Maybe you’re a fitness fanatic or a total health nut. Maybe you want to escape the corporate world and have a job where the dress code doesn't require a suit or slacks. If you already have a love for fitness and live a healthy lifestyle, then now is the time to turn your passion into a career! You may already know personal trainers' work, like creating workout plans, coaching, and motivating clients. But what’s the difference between being an average trainer and being the best in the business?
(Nope, it's not being super fit or a professional athlete.)
Keep reading to see if you have the traits to be an awesome personal trainer!
1. You have a life experience to share
Being passionate about what you do is a sure way to succeed in any field, and personal training is no exception. A great personal trainer wants to get more people to find and enjoy fitness because they know firsthand how positively it can impact someone's life. Maybe you have struggled with healing a serious or minor injury, preventing predisposed family health disorders, or needing and adapting to extreme weight loss. Letting a client know that you have struggled to find fitness or reach a fitness goal is the best way for you to begin building a relationship with them.
It can be difficult for clients to relate to trainers because they see you in the light of all your success. They all want to know what the “secret” is to get amazing results. To successfully coach clients and to help genuinely change their thinking towards fitness, you need to connect with them on a real and personal level. Awesome personal trainers will use their struggles and experiences to create a deeper and more authentic relationship with clients to be seen as credible sources of information and trustworthy, wise, and compassionate people who will help them best reach their goals.
"Tough situations build strong people and stronger relationships."
You are only with a client for a short amount of time a few days a week, so you really need to make that time count! The best way for you to understand their wants, needs, and goals is to listen. A client's first session can be very overwhelming. You need to absorb every ounce of information the client gives you to understand what they want from their training fully and you as a trainer. If you don’t actively listen to them, the first session can be just as overwhelming for you. Only good listeners can take what they hear, reflect on what was said, and successfully build a plan that will help them reach a realistic goal and make them happy.
It’s important to listen when you first discuss the client's wants and goals, but an awesome personal trainer will continue to listen during every session (even if the client isn’t directly saying something.) Maybe you notice they avoid certain movements, maybe they’ve been eyeing a new piece of equipment, or maybe they stop talking less about how much they weigh and talk more about how much they are lifting. If you use these as opportunities to revisit the client's goals or adjust the client’s plan, you will help them better than the average trainer!
"The right people will hear you, even if you’re not speaking."
As a trainer, you understand how the body moves and why. You will continuously learn more and expand your knowledge of the body and biomechanics to help you make the best plan for your client to get specific results or reach their fitness goals. A good trainer understands why the training plan they created is best for the client or why one variation of an exercise is being used over another, but an awesome personal trainer can clearly and effectively communicate that information to their clients.
Clients who learn why their plan is right for them and how it will help them reach their goals will have an easier time moving forward. As your clients begin to understand more, you can watch and help them slowly grow to become experts in their personal health and wellness. After all, the best teachers create students who want to continue to learn, not simply pass the test.
Take Trainer Academy's free CSCS practice test further to enhance your understanding of exercise science and training principles. By mastering these concepts, you'll be equipped to educate your clients with confidence and precision.
"Help people dream bigger and do more."
CLICK HERE to learn more about how you can teach our members to love fitness! >>
There are tons of opportunities in health and fitness, and becoming a personal trainer is one of the most beneficial careers in the industry! More people than ever are looking to work with personal trainers to help them reach their fitness goals. If you know why you want to be a personal trainer, then your ambition and drive are how you can truly be great at it! An average trainer will use the support of the gym and pick from their members to find clients, but an awesome personal trainer will be driven to success by knowing that more opportunity and growth are possible.
As a trainer, you are essentially creating your own brand and running your own business. You will notice that powerful things will begin to happen when you start taking an extra step to succeed beyond your goals. You will become addicted to the progress you are making towards establishing yourself as a knowledgeable trainer and fall in love with the process. Before you know it, your personal training brand could be known for being the best for weight loss, bodybuilding, or being the best around!
"Do you sit and wait for opportunities, or do you get up and make them?"
An average personal trainer pushes clients to finish their training program and get visible results. An awesome personal trainer knows that listening, educating, and motivating each client is doing much more for them than what they can see in the mirror.
If you want to be a trainer to help someone grow stronger physically and emotionally, you would be an awesome personal trainer. If you want to inspire someone not to give up on their goals, you would be an awesome personal trainer. If you want to help heal the relationship people have with fitness, you would be an awesome personal trainer.
"You have the power to create change."
A lot more goes into being an awesome personal trainer than just making great workout plans. Trainers lacking passion, drive, and ambition will disappear from the industry. But if you have the want and energy to be a great personal trainer, you can be! These traits are just a few of the many signs that personal training should be your next career move. Click the link below to see how you can take the next step to become a personal trainer for O2 Fitness!
Good luck and happy training!