Your clients want more than just a good workout. They want a personal trainer who motivates them, cares about them, and sets a good example. When all else is equal, your professionalism, your attitude, and your knowledge of business etiquette are what will put you ahead of the pack.

Don’t be a know-it-all

You’re having a conversation with a new acquaintance at a dinner party and he starts talking about the works of Umberto Eco. Instead of saying, “Who in the ever lovin’ world is Umberto Eco?” you nod along, pretending that you’re deeply familiar with The Name of the Rose and the other works of whatshisname.

C’mon, you know you’ve done this before. We all have.

Although you may get away with this tactic at a dinner party, you won’t get away with it as a personal trainer. If you give false information because you don’t want to look stupid in front of your client, you can do more than get found out — you can injure the client.

Be there for your client

Being there for your client doesn’t mean you have to trail her, handing her warmed towels when she gets out of the shower and feeding her chicken soup when she has a cold. You do have to put your own ego and wants aside and focus completely on the client.

Don’t ever take your eyes off your client during a session. A trainer who’s looking around the room is thinking about himself — how bored he is, what he’ll be having for lunch that day, how much he likes that hot trainer across the room — rather than about the client.

Your job is to be the most motivating, inspiring trainer you can be, and to set a good example for your client. That requires you to put yourself aside and be there for your client.

Stay within the boundaries

You have your personal self, and your professional self. Your professional self does not offer relationship advice, does not eat candy bars in front of the client, and does not make comments about the client’s home or its contents.

Personal training is just that — personal. Your client may come to think of you as her friend. That’s a good thing, but it also invites unprofessional behavior. If a client starts, say, complaining that her husband doesn’t pay attention to her, you need to draw that boundary line. Say, “I hear you, I understand” — but don’t offer advice or tell her what a jerk her husband is. If a client asks you to train her for an extra half-hour free of charge, or to drive 15 miles outside your regular area to train her daughter, tell her you can’t do it. If you do, the client may come to expect this from you all the time — and it can hurt your business.

Do what you say, say what you do

When you tell the client to do something, you should do it. Sounds simple, right? Well, you’d be surprised at how many personal trainers forget this simple concept.

The best way to keep your word is to be prepared, to always be on time, and have your bag and files ready ahead of time. To make sure you always have a program ready for the client, have the client’s file with you when you need it, and have a place where you can work — a place with a desk, adequate lighting, and all the tools you’ll need to stay on top of things. And be sure to have access to all the health information you need so that if you tell a client you’ll bring her a recipe or a new exercise or information about heart disease, you can have it ready the next time you see her.

Showing clients you care

Care is more than just a four-letter word. It also stands for “Clients Are Really Everything.” You may know everything there is to know about personal training, but you wouldn’t be much of a personal trainer without your clients. Clients can make or break your business. That’s why you have to care about them.

Here are some tips for showing clients that you care:

• Return phone calls promptly.

• Return e-mails promptly.

• Follow up with your clients to make sure the sessions are working for them.

• Send your clients thank-you cards for doing business with you.

• Always be sympathetic to your clients’ complaints.

• Keep individual files on each client so you can track them and create the most personalized programs for them.

Always be on time

Being late shows a lack of respect for the person who is waiting. Not only that, but if you have a personal training session and you show up late, what are your choices? You can either cheat the client out of a few minutes of training so she can be done at 5 p.m., or you can run late — which is annoying for a busy person (and who isn’t busy?).

If you’re always late, ask yourself why and come up with a solution. Do you get stuck in traffic? If so, find alternate routes or leave earlier. Do you have trouble getting yourself out the door? Have your bag, your client folder, and everything else you need ready by the door early in the day so you can grab it and leave when the time comes. You can even buy a shelf or hook to keep your stuff on — it may motivate you to use it.

Dress professionally

Here are some dress-for-success tips:

• We’ll say it again — no skintight spandex!

• Don’t wear jeans and a T-shirt, no matter how comfy they are.

• Make sure your clothes aren’t too baggy. If you demonstrate a machine, your clothes may get caught.

• Women, don’t slather on the makeup. (Guys, this goes double for you!)

• Keep jewelry to a minimum. Long, dangly jewelry can get caught in the machines.

• The same goes for long, loose hair. If you have long hair, you may want to pull it back.

• The best uniform may be a collared polo shirt, well-fitting sweatpants, and good-quality exercise shoes.

Stay educated

Personal trainers need to stay up-to-date in medicine, fitness, business, and even psychology and nutrition. These fields are constantly changing, and researchers are uncovering new information every day.

Here are some ways to keep learning:

• Attend continuing education courses.

• Talk to other personal trainers.

• Go to conferences and workshops.

• Read industry magazines.

• Read medical journals.

• Read health, fitness, and business magazines (many are available at the local library).

• Talk with doctors.

Many times, people will respond with re-hashed answers that they have
heard from someone else, or they have read in a magazine. Such things as
doing incline bench press for your upper pecs, decline bench press for
your lower pecs or even concentration curls to improve the peak of your
biceps are false and go against the basic laws of anatomy and
physiology.

First of all, you cannot change the shape of your muscles by doing
different exercises. For instance concentration curls will not improve
your bicep peak. The shape of your muscles is determined by your
genetics. What you can do though, is make the muscle bigger through
proper training, or make it a lot more vascular, cut and defined through
proper dieting techniques.

Now onto doing different exercises for different parts of the muscle.
What many people don’t understand is that when you stimulate a muscle,
you stimulate the whole muscle, from it’s origin through to its
insertion. It is physiologically impossible to train a certain part of a
particular muscle.

A perfect example is the chest. The chest is one large muscle. There
isn’t an upper or a lower pec. Whether it be decline, incline or regular
bench press, you are stimulating the whole chest muscle. A muscle fibre
either contracts fully, or not at all.

Again, genetics play a large part in the natural shape of your muscles.
If you want to improve a certain part of your chest, for instance the
inner pecs, all you have to do is build your chest muscles. Continually
training your chest muscles will eventually result in an increase in
size throughout the whole muscle, filling in your weak points.

This training certain parts of a muscle could be one of the main reasons
why so many people don’t get the results they want. They are doing way
too much work. Doing this exercise for that part of the muscle, another
for this part, is too much work and will only cause you to overtrain.

Remember, to successfully increase the size of your muscles, you need
plenty of rest and recovery. Doing too much will only lead to
diminishing gains. So, if you are doing incline bench press, decline
bench press, flat bench press and dumbbell flyes all in the same
workout, you will never increase the size of your chest, because it is
way too much training. Simply train hard with 1 or 2 of these exercises,
and then give them plenty of rest and food to grow.

Recently we have heard a lot about Tabata training .

If you do not know what Tabata is, I’ll explain a little bit about it. Tabata was founded in Japan by Izumi Tabata. He conducted tests on two groups of athletes; comparing moderate high intensity training with high intensity interval training.

The results were that the athletes training in high intensity interval training improved their aerobic systems as well as their anaerobic system. The athletes who did the moderate high intensity training only improved their aerobic system and had little to no increase in their anaerobic system.

Gym memberships for Christmas, jogging in 40degrees, Ab shapers, celebrity DVD’s, and a promise not to eat any desserts and to drink no alcohol. Then, nightmare!! Mates birthday, Free alcohol and sausages and its all over until next year!!.  

Do not despair. The way to deal with this is to accept that this will happen. The key is to plan your fitness program with goals and a nutrition plan which accepts one bad day a week. Of course I’m not suggesting for a second that every Saturday you order 4 pizzas and drink a bottle  of bourbon to celebrate your great week of diligence, but if you know you are going to over indulge, make sure you look at your plan and get back to it the next day.

Don’t get all upset with yourself and eat KFC to make yourself feel better. Enjoy the occasion but remember that one bad night doesn’t make it a bad year. Even if you have 52 bad days in a year there are 317 good days to more than balance it out. !!

Don’t give up on your goals.

Obtain advanced technical skills and knowledge in exercise science and programming, as well as broader business and project management skills. From employment opportunities in personal training, sports conditioning or delivering fitness classes, it’s the perfect course to get your career into shape.

As a fully Certified Fitness Trainer, you can enjoy flexible working hours and finally have an opportunity to be your own boss. At completion of the part-time course, you will graduate with a fully Accredited Certificate III and IV in Fitness, which is a Nationally Recognised Qualification and you, will be work (and business) ready.

Call us now to talk further regarding your new career. Phone: 5559 0623