Success comes in many forms. As a Certified Functional Training Specialist, success means greater business and income for the trainer and results for the client, with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment for both!
Functional Business: Business Excess Versus Distress
The difference between trainers who are successful and those who are not is the difference between those who seize opportunities when they present themselves and have the personality to influence others and those who do not. The most common denominator between all successful personal trainers is that people like them and enjoy coming to see them every day. After the first workout, their clients can’t imagine not paying to come back. The thought of “not continuing” never crossed their mind.
To find these trainers and learn from them you have to look no further than your local gym. Who is the busiest trainer there? Are they necessarily the “best trainer” when it comes to getting efficient and effective results? Maybe they are and maybe they’re not. Unless they are genetically blessed with incredible looks and a knock-em-dead physique, success flows from their personality. Have you ever seen an incredibly successful trainer with the personality of a doorknob?
There are many capable trainers in the fitness industry who are not successful because they feel their education and their ability should be more than enough to help people. They feel that the merit of their education and their lengthy biography will attract clients, and it might. However, these individuals are few and far between.
Personal training is about helping people, but it is also a business.
Business is about relationships. Likable people can and do become very successful personal trainers. Without sufficient knowledge and the ability to apply it, they may lose all the clients they gain and build a poor reputation over time, but they will always have the ability to draw interest.
Personality gets you a strong first look and keeps clients motivated to come to see you every day or every session. Then, it is your skill as a personal trainer that will help your clients achieve their goals. There can be no goals to achieve if clients don’t stay around long enough to see what you can do for them.
Find a mentor. This mentor should have a personality exuding out of every pore. How will you know? You will like them instantly! There is a good chance that during the short time you talk to them or watch them in the gym they will be accosted by people who want to talk to them (once again, this excludes the supermodel and the Adonis for obvious reasons).
Why do some people pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a single session with some trainers? This is not a difficult question. These trainers are great motivators, not necessarily exercise science experts.
If you feel you may not have what it takes to be a great trainer, then you most certainly do not. You will either have to change this half-hearted approach or get used to seeing “inferior” trainers with more clients than you. Successful trainers know in advance how to react to different situations before they ever happen. If they don’t know, they are 100% confident they can make something up and their client will never know the difference.
Most gym-goers are married to the scale. It’s either the scale or the mirror. Although the scale and mirror can be telling, they rarely tell the whole story. If fitness and health were only about weight and keeping it down everyone could happily join the protein dieters and live happily ever after.
Decreasing strength, losing muscle and water, and slowly draining the body’s immune and endocrine functions is a very likely result when we become a true believers in the scale and all that it proclaims. It only proclaims a number. You’d think this would be obvious, but it’s not. There is a lot more to the body than a number. If it were all about numbers we could simply choose the heaviest weight we could find, not worry about how we moved it, and move it as many times as we could, expecting great results. Hopefully, this does not sound too familiar. While this might begin to give us a very good number on the scale, is that number a true measure of health and fitness?
Stepping out into the great unknown and taking uncalculated risks with an unknown destination sounds great when you’re a teenager. Acting this way at any other time in your life is known by everyone else around you as a “crisis”. It is true that few people recognize true genius when they see it. But it is also true that genius doesn’t come by chance. Don’t take chances with your client’s program without examining the potential results.
We expect to get results very quickly when we focus and work hard. When we work hard without working smart, the result can be devastating. Sometimes we get lucky. But most of the time, with the right focus, attention to detail, and a clear idea of what we want, results take time. Long-term success is just that, the success that comes over a fair period of time. With the right efforts, dramatic success should come within 3 months of your decision to “focus on what I want” if you commit yourself to self-discipline. Self-discipline is about doing acting on what you should do, even when you don’t want to do it. Deep down you know what must be done. All that is left is to do it.
If you can’t be sure about how many clients you want, how long their session will be, how you will respond to their questions and concerns, and how your overall day will go, how can you expect to achieve success for your clients and for your pocket? You must focus on what you want, be clear about it, and be realistic in your attainment of what you want as a trainer and functional training specialist.
Not everyone will have dramatic results and be extremely happy with your programming after a couple of sessions with you. But if you take the time to plan in advance, educate and awe your clients, come early to work and leave late, and honestly critique your efforts, success will come to you. It is simply an undeniable fact.
If you want to be average, work the same number of hours as everyone else with your standard 8 hour day. Just don’t be surprised when you get average results. Those who are the most successful put in 60-80 hour work weeks. Are you willing to pay the price? If you can’t show enough commitment, how can you expect your clients to do so?
Starting Your Functional Training Career
Now it’s your turn to take action. Did you know that most fitness careers don’t require formal education or a degree?
Learn more about the variety of fitness industry careers. There is always something exciting about earning a new training or coaching certification and applying that new knowledge of how you train your clients. This also helps you hit the reset button.
Learn more about becoming a Functional Fitness and Training Specialist and gain the focus that helps you build unstoppable confidence.
Check out what it takes to start a career in personal fitness training. This is your most affordable and fastest way to become a highly qualified personal trainer.
Our Metabolic Conditioning Coach Course is the #1 training system that will help your clients burn fat, lose weight, build muscle, improve cardio and quickly get into the best shape of their lives.
Is your recertification coming up? Learn more about earning your CEU credits. You can find the full list of CEU courses here.
There is always something exciting about earning a new training or coaching certification and applying that new knowledge of how you train your clients. This also helps you hit the reset button.
NESTA and Spencer Institute coaching programs are open to anyone with a desire to learn and help others. There are no prerequisites.
Thanks for reading!
The NESTA/Spencer Institute Team
PS: Click here to see many helpful business/career resources
