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13 Ways to Rock your Personal Training Business in 2012
Image by Luigioss
Sell the Dream or Emotion – people care less about Reps, Sets and Exercises and more about the results. Sell the Dream Body and Lifestyle rather than the Personal Training sessions!
Make Contact Again – send out an email to all the people who have contacted your over the last year. Sell the dream and offer them a service they can’t refuse.
Write a Press Release – put together a short 400 word press release and send it out to all the local papers. Have a theme for the press release like a new 2012 fat loss plan, trial sessions or introduce a new product you will be using.
Give a Talk – contact local clubs based around your niche business area like: post natal, cycling, running, the W.I, fat loss group, and give a talk. Keep it simple but offer actionable steps and mention how you could help at the end.
Top 5 Mistakes in Kettlebell Training
Photo by Andrew Malone
1. Treat it like a Dumbbell
This is so painful to watch but I have seen Personal Trainers as well as Fitness Enthusiast using a kettlebell for bicep curls and triceps extensions. The true benefits of Kettlebell Training lies in its compound and dynamic movements. There are certain movements that Kettlebells do lend themselves nicely to that aren’t entirely Kettlebell orientated in nature like Single Leg Deadlifts and Bulgarian Lunges but in the main Kettlebells should be used as they were intended and not as an alternative to a dumbbell.
2. Training too light
Following on from the above point many people especially ladies believe that the kettlebell needs to be as light as a dumbbell. However, if you use the correct progressions and full body compound movements then there is no reason why a lady shouldn’t start with an 8kg. In fact in all my years of teaching kettlebell classes I have never had a lady start with anything below an 8kg and I now have ladies on kettlebells up to 20kg. Funny how women will pull and drag a 20kg suitcase around an airport but freak out over an 8kg kettlebell.
Exercise Programming – the only checklist you need
Photo by Will Lion
Whenever I exercise or I’m training a client I follow a simple checklist.
This checklist keeps me on track and makes sure that I don’t miss anything important from my program.
1. Soft Tissue
Taking care of soft tissue is vital to prevent injury and encourage activation. I always start with a foam roller and then progress to a tennis ball, tiger tail, stick and even hands on.
2. Corrective Exercise
This is the stage where I may use static stretching, muscle activation, stability and motor learning techniques to correct a movement issue.
Revolutionise your stretching with these 3 spinal cord reflexes
Photo by Temari
Muscle Spindle Stretch Receptor
Held within the belly of each muscle is a stretch receptor that protects the muscle from being over stretched. During stretching as the muscle length changes the Stretch Receptor sends a signal to the spinal cord for the muscle to contract. The subsequent contraction of the muscle ensures that the muscle is protected from not being over stretched.
You have 2 ways to overcome the Stretch Receptor and perform a deeper stretch:
1. Maintaining the stretch for 45 – 60 seconds will cause the muscle spindle to reduce its firing and the muscle will slowly relax
2. Reducing the intensity of the stretch will also calm the muscle spindle firing and allow for a deeper stretch
5 Solutions for a Failing Personal Training Business
Offer A Guarantee
Personal Training is one of those services, along with osteopaths and chiropractors that the market lets you get away with NOT achieving results. Imagine you bought a meal at a restaurant and the food was bad you would send it back right? And how about buying a new phone and then finding out it doesn’t work, get it replaced right? There is no such sentiment in the personal training industry and I think it’s wrong. In my opinion, if you can’t produce quantifiable results for clients then you shouldn’t be charging them. But if you can get results and you have a system that achieves them every time, offer a guarantee. It could be “lose 7lbs in 30 days or your money back” or “add 2 inches to your biceps in 8 weeks” or “improve your 10k run by 20%”. Providing the result is quantifiable and set within a timeframe you can use it. Not many personal trainers offer guarantees because the truth is they can’t guarantee results. If they can they should stick their necks out and back up their claim. Offer a guarantee and I guarantee you will get a lot more business. People will always buy if they know it’s Risk free.
Improve Your Product
As a Personal Trainer YOU are your product. So how does your product look? Are you always well turned out and professional? Are you knowledgeable and able to answer all the questions you get asked? Do you train hard yourself and know how it feels to exercise and eat healthy so you can empathise with your clients? You will never waste money investing in yourself. The problem is most people won’t. They get caught up in a vicious cycle of not having any business because they don’t know anything and not knowing anything because the can’t afford to invest. The truth is knowledge is not expensive, you can read books, read blogs, follow a mentor, watch instructional DVD’s, learn from colleagues. Invest just 1 hour a day into yourself and within 1 year you will be in the top few percent of your field. So get out there and get smart.
Top 7 Fitness Challenges. How do you compare?
5 x Turkish Get Ups with 1/2 Bodyweight
The ultimate full body exercise for stabilisation and mobility. If you want to bomb proof your body against injury then this is the exercise to master. Rumour has it that ancient greeks were not taught to strength train with any resistance until they could get off the ground with that same weight over head. By completing this test the young Greeks were able to demonstrate their ability to dynamically stabilise the weight before moving onto more prime mover based exercises. This is a lesson so often ignored as newcomers get injured diving into the weight stack without ensuring their body has adequate stability before they start.
100 x Push Ups
The Push Up is so much more that just a horizontal pressing movement, it’s a huge core stabilisation exercise too. It’s always interesting to see big bench pressers perform a push up, the core is always quick to collapse and sag. I like to think of the Push Up as a moving plank from the hands. Ensure that you utilise as much muscle as you can by corkscrewing the arms inwards and pulling yourself down with your lats. The lowering part of the movement (eccentric) should be slow and controlled and the pushing up (concentric) phase should be fast and explosive. You can also add a Push Up plus to the top of the movement to work on the scapular.
The Alpine Pass, my toughest challenge to date
I’ve just returned home from 3 weeks trekking from East to West across Switzerland and the Swiss Alps. The official route is called the Alpine Pass, 202 miles and 59,000 feet of ascent. It goes down as one of the hardest physical challenges I have accomplished to date.
The Alpine Pass begins in Sargans on the Liechtenstein border and crosses the width of the country in a South Westerly direction crossing 16 passes and ending up in Montreux on Lake Geneva.
Two years ago my wife and I completed the Tour de Mont Blanc a 2 week trek walking around the Mountain Ranges of Mont Blanc and crossing through 3 countries, France, Switzerland and Italy. We found that journey challenging but its fair to say that the recent Alpine Pass made that trek seem like a “Stroll in the park”.
We walked every day an average of 8 – 10 hours and managed to take one day off at the end of week 2. Armed with a tent we camped whenever we could. The perpetual climbs and descents gave no chance for the body to relax and we collapsed every night into our tent to sleep sometimes as early as 8pm.
7 Reasons Why You’re NOT Getting Results
1. Not Creating a Stress Response
Do you just go through the motions? or do you really push yourself? The body adapts when it is put under stress but the stress has to be great enough to warrant an adaptation. Whenever the stress is great enough the body adapts in order to economise movement for future episodes of the same stimulus. Most people do not push themselves enough, resulting in no stress response and no adaptation. A very simple method to ensure that the stress response is high enough is to push yourself just past the point where you want to stop (within reason of course). Another more scientific way is to use a heart rate monitor and work on percentages of your maximum heart rate.
2. Too Much Stress
Big gains aren’t made in the gym they’re made when you rest and recover. As we train we go through the “Supercompensation Cycle” which involves fatigue during the session and then compensation as the body returns to homeostasis and then finally supercompensation as the body surpasses its original status. If you train during the fatigue or compensation stage, before the body has fully recovered, then you risk overtraining, plateaus and a decrease in your gains. The trick is to hit the body again at the peak of supercompensation, this varies depending on the intensity of the session and the individual. If you find you are not making gains in the gym then add an extra rest day to your schedule.
Windmills are NOT only for the Dutch
The Windmill is based on the “Triangle Pose” in yoga and serves 3 main purposes:
1. Works on Shoulder Stability
Here we are not working on strengthening the shoulder complex per se but rather improving its timing. You can have “shoulders like boulders” but if your timing is off i.e. your stabilising muscles do to switch on and off correctly then you are prone to get injuries. Stability can be further broken down into Static and Dynamic, with the Windmill you begin with Static Stability and then progress to Dynamic Stability as your body position changes.
2. Increase Mobility through the Lateral Line
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff!
I get asked frequent questions about supplements, protein powders, macro and micro nutrient balances, sets, reps, intervals, exercise selection etc.
People want to know how to get the BEST results and fast. And I don’t blame them. In a world full of information and experts we all want shortcuts that will save us precious time.
It’s funny we often spend so much energy finding quick solutions that we miss the LARGE elephant in the room. What good are supplements if you eat badly the rest of the time? What use are fancy exercises when you can’t even Deadlift properly? What use are complex periodised programs if you frequently miss workouts?
The human brain is naturally inquisitive, it wants to find shortcuts and wants to keep things interesting. And this is fine but it should not be confused with being effective. If you want to be effective then you must focus on the BIG stuff, the elephant.