Shadow coaching lets a team member, such as a virtual assistant (VA) or a junior coach, help manage another coach's clients without you sharing a login. The shadow coach keeps their own FitMetrics account and their own limited access, and you link them to the coach they are helping. When they message a client or comment on a workout, the client sees it as coming from their real coach.
What shadow coaching is
A way to let a VA or another coach help manage a coach's clients on their behalf.
The shadow coach signs in with their own account and keeps a limited Coach role. There is no shared password.
You link the shadow coach to a primary coach. The shadow coach can then help with that coach's clients.
Why this is better than sharing a password
We recommend never sharing your FitMetrics username and password. Shadow coaching gives you the same coverage in a safer way:
Everyone keeps their own login. No shared passwords to leak or manage.
Only the access you grant. A shadow coach sees only the clients you give them access to. They cannot reach your billing, settings, or team management.
Every action is logged under the real person. FitMetrics records who actually did what, so you always have an accurate history of the shadow coach's activity separate from the primary coach's.
What a shadow coach can do
See the right clients. A shadow coach sees their own clients plus the clients of the coach they are shadowing. If they have no clients of their own, they see only the shadowed coach's clients. They do not see anyone else's clients.
Send messages. They can message the shadowed coach's clients.
Comment and react. They can comment on and react to workouts and nutrition.
Cover more than one coach. A shadow coach can be linked to several coaches at once. Each client is automatically attributed to their own assigned coach, so there is nothing to switch by hand.
To the client, messages and comments appear to come from their primary coach, so the experience stays seamless. Inside FitMetrics, every action is recorded under the shadow coach's real name, so your team can always tell what was done by the shadow coach versus the primary coach. When a shadow coach sends a message or posts a workout or nutrition comment as the coach they cover, your team also sees a small Sent by [name] badge on that message or comment, showing the shadow coach's real name. Hovering over the badge shows who really sent it and which coach it was sent as, for example "Shadow coaching — Jamie Lee sent this as Alex Morgan." This badge is only visible to your team inside FitMetrics. Your clients never see it and continue to see only their primary coach.
What a shadow coach can't do yet
Schedule or move workouts as the primary coach. This is not available yet and is planned for a future update.
How to set it up
Only an owner or admin can set up shadow coaching, and your Trainerize integration needs to be connected so your coaches appear in the list.
Go to Settings, then Team Members.
Make sure the person you want as a shadow coach is already a team member with the Coach role. If they are not, click Add Team Member, enter their details, set their role to Coach, and send the invitation. They accept the invite and create their own login.
On the Members tab, find the team member you want to make a shadow coach.
Open the actions menu on their row and choose Edit Member.
In the Edit Team Member window, find the Shadow coaching section.
Click Add a coach to shadow.
In the Search coaches by name or email box, find and select the coach whose clients this person will help manage. You can add more than one coach here — repeat this step for each coach they should cover.
Click Save Changes.
After you save, the team member's row shows a Coaching as label with the coach's name, so you can see at a glance who each shadow coach is helping. To stop shadow coaching, open Edit Member again, remove the coach from the Shadow coaching section, and save.
Turning shadow coaching on or off yourself
A shadow coach does not have to leave shadow coaching on all the time. When you open a client’s chat — either on the Messages page or in the pop-out message dock — you’ll see a small bar just above where you type:
Toggle on (default): the bar shows “Sending as {coach}” with the coach’s photo, and your message goes out under that coach’s name — exactly what the client expects to see.
Toggle off: the bar shows “Sending as yourself”, and your message goes out under your own name instead.
Your choice is remembered on your account, so it stays the same the next time you log in — on any device.
If you help more than one coach, there is nothing to switch by hand. When you open any client, FitMetrics automatically sends as that client’s own assigned coach — the bar simply shows “Sending as {coach}” for whoever that is. The on/off toggle is the only control.
If your team member does not have their own Trainerize account, shadow coaching stays on for them (there is no personal account to send from), so the toggle is locked on.