How often should I recommend my clients supplement their strength and conditioning workout with alternative options like running or yoga?

A big part of helping our clients achieve their fitness goals is keeping them healthy, injury-free, and motivated to maintain this lifestyle.  Clearly, we all know the importance of strength and conditioning when programming for our clients; however, how often do you take a look at the bigger picture and identify areas of opportunity beyond specific sport or strength training?  Whether your clients are runners, hockey players, or weekend warriors, cross-training is an important component of an effective and comprehensive fitness plan.

ACE defines cross training as a “type of training that is characterized by variety and the use of different exercises and equipment”.  Even simple program design changes such as altering intensity, movement patterns, or exercise order, can also be considered cross training. The type of cross training each client engages in – and how often they do it – will look different for everyone based on their specific goals and their current program.

My Top 12 Ways to Maximize Personal Trainer Client Retention

It’s easier and cheaper to keep a current client than it is to try to find new ones. Here’s my Top 12 Ways to Maximize Personal Trainer Client Retention

When it comes to training success and longevity, retention is key.

Long-term clients essential. They’re your best source of new business (through referrals), are most likely to provide you with social proof (through testimonials), and are most likely to buy and recommend any affiliate products you may offer.

Retaining long-term clients allows you to focus on what’s important, namely high-quality service and results-based training.

Optimizing multiple revenue streams

Fitness businesses come in all shapes and sizes — from boutique Barre studios to big box gyms. We find our niche and serve the needs of our clients. Although services vary, successful businesses have one common thread. We have multiple streams of revenue to keep our operations afloat and thriving. Running multiple profit centers such as personal training, boot camps, and nutritional products is a tenuous balance. As entrepreneurs, it is easy to get distracted and have your hands in many different areas. However, we need to focus our energy on services that provide the deepest impact and the most return on investment. But we cannot rely on one area of our business to do all the heavy lifting!

We are going to explore ideas for diversifying your current income. We’ll also discuss how to create programs that include multiple profit centers to showcase the best of your business. To dive in, let’s look at a preliminary list of profit centers. Where does your business line up? Are you highly functioning in at least six of these areas? Write them down. Add to the list any of your services not reflected below.  Keep that list. You’ll use it as we work through this topic together.

The Benefits of Kettlebell Sport

Kettlebell Sport, known traditionally as Girevoy Sport (GS), is gaining popularity among athletes and fitness enthusiasts alike that want to try something new. Personal trainers should become familiar with the sport as it offers generous opportunities to enhance cardiorespiratory ability, endurance, power, stability, and confidence, all without impact to the joints… yes, it is a non-impact sport!

Similar to running, rowing, or swimming, GS involves movements of a cyclical nature, with a lifter’s success resulting from proper technique, flexibility, strength, power, breathing patterns, aerobic capacity, stability and mental focus.  As opposed to Olympic or Power Lifting, Girevoy Sport requires the person to lift a sub-maximal load and complete as many repetitions as possible in ten minutes with one change of sides on single-weighted lifts such as Snatch. 

9 Scientific Principles Of Success

Is there a simple formula for success?

In 2011, motivational psychologist Heidi Grant Halvorson published: “Nine Things Successful People Do Differently.” Scientifically proven, these 9 strategies provide a useful framework for both setting and reaching challenging goals. Let’s quickly run through them in a checklist fashion to see how you might apply them:

1. Get Specific

With the amount of information each one of us processes daily, it’s easy to get overwhelmed, diluted, or thrown off-course.

So it’s vital we gain a crystal-clear idea of exactly what success will look like once we achieve it (whatever “it” may be).

Don’t Forget Why You Started

I remember growing up as a kid, my father NEVER smiled. I think I was about 12 years old before I ever heard him laugh. But right around the time, he hit his mid-50’s, that all changed. I remember it was right around the time he left his job as a middle school principle to go back into the classroom to teach.  You couldn’t stop him from laughing. And truth be told, he was the master of horrible jokes…and forgetting punch lines. As we both grew older and I became more insightful, I referenced this change to him and asked him what caused the shift? He said, “because I went back to doing what I love.”  Instead of being on the administrative side and feeling like he was more of a disciplinarian, he was able to go back to what he got into teaching for in the first place…to mentor and mold the minds of his students each and every day.

6 Keys to Success

Over the past six years, I have been studying and trying to identify the difference between what makes some people succeed and other people fail.   

I have found that most successful people have certain traits and a specific mindset. One of the most important things to remember when trying to strive for any type of success is that consistency is key and hard work is a must. If you’re anything like me, nothing is just handed to you, and you have to do certain things every day to get the outcome you want.

Below are six things that I have done over the last six years that have helped me achieve a certain level of success while keeping a balanced life.  

Do you ignore what you cannot see?

If you live your life and career as a strength coach or trainer, how many times do you ask yourself how well you are helping your clients?  Is the work you are doing making a difference in the lives of others?

We encourage others to lead a healthy lifestyle, improve their sports performance, and gain muscle.

It is easy to get caught up in the things we can see like how the body can move effortlessly with training, how we can improve athletic performance, and how we can achieve fat loss and gain muscle. But, we seem to neglect the things we cannot see.

This article focuses on the art of coaching in hopes that you will find a deeper level of coaching to help your clients.

Image is Everything

An image is everything. After all, the reason people probably turn to fitness professionals in the first place is to improve their image. As the professional, you should be maintaining and improving your image as well, and presenting yourself in a professional manner. 

Being a personal trainer, life coach, nutritionist, or bodybuilding posing coach means that you run a small business.  Running your own small business means that you wear many hats. Besides being the fitness specialist, you also wear hats for accounting, marketing, billing, and scheduling.  In order to continue to grow your business, you will need to do marketing.  For most in the fitness industry, your own body is your number one asset and the calling card that you have with you all the time.  Everywhere you go, there are opportunities for people to see you and say, “Wow! You look great I wish I could look that good!” You have the chance to sell yourself. 

3 Marketing Must Haves To Grow Your Business

The fitness industry is getting more and more competitive.  There are studios, boot camps, and CrossFit boxes popping up on every corner.  Then you have the big box gyms like Gold’s providing personal training and small group training on the cheap.

How in the world do you compete with all these businesses?

It used to be that if you were good at what you did, had a bit of drive to outwork your competition and produced results for your clients that you would succeed as a fitness business owner.

Now, there are more frustrated, struggling fitness business owners than ever.

But, it doesn’t have to be that way!  With a great plan you can succeed, make a great living, enjoy what you do and even have the freedom to take vacations and stop working 12-16 hour days.

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