Thursday, March 28, 2024

Self-Development is Key for Personal Trainers – More Than Muscle

Covid-19 presented challenges for personal trainers. Yet, there are a few fundamentals you shouldn’t steer away from. 

Service Quality Is Crucial

Personal training is a service-based business, and so your ability to serve your customers comes down to three things:

  • Knowledge to help your demographic solve a problem.
  • Having the social intelligence to achieve client buy-in.
  • Your time.

As a result, it’s important that personal trainers enhance their professional practice knowledge. You need to be consistently developing your experience and understanding of your demographic, from both a physical and psychological perspective. Not only that, you also need to balance this with developing your business know-how! That’s how you can trade in the best way possible.

Stay Thirsty

Thirst for knowledge is something I’ve tried to stick by throughout my career as a personal trainer. From a coaching standpoint, there is so much to learn. But from a business point of view, many trainers have never explored the fundamentals of running a service-based business. 

This is why I’ve always invested in mentors and got around coaches.  Their influence and experience has served me well alongside reading 10 pages of a book daily. It’s a habit that’s given me wide perspectives on subjects I’m interested in learning about. Remember, 10 pages a day is 12 books a year, and I’ve been a coach for over 10 years now (that’s a lot of books). 

Below are four major areas I encourage personal trainers to develop in:

  1. Conversations

Spark conversation with people. Show them you can add value! Social media can be a great way to showcase your expertise in this area. Be consistent with this and produce content that actually helps your demographic. Don’t be salesy, but try to drive people towards your service. This is important. Building awareness around what you can do for someone is key to growing your PT business.

  1. Produce Results

At the end of the day, you’re only as good as your delivery of the promise you sell. Meaning, can you achieve the results you promise?  A large factor in that comes down to understanding the evidence. Being able to translate complex medical terminology into a user-friendly format for your client, is key. Remember, people pay for implementation not information. So, developing your coaching delivery alongside the science of the human body is vital. 

I find trainers can massively overcomplicate things. Or even fail to put enough emphasis on improving this vital element of their personal training business. If you can systemise your approach to meet the needs of your clients’ problem, you’ll be producing results in no time. One of the best ways to scale your business is through referrals. Having social proof is a great way to do this. 

  1. Develop Social Intelligence

Get great at understanding your demographic. What do they look like? Where do they socialise? How do they speak? What their pain points are and their psychodynamics.

This will give you a lot of feedback on how to tailor your service to solve their problem. It also gives you insights about how these people want to work. It’s an important way to get that client buy-in. Ultimately, keeping clients long enough for you to grow your personal training brand. It’s also another way to grow a community of like-minded people. A powerful tool in your development of a strong personal training business. 

  1. Time management

At the end of the day, you must serve yourself before you can serve others. Understanding elements of your diary management is key. Your business operations and the rate you charge affect this. That’s why pricing your services correctly is something you should spend time reflecting on. 

Under charge and commit financial suicide. Lots of hours with little return or space to grow. You’ll also find your service will suffer, and that will impact your ability to get results. Your business model and chosen deliverables will all dictate how you manage your time.

Invest in your future

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a lot of stress for personal trainers. With gyms closing, it meant many had to pivot to work online. The truth is, the pandemic has increased the need for people to stay healthy and thus the demand for your help. 

I always spend time with my personal trainers, helping them develop the above four areas. More conversations mean more interest around your service. More results equals a higher volume of clients and an ability to charge a greater fee. More relatability equals better results. But understanding the impact of your service in relation to your business model, will ultimately dictate how your service runs and the free time you have available. 

If you are interested in developing more as a personal trainer or want to follow the More Than Muscle journey, please contact us via our website.

Written by Andy Pilides MSc, PGDip, PGCert

www.morethanmuscle.co.uk

Share this article

(Ambassador)

This article features branded content from a third party. Opinions in this article do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of New York Weekly.