Interview: Marcus on Building a CrossFit Community Through PT Tracker

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We sat down with Marcus Johnson, a CrossFit Level 2 coach who runs Marcus Fitness — an online and in-person coaching business based in Manchester. Marcus has been using PT Tracker’s creator tools to programme for his athletes and grow his community. Here’s our conversation.

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How did you get into CrossFit coaching?

I stumbled into CrossFit about seven years ago. I was playing semi-pro rugby and a mate took me to a box for a drop-in session. I got absolutely destroyed by a twelve-minute AMRAP that looked easy on paper. I was hooked immediately. There’s something about the combination of strength, conditioning, and skill work that appeals to the competitive side of me.

I got my Level 1 within the year and started coaching at the same box. Picked up my Level 2 about two years later. Then COVID happened and I started coaching online out of necessity, which turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to my business. I realised there’s a massive market of people who want CrossFit-style programming but don’t live near a box or can’t afford the membership.

What made you join PT Tracker as a creator?

I’d been using spreadsheets and PDFs to send programming to my online athletes, which was a nightmare. Every week I’d spend hours formatting Google Sheets, sending them out, then getting messages like “what weight should I use for the power cleans?” It wasn’t scalable at all.

A coach I know mentioned PT Tracker had launched a creator marketplace where you could publish programmes and your athletes could follow them in the app with built-in tracking. I signed up the same day. The difference was night and day — I write the programming once, publish it, and my athletes get it delivered to their phones with exercise demos, scaling options, and tracking built in. It cut my admin time by about 70%.

How do you programme for your athletes?

I run three main tracks. There’s a general fitness track for people who just want to get fitter and have fun — that’s three to four days a week with a mix of strength and conditioning. Then there’s a competitive track for people training for local competitions — that’s five to six days with more skill work and heavier loading. And I’ve recently launched a masters track for the over-40 crowd, which is lower volume but still challenging.

Each track follows a macro cycle — usually eight to twelve weeks with specific strength and skill focuses. For example, right now the competitive track is in a strength cycle focused on Olympic lifting, so there’s a lot of snatch and clean and jerk work with metcons that complement those movements.

The PT Tracker creator tools let me programme all of this with the AMRAP, EMOM, and For Time workout types, which was a big deal. Most apps only handle traditional sets and reps, but CrossFit doesn’t work like that. Being able to set up a twelve-minute AMRAP with three movements and have athletes log their rounds and reps — that’s essential.

What features do you use most?

The workout timer is massive for my athletes. CrossFit is all about intensity, and having the timer built into the workout screen means they’re not faffing about with a separate stopwatch app. The AMRAP countdown, the EMOM interval alerts — those are game-changers.

I also love the progress tracking across cycles. My athletes can see their Fran time from three months ago versus today, or compare their front squat max from the start of a cycle to the end. That data drives motivation like nothing else.

The scaling suggestions are brilliant too. Not everyone can do muscle-ups or handstand push-ups, and the app suggests appropriate scaling based on the athlete’s level. I set up the scaling options when I write the programme, and the athlete picks the one that matches their ability.

What’s your advice for aspiring coaches?

Start coaching in person first. You need to understand movement, you need to see people move badly before you can fix it, and you need the reps of cueing and correcting. Online coaching is great but it’s not where you learn the craft.

Once you’ve got a solid base of in-person experience, go online but keep it personal. My athletes know me. I respond to messages, I watch their logged videos, I adjust their programming when something isn’t working. Don’t just publish a generic programme and disappear — that’s a product, not coaching.

And charge what you’re worth. I see coaches underpricing themselves massively because they’re afraid people won’t pay. If you’re good at what you do and you deliver results, people will pay for it. My competitive track is not cheap, but my retention rate is over 85% because the athletes get results.

How has the creator marketplace helped your business?

It’s been transformative, honestly. Before PT Tracker, I had about 30 online athletes and it was already feeling unmanageable with the spreadsheet approach. Now I’ve got over 120 across the three tracks, and the admin is actually easier than it was with 30.

The marketplace also brings in athletes I’d never have found otherwise. People searching for CrossFit programming on PT Tracker find my programmes, see the reviews from existing athletes, and sign up. I’d say about 40% of my new athletes come through the marketplace discovery rather than my own marketing.

The revenue split is fair, and I get paid on time every month. It’s let me go full-time with coaching, which was always the dream. I left my day job about eight months ago and I haven’t looked back.

What’s your favourite thing about the platform?

The community features. My athletes can post their scores, share videos, and encourage each other within the programme. It creates the box atmosphere even for people training in their garage or a commercial gym. That social element is what keeps people coming back — not just the programming, but the feeling of being part of something.

I run a monthly challenge through the app where athletes compete on a specific workout, and the engagement is incredible. Last month’s challenge had a 92% participation rate. Try getting that kind of engagement with a PDF programme.

What would you like to see next?

More sophisticated leaderboard options would be great — filtering by age, gender, RX versus scaled. And I’d love to see live class streaming integrated so I could run real-time sessions with remote athletes. But honestly, the platform is already miles ahead of anything else I’ve used for CrossFit programming. The team clearly understands what functional fitness coaches need, and that shows in the product.