moments, this is your playbook.

We talk through how to build full body strength sessions even when clients think they only want glutes, abs, or arms. The secret is pairing core lifts with accessories that do not steal force production from the main pattern. You will hear practical examples for groups of three where everyone shares the same squat, pull, and plank patterns, plus ways to swap variations when you do not have enough racks or pull-up bars. We also cover rotating stations, where the coaching focus goes, and how to keep accessories engaging without turning the workout into a circus.

Then we get honest about a common mistake in small group fitness classes: mixing heavy lifting with early cardio. When conditioning comes first, strength output drops, loads drop, and results slow down. We explain how to place jumps and power work for fast twitch recruitment, when to save cardio for a game or a finisher, and how to make five-person circuits work without compromising performance. Finally, we zoom out to programming systems like progressive overload, simple testing on day one and day 30, and monthly templates that help clients chase PRs and stay bought in.

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Transcript

The CCA Programming Template

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Helping you design a program for small group training. We're gonna look at three people and also five people. The foundation which we teach within the SUF CPT is the CCA. Core movement pattern, core movement pattern, followed by an accessory. Do that for three rounds and you go to the second and third circuit. We're still gonna use that same template. It's just gonna be based on your environment. So for one-on-one, that will be the workout that I would provide for someone who wants to focus more on lower body. Most of our clients want to train a specific area, but we do full body because they're training two to three times per week. Meaning, if you have a honket or a lady, she wants to work on more glutes, you're gonna do a squat pattern followed by an upper body pattern, an accessory, which doesn't take away force production from that main core pattern. Do that for three rounds. And then here we're gonna do a hinge pattern followed by a press. So we do a back and do a chest. Do that for three rounds and do a jump in there. And for this last circuit, we could do another hinge. You could also throw in there unilateral. As I said, it just depends on your environment. We're gonna do push-ups and you'll see why here in a second. You could also throw in a press. So in totality, we're getting a hinge, a squat, a unilateral, a push, a pull, and a press, chest, back, and shoulders. So

Pricing Small Group As A Win Win

SPEAKER_00 1:13

how I would do this for a small group, I've got a lot of trainers who've gotten hired at Lifetime in Equinox. I have three clients I'm gonna start training on because they can't afford the 150, but they can afford 75 per hour. You bunch them together, you're making more, and the clients are paying less. It's a great way to overcome that objection. It's too expensive. Well, what can you afford? I can't afford 150. Well, I could do 75. Awesome. If I get you to 75 three times a week, will you train with me? Yeah, I can do that. Well, then you find two other people, it's a win-win for everyone. So

Three Person Group With One Plan

SPEAKER_00 1:45

here's how I would do this with a small group of three clients. You have three hunkets and want to focus more on lower body. Obviously, you're gonna tailor it for people's inabilities with injuries and so forth. But I would just have everyone do squats, everyone do pulls, and everyone do planks. Now notice how I said pulls. If you don't have a gym with three pull-up bars, you take the pattern and you incorporate a variation that's appropriate for what you're given. So everyone does squats, goblet squats, everyone does bent over rows, and then everyone does planks. We rest, talk about life, love, happiness, have pillow fights, and then we get into the second round. Increase the load for the goblet, challenge them a little more with the pull, and then make the plank a little more engaging. Maybe you have them set up and they're slapping hands, you have a ball, they're throwing around. The accessories where you make it fun and make it entertaining, get involved as the trainer. Down here, I would do a hinge pattern. So I may not be able to set up a hip thrust machine, but I can have them do a loaded bridge, do that for 10 to 12 reps, and then I give them some load and they can do a press on their ground. You could even do a bridge press. And because of this scenario, jumps wouldn't be good to put here. I would want to do some type of isolation because you'll see why here in a second when I get into the other variation. And for here, instead of doing an RDO because we just did it, we're gonna do a step up. Everyone can do push-ups, and then we do like band pull aparts or band walks. That's if everyone's doing the same pattern. If you're

Rotating Stations In A Small Gym

SPEAKER_00 3:14

at Lifetimer Equinox, they literally have three to five racks. You may be able to take that up. So you could do back squats and just adjust the weight accordingly. You're looking at the pattern. And remember with the pattern with the CCA, you don't always have to do squat, always do hinge, always do unilateral. You could do unilateral first, you could do squat here. You vary it based on your clientele and your progressive overload. Now, the option that we do here in Santa Monica, because we have a smaller gym, is you'd have someone do a back squat, someone do a pull-up, and then someone would be doing a plank. So it's a circuit. So back squat here while someone else is doing pull-ups and then they're doing planks. And when she's done, I have a rabbit station as I call it. The station I want to focus more on spotting or helping. So I'm watching the back squatter, and then when she's done, she goes to the pull-ups, pull-ups come to the planks, planks come to the back squat, and I would be adjusting the weight. It can be a little more hectic, especially if there's a huge discrepancy in the force production. Lady A can uh, isn't that a country group? Lady A is doing 135, B can only do 95, so you don't have to take the weights off. It can be a little more problematic, but that's why they're paying you the big bucks. And then

Five Person Circuits Without Chaos

SPEAKER_00 4:26

we have option C down here, which is when you have five people into a circuit. Again, if you're at a lifetime or equinox, super easy because you would just do everyone doing squats. Everyone do the pull, everyone do the planks, rest, overload, do it for three sets. Then you go into and set up the next station, which would be hip thrust. They have all the pads there, similar to what we have with the Breck and Travers one. You set those all up and then grab the dumbbells for everyone, and then you do the jumps or isolation. Here in that circuit example in Santa Monica, you could have someone do hip thrust, do a jump, and then you're doing the incline dumbbell. So the jump is going to potentiate the hip thrust, and that will be fine in that regard. Otherwise, I wouldn't want to have jumps as the accessory in the second circuit because you're compromising force production. You want to be able to get maximal fast twitch recruitment there. So if you have five people, this one gets a little more challenging because I probably want to do a leg into an upper, a leg into an upper into an accessory. So leg choose your pattern if you do a squat here, goblets, upper push-ups, lower lunges, opposite of whatever you choose here, the antagonist. So if I'm pushing, do a pull. So we're gonna do a band pull aparts or pull-ups or bend over rows. And then for this last one, we would do an accessory, which would be isolation.

Why Cardio Early Hurts Strength

SPEAKER_00 5:49

I think it's important here not to compete with the orange theories and all those small group classes because they're gonna throw in cardio. And why I don't like them. Imagine person one, two, three, four, and five, and they're set up in a circuit, um a circuit fashion. When this person is starting out on cardio, they're running. When they come and do the squats next, the force is compromised dramatically due to cardiovascular taxation. So if I can do 135 for 10 on a back squat, if I just ran for a minute, there's no way in hell I'm doing 135 for 10. I have to drop it down to probably 95, and I'm gonna be huffing and puffing, probably gonna pass out. So that's why I don't like to incorporate cardio for this first round. For this first circuit. As I said, because we're doing five, we're gonna do two different circuits. So there's set one. Person A does squat, then she'd go into the push-ups, she'd do the lunges, she do the pull, and then do some bandwalks or planks or abs or whatever. Do this for three rounds after each round. So person A does one and then two and then three and four or five, that's when we would rest. You're gonna have a little rest between the squat and the push-ups at their own regard. And that's one of the challenging things is you have to monitor five people. Have your glucose tablets ready because someone's probably gonna get woozy because the condition states are all not the same. It is more challenging. You can make more money, but it is more challenging. For the second circuit down here, start with the transitional, which would be legs, do some jumps for 10 reps or so. Don't jump for 30 seconds, don't jump like Tinkerbell. It's compromising force production. You can have them get like on a bench and jump up as high as they can, do a little switch jump there, or do a jump as high as you can, rest for a second. I want 10 max because that's fast twitch recruitment. That's why volleyball players and soccer athletes and basketball athletes look amazing, is because they're producing maximal force. They're not jumping like this for 45 seconds, which does shit. That's more of a cardio exercise. You're doing this for maximal force production. So you do a jump into a landmine, let's do an RDL. If you have a land mine, cool. If you don't, you can just grab a kettlebell pretty easy. And then for that other upper one, we've done shoulders. Let's get some more back in there. If you want to do like an Aussie band pull aparts, whatever we're gonna do for the back aspect, and then I would do cardio. And so when I try to make it fun and have a competition, my bunny person would be the cardio, pun intended. So I'm gonna say run back three times, and when she's done, that's when we switch. So when she's done with the cardio, then she's gonna go into the jumps, and then she's gonna go into the landmine. Again, not optimal, but that's what we're going to do for this last circuit. I would prefer to do cardio as like a game, maybe even at the end. Again, if look at your time. I've perfected five within our studio here in Santa Monica. I can have five girls, five guys, and it works perfectly. You have two different circuits, it's exactly an hour. Depending on your clientele and your space, you could do like 25 minutes here, 25 minutes here, and then everyone does cardio together. That would be the most optimal. If you do a bunch of cardio in the beginning, compromising force production. If you're doing a leg into a leg or a leg into an isolation, you're compromising force production. There is strategy behind small group training. And that's

Results Through Force And Better Testing

SPEAKER_00 9:02

my frustration going through school with kinesiology, training trainers. We have the best certification out there, is trainers just choose exercises. Um, I'm gonna do a squat. Oh, I saw this really cool landmine thing here, and I saw a cool ab exercise here, and oh, I saw this really difficult, whatever it is. It's not about crushing your clients and annihilating them. So if you do a proper assessment and you let them know we're not like all your other small group training facilities, we're gonna get your results. Results come from maximal force production. Let me ask you some questions. How many push-ups can you do? How many pull-ups? What's your mild time? Gather that data. When you were training like that out there, it wasn't optimal. And here we're going to optimize it. And I base this off of the movement patterns and optimal force production. And so then you can educate them. So now they have an idea of your systems. I helped design a program system for a company in the Bay Area. They just started a gym and they're trying to figure out how to do small group training for five to ten people. And the way that they were doing it was just random exercises. So I educated them on the CCA, and you can branch this out. That's the beautiful thing about having a template, is you can branch this out to a CCCC. Oh my gosh, how could you do that? Because you do a leg pattern, you do an upper body push pattern, then you can do a muscle that has not been engaged yet. So let's do a pull, because if you push, you do a pull. Now the legs have rest a little bit. So you can go back and do another leg pattern, and then we can finish off on whatever muscle group we missed. If we did chest here, back here, then you do shoulders. So when you understand programming, progressive overload, periodization, you can be strategic about the placement of the exercises, not just throwing the random things out

Monthly Templates PRs And Mentorship

SPEAKER_00 10:52

there. And it gets really fun because you can let your group know that for this month, we're focusing on these five lifts: a squat pattern lift, so goblets, a pull pattern lift, pull-ups, a press pattern, which is split stance press, we're gonna do hip thrusts, and then we're gonna do push-ups. So we're testing on day one, and then we're gonna test on day 30. The next month we have a new template. We're gonna focus on back squatting, maybe we do kettlebell swings, we do overhead pressing with the barbell. You choose the exercises based off the patterns and you focus on moving those numbers, setting PRs. That's how you can make it fun. There's so much opportunity in this. My frustration comes when we just choose random exercises. Don't be that coach. If you want to level up your skills, get some mentorship, get some specializations with certifications, we have our soft tissue, we have our nutrition, and we have our CPT for life. Daily calls, we get access to people to help you become a successful personal trainer. And remember, big biceps are better than small ones that keep showing up.