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Onboarding a New Coaching Client
The hardest part of moving a client onto a new platform is not the sign up. It is everything they already have: two years of logged training, a program mid-cycle, and a set of numbers their percentages are built on. Handled badly, the first week feels like starting from zero. Handled well, they open the app on day one and their history is already there.
Step one: the invite link
Adding an athlete is a single link. You copy your personal invite link from Manage Roster, send it, and they land on your roster the moment they sign up. There are no email lookups, no pending requests to approve, and nothing for them to configure. Athletes train free under your subscription, so nobody is asked to pay before they have seen a single session.
That gets them in the door. The next two steps are what make it feel like a move rather than a restart.
Step two: bring their history across
An athlete with no history is an athlete with empty charts, and empty charts make a new platform feel worse than the spreadsheet they left. Their past training is also what makes your analytics useful immediately: load trends, relative intensity, muscle volume and body map all need something to read.
Import it for them
From Manage Roster, tap Import client history. You upload a spreadsheet and it writes their training into their account. One file can cover your entire roster: add an Athlete column naming each client by email or name, and every row is filed to the right person. If you are onboarding one client, pick them from the dropdown and skip the column entirely.
Nothing is written until you have seen it. The preview shows how many rows are valid, which ones are not and why, and which athletes the file covers, so a mis-typed exercise name or a client who is not on your roster is caught before it lands rather than after.
Or have them do it
Often the athlete is the better person for the job, because they are the one with the old logs. The same Manage Roster card copies a set of plain instructions you can paste straight into a message to them. There is one practical reason to prefer this route: personal records are calculated on the athlete's own device, so a client who imports their own history gets their PR list filled in automatically. When you import for them, their charts and analytics populate immediately, but their PR page fills in the first time they open the app and run the history scan.
Let AI do the conversion
Most incoming logs are not in anyone's template. They are a spreadsheet with the client's own column names, a notes app, or an export from whatever they used before. Paste it into the import screen as it is and tap Convert with AI: Ægir Iron maps their exercise wording onto its own names and lays the rows out correctly, without leaving the app. The converted rows come back in the same box for you to check, and anything it could not confidently match is flagged so you fix a few specific lines instead of re-reading the whole file.
This costs nothing and is not part of the paid assistant add-on. If you would rather work in your own AI tool, a button copies the same instructions, exercise list included, to paste wherever you already work.
Step three: put their first block in place
A new client should have training waiting for them, not an empty program tab. You have four routes, and which one fits depends on how bespoke the client is.
- A pre-built program. 5/3/1, nSuns 531 LP, Power Matrix and Classic 5x5 are built in and can be pushed to several athletes at once.
- The program wizard. Answer a few questions about sport, experience and days per week, and it generates a full cycle. It reads the athlete's own maxes when deciding whether to write percentages or RPE.
- Build it yourself. Cycle, block, week and day structure with per-set prescription, then copy a week or a block across.
- Upload a program you already have. If your programming lives outside the app, it can be imported as a template.
One detail matters more than it sounds: percentage-based programming needs the athlete's training maxes, or it loads with blank weights and the client's first session looks broken. When you push a percentage program to multiple athletes, you can optionally set each athlete's starting maxes in the same step, seeded with an estimate where one can be derived. The grid then prices real weights the moment they open it.
Step four: make it your app, not ours
Your clients should see your business, not our logo. In Settings you set a company name, upload a logo and write a short bio, once, and every athlete you add inherits it automatically with nothing to configure on their side.
That branding follows the work everywhere it goes:
- The app header, for you and for every athlete on your roster, on web and on iPhone.
- Program print sheets, so the page an athlete carries to the gym floor is yours.
- Meet plan print and export sheets, including attempt cards on meet day.
- Share cards, the image an athlete posts after a PR. This is the one your future clients actually see.
- Block report images, the end-of-block summary of PRs and strength progression.
- Body map images exported from training health.
- The Help and About page, with your bio.
- The Ægir Assistant Coach greeting, for athletes using it.
Spreadsheet exports are deliberately unbranded, since they are data files rather than something a client looks at.
Optional: an assistant that reads their results
Once a client's history is in, Ægir Assistant Coach can read their actual logged results and analytics and answer questions grounded in them, help draft a first block, and record changes through a confirm-before-it-saves gate. It is a $4.99 per month add-on, off by default, and entirely optional. It is worth knowing about at onboarding specifically because a freshly imported history is exactly the input it works best from.
A realistic first week
Send the invite link. Import their history, or send them the instructions and let them do it. Push or build their first block, seeding maxes if the program runs on percentages. Confirm your branding is set once, and it applies to every client after this one. From there the normal coaching loop takes over: they log, you review the actual work against the plan, and their load and recovery show up on your roster view.