A keen interest in health and fitness is just one of the key components to success as a Professional Training Coach.
There are not too many professions out there that require a person to get out of bed at 4:15am every morning. And when I first started at Innovative Fitness I’ll admit that the prospect seemed daunting. But what I didn’t realize at the time was that I would soon be WANTING to get out of bed every morning at 4:15am for the “Starting Bell” of the 6am training hour. Coming straight out of my university kinesiology program and right into a full time Professional Training Coach position as a complete “Green Horn,” I played sports, trained myself for years, and had developed a keen interest in the health and fitness field. But I soon discovered that success in the industry hinges on an interest and passion in one area above all others:
People
I had always considered myself and “People Person” but at the outset of my career I was unaware of how much that would help me in my professional as well as my personal development. My view of my job for my first 6 months to a year was that I was just “training people.” But, thanks to some incredible colleagues and mentors I had around me, I was educated on the principle that the key to this business is personal relationships. One of my all-time favourite “Pearls of Wisdom” from one of my university professors is: “People don’t care what you know, until they know that you care.” Sure I have my Bachelor’s Degree in Kinesiology, and over the years I have taken a number of continuing education courses to increase my understanding of immense field of health, fitness and human movement (FMS, Movnat, RAD Roller, Perform Better, Etc). While all of these have added “tools to my tool box” as a trainer, a key piece of advice that I wish I had been given, that would be my first recommendation to any person considering a profession in the Personal Training industry is:
Learn to be a great Coach
At Innovative Fitness, we try our very best to differentiate ourselves from other “Personal Trainers” in the industry by referring to ourselves as Professional Training Coaches. As soon as I began making this distinction for myself, it ultimately changed the way I approach every day I come to work. Please don’t misunderstand me, in order to succeed in the health and fitness field, you NEED to seek out opportunities to further your education, and be on the cutting edge of what the best available approaches are to help your clients (or “members” as they are to IF) from a physical perspective. But “the physical” is only 20% of a person. The Spiritual, Emotional, Social, and Intellectual components of a person often far outweigh what is going on with them physically. And it is that “80%” that a great Training Coach can tap into. Three prominent figures in the in the Professional Training Coaching industry that have greatly influenced me in the past couple of years are Martin Rooney (www.trainingforwarriors.com), Lee J. Colan (www.theLgroup.com), and Todd Durkin (www.fitnessquest10.com), and all three publish great newsletters and resources on how to achieve greatness in the field of coaching.
As a veteran Training Coach of almost 9 years with Innovative Fitness, I’ve also experienced first-hand what sets apart the people who succeed within the company and those who don’t. If you are a prospective Training Coach, your success as an IF Teammate will depend in large part on your ability to do the following:
Jump in with both feet
– IF is not your “side hustle,” your “time filler” or your bridge between two things. You will never fully experience the greatness of what the company has to offer, or realize your OWN greatness potential if you are not fully committed to what you are doing every hour of every day.
Embrace the Culture
– At every IF location, we strive to create a culture of community, based on the principles of creating an unbelievable experience for every member, and delivering them incredible results. It is a “customer obsessed” culture, and great training coaches are just that!
Every hour is “Hour 1”
– As Training Coaches we are not robots, and we even get tired and bogged down with long work days and things going on in our personal lives. But “the show must go on,” and in a “customer obsessed” culture, members come first. And, for at least for the 1 – 3 hours they are at IF every week, every member deserves to feel like they are the “First Hour” of our day
Connect with people FAST!!!
– Through the consultation process, facility managers and sales managers do an excellent job digging into why people have walked through the doors of an IF facility. That being said, a great Training Coach will use this information to in an effort to make an instant personal connection with a member from the moment they walk into their first training session at Innovative Fitness. From a “Hello” at the beginning of their hour, to a “Goodbye” and a high five at the end of their session (*Note that these gestures are not just reserved for the person that a coach is actually training!), to follow up emails between their training sessions, as I’ve said before, the key to this business is personal relationships, and the ability for a coach to establish that relationship is vital for success!
If being more than just a “Personal Trainer” is something that you are interested in, I want to encourage you to stop into any Innovative Fitness location and speak with a facility manager about any and all available opportunities!
Yours in health,
Jeff Berger
Movement Trainer and Professional Training Coach
Innovative Fitness White Rock
Follow IF on Instagram.
Watch IF on YouTube.
