Love working in Fitness?
A lot of us begin working in fitness as it was a hobby we enjoyed. Some of us were sporty as children and so professional fitness became a natural progression of sport. Something we hear a lot when teaching courses during ice breakers is “I love exercising myself and just want to help other people feel the same”. The thing is though, most people don’t enjoy exercise and just can’t understand why you love it so much, so getting them to feel your joy can be frustrating. The hours are long (5am starts most days anyone?!) and often your own training goes out the window as either you can’t fit it in or are so tired from training everyone else or teaching classes that you crawl into bed and can only get up after copious amounts of coffee. Sound familiar?! Well this isn’t what you got into this fantastic business for. So, how do we get the balance back, along with the enjoyment and passion we first felt so that we can make the genuine impact on others we set out to MAKE.
To love working in fitness here are our top tips. We know they work because we use them in our own lives and between us we have been working in Fitness for over 50 years here at HQ!
1. Say no!!! From the beginning. If you don’t you will end up running around all over the place, burning yourself out. Decided when you want to work and stick to your guns. Block out your work time and your you time/learning time/personal development time.
2. Schedule in your own workouts and ensure you do something to balance out what you are missing or overtraining in if you teach Group Ex. If you teach a lot of cycle or studio resistance you will benefit from something like yoga or stretch to ease out your muscles. If you teach yoga or pilates, get some cardio in for your own workouts. Remember there are 4 components of fitness; Cardiovascular, Strength & Endurance, Flexibility and Skills (Proprioception/balance/agility/reaction/quickness).
3. Unless you really are a morning person, decide how many early starts you actually want to do and stick to it. And if you are up early, make sure your schedule allows you to be in bed for enough sleep, that includes winding down as well.
4. If you are a PT, decide on a demographic and stick to it. Far better to master a couple of key areas well than try and do everything. You can charge more for specialising as well. It will also help your session enjoyment if you are working in a skill set you are more passionate about and with clients who come to you specifically for that.
5. If you have clients you really dislike training, let them go. Yes, we know its money, but if you work from a place of passion and integrity the money will come. If you hate training someone, for whatever reason, you won’t put your heart into the sessions and they won’t get as good results. Send them to someone who is a better match.
6. If you are a Group Exercise instructor, again decided where you passion lies. It is impossible to be good at every type of class. If you teach pre choreographed classes this also applies. Master a few that really make your bones sing to you and ditch the rest or you will spend your life learning choreography and never really getting good at it. This leads to resentment and burn out.
7. Have at least 1 day off completely a week. We are bad in this industry for agreeing to extra work to help people out. You do need to look after yourself as well.
8. Have a regular massage to keep your body healthy.
9. Find multiple income streams. If you look at all the successful and happy people in fitness who can afford to take time off, they all have multiple income streams in common. With the internet this has never been easier. Many people are now using affiliate marketing and network marketing to exponentially increase their wealth globally as well as in the UK. For low start up costs and relatively low time commitments compared to the job hours significant income can be earned allowing you to take on only what you really want to. Online subscription services can also be lucrative if you have a good product or service and have more time and finance to put into setting up.
10. Never stop learning! The minute you think you know everything, it’s time to hang up your trainers as that’s when you have lost your passion. We grow ourselves professional and personally by always learning. Charles Poliquin once said “Spend 1 hour reading a professional development book every day and another 1 hour reading a personal development book and you will be successful.” While this may be too much for a lot of us, in the days of audio books it is easier to achieve than you think. I for example, always have a personal development audio book playing in the car and read 10 pages of a professional book each day (between clients sometimes more). Imagine how much better you could be in 1 year if you read/listen to 12 personal development books and 12 professional development books in that time.