When you explore a franchise, you see a lot of numbers, contracts and brand promises.
Those matter. But they do not answer the question that coaches and future owners care about most:
“What will my actual week look like if I do this”
In this article, we combine two questions:
What does a real week look like for an Outdoor Fitness owner-coach
Can you realistically start part-time while keeping your current job
Outdoor Fitness is built on 25 years of outdoor training experience with Cardio Plein Air in Quebec, 53 franchises and tens of thousands of participants every year. What follows is based on how our best franchisees structure their time, not on theory.
Who this is for
This article is for you if:
You are a certified coach or trainer
You care about nature, community and long term health
You want more control over your schedule and income
You are not ready to jump blind into full-time entrepreneurship
You want a clear picture before you decide. That is what you get here.
Part-time launch: keep your job, build your base
One of the strongest advantages of the Outdoor Fitness model is that you can start light.
You can launch with 2 to 3 classes per week while keeping your current job, as long as you can protect a few key time blocks in your week.
Here is an example of a part-time week with 3 classes.
Sample schedule – part-time owner-coach
Monday
19:00 – 20:00: Evening class in the park
20:00 – 20:30: Quick post-class follow up and notes
Wednesday
30 to 45 minutes at lunch: answer messages, confirm bookings, social media post
19:00 – 20:00: Evening class
20:00 – 20:30: Follow up and notes
Saturday
09:00 – 10:00: Morning class
10:00 – 10:30: Post-class conversations, referrals, community building
Sunday
60 to 90 minutes: planning the week, scheduling posts and emails, checking KPIs in the CRM
This is a realistic range if you keep a standard day job and run your classes in evenings and weekends.
On a typical part-time week you can expect:
3 to 4 hours of live classes
2 to 4 hours of marketing, follow up and admin
So roughly 5 to 8 hours per week to start, with the option to add more classes as your client base grows.
You are not building everything from scratch:
You use the central booking and payment platform
You use prebuilt funnels, email templates and ad creatives
You plug into an existing outdoor training method and program library
Your job is to show up, coach, follow the playbook and build local relationships.
Full-time scenario: when you decide to scale up
At some point, some owners choose to move from part-time to full-time.
In a full-time scenario, your week changes in three main ways:
You add more classes at key times (early mornings, more evenings, more weekends)
You invest more hours into local partnerships and corporate deals
You start to delegate some coaching to other trainers you hire
Sample schedule – full-time owner-coach
4 to 8 classes per week, spread across mornings, evenings and weekends
1 to 2 half-days per week focused on partnerships and local visibility
Meeting local businesses
Visiting clinics, gyms, community groups
Organizing special events or challenges
1 half-day per week on systems and management
Reviewing KPIs and financials
Planning campaigns with head office support
Training and coaching your team
The total weekly volume can reach 25 to 35 hours, combining:
Coaching
Leadership and team management
Marketing and partnerships
You move from “side hustle” to “local outdoor fitness leader”.
How Outdoor Fitness reduces non-coaching workload
Owning a business does not mean you must enjoy accounting, website updates or building ad campaigns from zero.
Outdoor Fitness is designed to reduce the time you spend on low-value tasks, so you can focus on people and growth.
You get:
A central booking and payment system, managed at head office
A branded website and online presence for your territory
Prebuilt launch and seasonal campaigns
Social media and email templates you can adapt instead of writing from scratch
A 60 to 90 day launch playbook with step by step actions
Ongoing coaching to help you read your numbers and adjust
You still have to execute and be consistent. But you are not alone, and you are not reinventing processes that have been tested for years.
What does this mean for your lifestyle
Here is the honest summary.
If you start part-time
You can keep your job if you can protect specific time blocks
You can test your market and yourself without burning the bridge behind you
You get used to the systems, the weather protocols and the community side of the work
You will need discipline. Evenings and weekends will be busier for a while. But you are building an asset.
If you later move to full-time
You gain control over your schedule
Your income potential is no longer capped only by your hourly rate as a coach
You have more room to build a small team and a strong local brand
This is not a magic shortcut. It is a path that has worked for many outdoor franchisees when they commit to the model and the work.
Next step: make this week your own
Reading a sample week is helpful. The next step is to see what this would look like for you, in your city, with your current constraints.
If you want:
A simple model of a part-time launch based on your schedule
A first look at what a full-time week could be 12 to 18 months later
Clarity on whether this fits your reality or not
Contact us, we will walk through your situation, use our 25 years of outdoor experience, and show you a realistic version of this week for your city.
After that, you can decide with a clear head if Outdoor Fitness is the right move for you.
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