How to find a professional coach
that can
change your life
·
Certified Personal Fitness Trainer
·
Certified Fitness Specialist
·
Life Coach
·
Nutrition Coach
Finding the right
Certified Personal Trainer can definitely change your life. What I would like
the opportunity to do is help guide you to hiring one that will impact your
life for the better. If you want to lose weight, become healthier, reduce back
pain and/or tone your muscle, hiring a professional certified personal trainer,
fitness specialist or nutrition coach can be a giant leap in the right
direction. A decent trainer can help you get going, but a great trainer or
coach will positively impact and change your life!
You’ve already taken the
first step and now it’s time to learn how enlisting the service of a
professional coach can change the game for you.
What can a trainer or coach offer you:
·
Accountability
·
Professional
guidance that has been built from direct experience
·
A
comfortable environment where you can enjoy your workout
·
A
baseline composition assessment and follow-ups to help you understand the
changes you
are making and the impact they are
having on the body
·
Help
you set baseline goals, sub-goals and final goals
·
Help
you get to your goals without injury
Topics I will cover in this article:
·
Questions you MUST ask a
potential trainer.
·
Questions to ask
yourself prior to hiring your trainer or coach.
·
What's the difference in results a trainer can
help you achieve vs. what you can achieve alone?
·
How to use a trainer to break through barriers.
·
How to find professional trainers and coaches.
·
Why hiring a trainer
from a corporately owned fitness center is not a good idea.
My
mission is to share with you in a way that will help you grow in health,
knowledge, spirit and in life. You have the opportunity to make this the last
day of accepting poor health. Increase your vitality and a quality of life
starting with today. You deserve an exceptional life! Never doubt that. I want
to help you make decisions that take you one step closer to changing your
habits and living the life of your dreams. Following these steps will greatly
help when searching for a trainer to best suits your needs.
Questions to ask
yourself before hiring a trainer:
·
Why are you seeking out a professional fitness
trainer or coach?
·
Motivation, developing a plan, acts as a
babysitter, educates you, gives you support and tools that will help you change
your life, weight loss, sports performance, reducing pain, increasing mobility
and strength...
·
How will this potentially impact your life?
·
How much can you budget to invest in your health
and quality of life?
Interview questions to
ask a trainer:
·
What are their
professional qualifications?
What is their area of expertise?
Why are they in the fitness industry?
What college did they attend to acquire their training
as a Certified Fitness Specialist? If they did not attend college for
extensive training, what nationally recognized training certifications do
they hold?
What is their communication style with clients?
Things to remember:
·
Your
trainer can only help you if you trust that they are a true professional. It is said that you
will never fully commit to anything that you don't believe in. You must trust
their education and passion for helping you achieve your goals.
Your trainer or coach needs regular feedback from you to effectively help you. It's a team effort!
Your trainer only spends 1-3 hours a week with you out of the 168 hours
you live that week. When you have trouble throughout the week, you should
get in touch with your coach to ask for help, guidance or support. If you
have a dedicated professional coach they will likely give you their afterhours
contact information such as email, phone, text messaging or sometimes a Facebook
page.
You should consider
fully disclosing any issues you may have with food, social relationships
and how they affect your eating. If your trainer doesn’t provide coaching
to help clients deal with this you can ask for a professional referral.
Don’t hesitate to ask for additional help because you are building a
fitness / wellness team. As an option you have access to Professional Nutrition and Life Coaching nationwide via secure video conferencing.
Goals should be set
in small attainable and practical steps that will lead to long term
success. Setting the right goals can help you 'climb mountains' but the
wrong goals can overwhelm you and lead to eventual failure.
If you are a person who has a hard time getting motivated to workout,
you find it boring, you have reached a plateau or you feel you're spinning your
wheels and getting no results, you are not alone. This is a very common feeling. If this sounds familiar you are a
prime candidate for a personal trainer. I have a high average of clients that
feel this way and have worked with me on average for between 3-5 years with
some going on 7+ years.
If you have a reason to
get moving, but not the motivation a trainer can help. In this scenario it's well worth the expense to
improve your health, energy and quality of life. I consider the cost of
training as a preventative health service - reduce medical expenses and copay,
reduce your life insurance premium and increase work productivity as well as
quality of life. Frankly, you can't put a price tag on that.
Many people say... "But, I can't afford it. Coaching is just
too expensive." In response my question is this... What is your health
worth? Your creator has only given you one body to use during your lifetime.
Your body isn't like a car - when it gets old, beat up and boring you can't
simply trade it in for the right price tag. It is possible to regain your
health at any age if you put the effort in, I'm just saying there is no easy
way to make it happen and in some cases it isn't cheap but the pay of is
incredible. People will drink a $4.50 latte 5x/week or pay $1,000 per month for
a car, but won’t invest in the one asset they literally can't live without,
their body.
The standard rates for a
one hour session in 2011:
·
Personal
Training $50-85
·
Nutrition
and Life Coaching $75-175
ü Fees
depend on several things... if the session is one-on-one or in a group
setting, level of the coaches training and experience.
Another factor to consider is if the session is face-to-face or online via
secure video conferencing.
Motivating
When consistency is the name of the game your trainer will do
their best to keep you motivated. To keep you consistent and help you see the incentives
that will keep you going and dedicated to your fitness plan.
Providing accountability
For those that don't the
motivation to start or keep themselves going it's valuable to turn to a trainer
to provide accountability for you. You know that you need to work out - maybe
it's because your doctor recommended it due to blood pressure, diabetes,
obesity risk factors, injury recovery, pain... Whatever the reason
accountability to show up at your scheduled appointments will give you
incentive to keep going. Believe it or not you may also end up enjoying the
company of your trainer and that will keep your mind off of the workout that
may otherwise seem grueling.
Guided exercise with a
purpose
The most common job for
a certified personal trainer is to educate and guide their clients to safely
engage in weight training and aerobic exercise routines. A personal trainer
will teach how to do exercises in a safe and efficient, while teaching you how
to prevent or reduce the risk of bodily injury. Your trainer will also teach
how to use the different exercise machines as well as appropriately fitting
free weights, bands and balls at the gym. You will also learn how to work all
the major muscles to help you increase strength, flexibility, mobility, balance
and muscle tone. Personal trainers can also help plan aerobic exercise programs
for their clients including jogging or bicycling workouts.
Educating you and your
family
Your trainer should be
able to educate you so that you are empowered to live a healthy life. Some
people just want to show up after a long day’s work to have the trainer leads
them through their workout session. Others love soaking up the knowledge and
sharing it with their co-workers and loved ones. As a dedicated and passionate
coach I commit to researching a minimum of 320 hours per year to further my
knowledge base and grow as a professional. Your trainer or coach should have a
wealth of knowledge to share with you.
Goal setting
You've probably heard -
putting it on paper makes all the difference. Well you don't necessarily have
to put it on paper with fitness goals, but it doesn't hurt. That's for sure!
Your coach will be able to help you set small attainable goals that fall in
sequence to accomplish your large goals. Remember that goals take time. You
didn't end up where you are in a few months and it will take some time to reach
your goals. Your coach knows the in's and out's, the phases, and the patterns
that people go through when losing weight.. this is what your coach and myself
do day in and day out.
Customized
program creation
Your trainer or coach
will likely have programs that they create based on their extensive experience
working with people. As a Certified Fitness Specialist and Nutrition Coach I've
developed several programs over the years. I continue to develop and re-work
the programs making them better and better so my clients have the most complete
resources possible. I imagine no matter what professional coach you go with,
they will have also developed programs geared for weight loss, general health
and sports performance, etc...
The Personal Fitness
Training and Coaching industry has exploded across the United States in the
past decade. It used to be a matter
of following videos on the TV and now it's turned into an entire sub-culture.
With 37% of our population healthy my industry has a long way to go before we
reach the 63% that could benefit from coaching and professional guidance.
My passion is to educate people and help people make changes that
will
positively impact their health and that of those in their family.
Yes, you could hire a
babysitter from one of the large corporate chain fitness centers. But, my goals are to give you the tips and help
you find a coach that will be an answer to your prayer and not someone that
perpetuate more of the same.
See... most corporations DON'T invest in their trainers. Instead
they pour substantial dollars into marketing their trainers. The
focus of these big box gyms are on maximizing annual revenue from their
training department. Now just to keep things real - yes, of course I understand
what revenue is. I too have a household to support and a family to take care of
in addition to running a professional customer service based business. So
I'm not saying annual revenue is bad. I'm saying it's the intention behind why
they do what they do that shines through. I believe that income should be a
reflection of the hard work I do in the service of others.
Many trainers not only lack the education, but
also lack the motivation to invest in their chosen line of work. I have built a network of trainers that I work
with and share information / resources with because they are also trusted and
respected in my industry. I dedicate a minimum of 320 hours a year to research,
writing, program creating and public education, because this is my career not
simply a job I fell into. The point is that if you are going to invest your
money in improving your health and getting the help you deserve, use my tips to
make sure you find someone worth your time and hard earned money.
You deserve the best! Remember that…
Even amongst qualified
fitness professionals we all have different backgrounds and specialties. I'll
say it one last time, Interview and make sure it's the best fit. You wouldn't
hire a home repair contractor without proper licensing, experience for the specific
job at hand and excellent referrals. Nor, would you walk into a random hair
salon and plop down in some new stylists chair and say "give me your
special..." now would you? Of course not that's the point. Worst case scenario
you could move out of the damaged house and eventually you'd be happy with your
hair again. On the other hand, YOU ONLY HAVE one body in this lifetime.
Your body is the most valuable asset you own. Don't take better care of
your car, house or pets better than your own body.
If you have any specific questions relating to fitness, nutrition, weight loss,
post-rehab re-training, sports performance, eating disorders, back pain
recovery, personal training or referral inquiries
please
feel free to contact me directly at:
Chris@SevenWellness.com (206)
551-4501 www.SevenWellness.com