It’s happened to us all.

A client calls you 30 minutes before a session, says that their [knee/back/shoulder/elbow] hurts, and they are really sorry, but they need to cancel their appointment.

You can:

A: Charge them for the session and generate some tension.

B: Not make money for the hour while you look at photos of that girl/boy you likes beach vacation on Facebook.

Neither option is good.

Fortunately there’s a third option…

…You Can Train Your Client in Pain AND Fix The Underlying Issue

This article is going to teach you how to ensure that you don’t lose out on income from missed sessions.

No matter how good of a trainer you are, nagging injuries come up, people complain, and if you can’t train them in pain AND reduce the instances of pain, you’re going to be one hella frustrated personal trainer (if you aren’t already).

And no, you don’t have to use pink dumbbells and bands all day. Here’s an example:

14 out of 17 members of a female high school soccer team I trained outside a few summers ago entered a session complaining of shin splints after a particularly intense workout. So, being me, I said to the shin splints group, “Okay, then while everyone else runs their perimeters, I want you to do 50 air squats, 20 pushups, 20 back rolls to standing, and 20 stepback lunges on each leg before they return.”

Everyone in the shin splints group had to murder their legs to complete the series. Following that set, I asked if they still had shin splints and MIRACULOUSLY only 3 of the 14 still said they had something resembling shin splints!

I’m not saying this to prove how much of a jerk I am to train with (I am), but to impress upon you that you can provide your clients a kick-ass workout even when they’re feeling some form of pain or dysfunction.

The first step to working through pain is understanding what leads to the pain in the first place.

In the above example, the shin splints were caused by impact forces that were going through the legs during running (whether it was tibialis anterior fatigue, microtears to the interosseous membrane, microfractures to the tibia, or simply dead tired legs, we’ll never know).

Because the mechanism of running and impact created the problem, the solution was to make them hate life while not 
involving any impact through the legs; the air squats and stepback lunges instead of step-forward lunges are an example.

What About Common Rotator Cuff Issues?

A common issue for what’s perhaps the demographic that spends the most money on training is rotator cuff issues. Picture Mr. Burns, you know, all hunched over with fingers tented and stuff.

You could choose to only address the rotator cuff and have him perform endless sets of external rotation with a band. He’d probably get bored and want to gouge his eyes out faster than I’m sure Kris Humphries did around day 40 in his marriage to Kim Kardashian. [Note from Jon: Dude's on fire!]

Or you could work on fixing the underlying issue instead of focusing only on the rotator cuff.

Why not look at getting his T-spine into more extension? You could potentially work on getting his scapula to retract and depress to correct the potential imbalance between his upper traps and lower traps and work on breathing mechanics to prevent him from collapsing back into
flexion?

Sounds like a plan.

If he’s hunched like crazy, he could use some re-training on getting his lats to fire CORRECTLY, meaning he feels it all the way down to his pelvis.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town, his legs seem to be fine, so why not blast them with some front squats, goblet squats, split squats, 1-leg squats, deadlifts, carries; as long as he isn’t put into external rotation and abduction and maintains an upright posture he’s bulletproof.

There. I literally just solved 90% of the rotator cuff problems you will ever see in the gym, and even gave you the program for it. Aren’t you glad you checked this out today??

I’ve Got More For You, Much Much More

It’s difficult to figure out when you can train a client, when you should refer out, and how to train the underlying issues so that clients actually get better. I’ve never come across post rehab information actually MADE FOR TRAINERS.

That’s why I developed the premium training resource, Post Rehab Essentials, to help guide you through the process. It’s intended for personal trainers who want to work with a client who may have an injury. After studying the material, you’ll gain the following benefits:

• Stop losing money from clients cancelling due to pain.
• Finally figure out how to fix your own nagging injuries.
• Position yourself to get referrals from chiro, physical therapists, and doctors.
• Be able to stop giving your clients band-aid solutions because you’ll be able to fix the underlying problem.

Imagine never having clients cancel on you last minute, or having your clients refer everybody you know because “you’re the only one who could fix their [knee/back/shoulder/elbow] pain.

Even if your clients are largely asymptomatic, this premium training will teach you how to get them functioning better by identifying AND FIXING any energy leaks or dysfunctions to ensure they never get injured and you never miss out on getting paid for a session.

To celebrate the release of the much anticipated V2.0, I’ve decided to put the entire training package at a 25% discount this week only. Click here to save some cash and grab your copy today..

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The following is a guest post by Mike Robertson. Trainers are always wondering how to come out on top.  Mike Robertson tells us how to get the personal training edge and become an authority in the fitness industry.

Interested in making a guest post? Have at a look at our contribution page.

One question I get from interns and seminar attendees is, “How do I get to the next level?”

It’s interesting, because I see both sides of the coin.  I see young trainers helping people, improving their craft, and doing their best to take the industry to the next level. I also see that 1% that hates everyone and everything, and can’t figure out why more people don’t listen to them.

This article is simple: here’s my advice on getting the edge on the competition, and becoming an authority in our field.

There are no magic bullets here.  This stuff takes time, which is fine by me.  If you’re not willing to work your arse off, I don’t want you in my field anyway!

1 – Get under the bar: Take care of your appearance.

Photo credit: aspegeek.com

A little vain, don’t you think?

If you’re a personal trainer, you owe it to yourself AND your clients to some sort of physical standard. If you’re overweight, out of shape, or can’t demonstrate exercises, how can you expect your clients to respect you?

If the only thing you’ve lifted in the past two years was chicken parm sandwiches, do you really expect your clients to listen to what you have to say?

This doesn’t mean you need to be world-class.  There’s no need to be a 1000-pound squatter, or constantly be under 10% body fat.  Ideally, your physique should be on par with what your clients desire.

In other words, if you are working with fat loss clients, its helps to be relatively lean.

Likewise, if you work with powerlifters or Olympic lifters, it helps to have spent some serious time under the bar.

Where people get into trouble is when they’re a 300-pound powerlifter trying to train fat loss clients.  Even if you know exactly what to do to get results, it’s confusing from a client’s perspective.

It may sound vain, but your appearance is the first thing your clients notice about you – so don’t blow it!

2 – Own or work in a top-notch facility.

Why do people make fun of big box gyms?  ‘Cause they mostly suck.

You could be the greatest trainer on earth, but people will immediately have a natural stigma about you because of where you work.

On the other hand, simply working at a first-class facility such as Cressey Performance, Results Fitness or Peak Performance is going to give you an immediate level of street cred.

It’s not fair, but it’s true.

If you want to become an authority figure, either:

1. Own and operate your own facility, or

2. Work in a great facility.

Sure, you can make it by doing things your own way, but this is the surest way to not only get a certain level of credibility, but really take your knowledge-base to the next level as well.

3 – Never stop learning!

This comes up all the time. Too often people assume, “I’ve been in this field X years, I know more than that guy!”

They wear the X on their body like a badge of honor, assuming that just because they’ve been around for X years, they automatically know what they’re doing.

It’s not to say that experience isn’t important. But here’s a quote from Bob Alejo that I want to share with you:

“Experience is different than expertise.

In other words, it’s not just hanging on for years on end, it’s actually being good at what you do that’s important!”

Trainers could be training for 40 years, but if they haven’t taken the time to further their education and improve, it just means they’ve been able to survive and hang-around.

Photo credit: PTDC Seminar

Here’s a couple ways to fast track knowledge:

Get around great people.

Spending 20 years in a horrible facility will not make you any better. Find a great facility with great trainers, and you’ll be amazed at how much better you can become.

Find great people to work with.

Energy vampires with no desire to succeed will rob your time, energy and passion.  Fire these people and don’t look back.

Learn from the best.

If I want to learn about something, learn from the best.  When it comes to low backs, I’m going to learn from Stuart McGill.  When I want to learn about shoulders, it’s Kevin Wilk or Mike Reinold.  If it’s knees, Dr. Shelbourne is the man. Seek out and learn from the best.  If they’re getting results with real client, I want to learn from them. And not some clown spewing hate from behind a keyboard.

Continuing Education is critical.

We have access to so much information now it’s ridiculous.  Go to seminars, download webinars, review DVD’s, and read books and journals.  It doesn’t matter where you live; you have access to more information than any time before.  Don’t let that opportunity pass you by.

4 – Become solutions-based vs. problems-based

One of the key themes I find in successful people is that they are solutions-based versus problems-based.

People who are problems-based are not only the annoying Negative Nancy, but they never offer anything of value in return.  They can’t tell you what solutions they have, because they aren’t really training people or getting results! All they do is criticize, often without even knowing the whole story.

On the other hand, solutions-based trainers are willing to make educated guesses to improve results.  Does it work 100% of the time?  Probably not.

They’re willing to take chances and make minor errors, knowing that over time they’re going to continue refining their philosophy to get better results.

Who do you want to hang out with – the guy who’s in the trenches, working hard, and getting results or the guy who has nothing better to do than philosophize and pontificate?

5 – Improve your communication skills

So much of what we do is about educating our clients and our peers.  If our communication skills are poor, we’re really going to struggle to get our point across.

Writing is a great starting point.  You can start a blog from the safety of your own home, and no one has to see it!  This will help you start to organize your thoughts, develop your philosophy, and hone in your focus as to how you do things.

Speaking is the next step, and it’s absolutely crucial when you’re coaching and training. You must be able to articulate your thoughts, your philosophies, and your coaching cues in a way that your clients understand.

It’s not showing how much you know, it’s teaching them what they need to know.

If you’re serious about becoming a major player, it may pay dividends to take a public speaking course.  It’ll give you an idea of how to layout speeches and presentations for maximum effect.

Finally, non-verbal/visual communication is important.  Obviously people pick up on body language, but let’s take it a step further – if we’re going to coach our clients, it often helps them to see how to perform an exercise first. We should be able to demonstrate the exercises we’re coaching with proficiency.

Photo credit: Crossfit Football

You may not be a 800-pound bench presser but it definitely helps to have a certain degree of proficiency if that’s the client-base you’re working with. Have a degree of athleticism and understanding of how to perform an exercise before programming it for a client.

Here’s the bottom line:

To become an authority in this field, it’s going to take a lifetime.  At my own 14-year mark, I’d like to think I know a thing or two.  Yet I know that I still have a long way to go, and a whole heck of a lot to learn.

If you aren’t spending a ton of time coaching clients, working with a ton of people, gaining experience and GETTING RESULTS, it doesn’t matter.

It’s time to step your game up and take it to the next level.

About The Author

Mike Robertson is the President of Robertson Training Systems and the co-owner of Indianapolis Fitness and Sports Training (I-FAST) in Indianapolis, Indiana. Mike has made a name for himself as one of the premier performance coaches in the world, helping clients and athletes from all walks of life achieve their physique and sports performance goals. For more info, visit his website, like his Facebook page, or follow him on Twitter.

Photo credits: Nick Tumminello (featured)

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The following is a guest post from Martin Rittenberry based in Minnesota. He’s developed a powerful system for building an exercise library that will improve both your online and in-person business.

“Hey! This is John at Dynamite Training Studios here to teach you…” 12:31 video length, no thank you.

Click.

“Hey! This is Scott with Scott Fitness and I’m here to teach you… ” Wait, why doesn’t he have a shirt on?

Click.

“Mark here with UltimateFatLossTrainingandSolutions.com…” Great, a competing online business – and no shirt.

Click. 

Why can’t anyone just demonstrate a reverse lunge?!

Rushing out the door for your next session while trying to send an online client a quick refresher on the difference between a split squat and lunge is frustrating when some trainers take it upon themselves to demonstrate an exercise alongside a 12 minute (half-naked) monologue.

Everyone has different personalities, needs, goals, and experience levels. Managing in-person and online clients together can be really tough. But it doesn’t have to be. Systems, like managing your clients’ programming, are crucial not only from a time management perspective, but they also allow us to be more effective and help more people.

If you’re programming workouts for in-person clients to do outside of their sessions with you or starting to grow your online business, you’ve likely been asked a time or two over email: “what is exercise “X” again?” Unless you keep a master Word or Excel document of different URL links (and have your jump drive on you at all times), finding the perfect video on YouTube or Vimeo in under a minute can be nearly impossible.

So what should you do? Record your own. And I’ll show you how.

People buy trainers, not training—recording your own videos to send to clients adds an extra touch that differentiates you from your competitors.

While recording a massive exercise library can be time consuming on the front-end, with the power of the Internet you can store hundreds of exercise videos exactly how you want them at zero cost. All you need is a computer, Internet connection (you have those two if you’re reading this), a cheap USB camcorder and a Saturday afternoon.

I personally used a Flip HD for a majority of my demo videos. What about a tripod? With enough creativity or a close friend, you don’t even need to spend money on one. To record my first batch of videos, I balanced my USB camcorder on jump boxes and weight plates.

Have a system to record everything you want.

My first step was to modify a master exercise database I created on Excel. Years ago, I found myself actually forgetting favorite exercises so I realized I needed a system to organize my thoughts on exercise regressions and progressions. To keep things simple and effective, I created a giant Excel document with sheets labeled: corrective, core, power, knee dominant, hip dominant, upper body push, and upper body pull. To organize my thoughts further, I broke down patterns within each sheet.

Click the picture for a downloadable example of the exercise database or pick it up at the bottom of this article.

I definitely suggest keeping it simple if you’re just starting out and limit your categories to core, lower body, and upper body. As you advance, you can easily edit your database to suit your needs. Keep a soft copy of the database and add to it when you come across a new movement or are experimenting in the weight room.

Camera… check! List… check! Time…?

After securing your equipment and exercise list, the next step is to find the time. I started the first batch of videos I made awhile back when it rained on a Saturday afternoon after training my morning clients. My gym is normally dead after lunchtime on the weekends (people walking through the shotis no good) and the crappy weather (seen below) made it enjoyable to get something productive done away from the computer.

Click here to view the embedded video.

It sucked taking the time to shoot these videos. But, when it was done, it felt great! Be creative with your time. Use rainy weekends, 30 minutes after your shift each night, or just keep your camera and tripod on you for a few weeks so you can set up shop whenever you have spare time or a client cancels.

Done recording… now what?

Alright, you’ve got dozens of clips recorded. What’s the best way to get them to the Internet for your clients? Thankfully, there are several cost-effective software options out there and some USB camcorders even come with preloaded editing software.

For me, a Saturday afternoon with my Macbook Pro, coffee, and good tunes made the process rather painless. To edit the videos, I used QuickTime and the trim feature. I became even more efficient by performing several exercises within one clip (without pressing stop on the record button) and was able trim each exercise out without altering the original file. This saved a TON of time on the editing portion. Only ten recorded clips turned into over 40 actual exercise clips after the trimming process.

Side note: One afternoon I recorded over 40 exercises in about an hour despite a few members working out in the studio at the same time. Yes, there is some background noise because of it, but what matters most is the fact I got over 40 exercises recorded and edited in a short afternoon. Save some of your perfectionism for longer coaching tutorials (with your shirt on).

Recorded, edited, time to import.

Since Google currently runs 80-90% of my life and business, I decided to stay with YouTube. Another nice benefit of using YouTube? Trainerize offers the ability for trainers to upload their entire YouTube channel making it easy for online clients to find videos in only a few clicks.

Again, QuickTime made my life much easier for the actual importing. With QuickTime and my own internet (coffee shops don’t like it when you suck up their bandwidth), I could directly export each exercise clip to YouTube with the built-in share function. No Mac? YouTube makes importing videos easy with their web-based platform if you need to go that route.

Like coaching in real-time, keep the cues in the description short and succinct. When you’re uploading several clips all at once, you don’t need to write a dissertation on foot and hand position. Many clients won’t read them or will forget the cues when they’re in the gym.

If you’re using Trainerize you’ll have another opportunity to write out your description for each uploaded exercise that gets shown right on their program. If you’re hand-typing or using another system, I suggest writing a few cues directly on the program to jog their memory. [Note from Jon: Keeping cue cards handy while filming for each exercise to write the cues down helps when you go and write the descriptions]

If you want to get an idea of what simple channel looks like with different clips and descriptions, check out mine here: http://www.youtube.com/user/mritty85

10% = Blown Away

I won’t lie to you and say you can have a full exercise library in 20 minutes. The reality is a 15 second clip will take you around 3-5 minutes of real time to set-up, record, edit, and upload onto YouTube. But that’s one clip. Like the math involved for batch cooking meals (it takes the same amount of time to cook six chicken breasts as only one), the total time to finalize and upload 10 clips doesn’t take any longer when you have systems in place.

If you’re willing to go the extra 10% to do the best for your clients, I challenge you to add this system into your toolbox. By doing so, you’ll set yourself far apart and impress your offline and online clients more than you can ever imagine.

While the internet is riddled with thousands of trainers explaining killer chest workouts with their shirts off, you can invest a little effort and save yourself time and headaches by doing these simple steps. By doing so, you will give an even better product for your clients and they’ll rave about you to their friends. Did anyone say referrals?

All this while keeping your shirt on. [Note from Jon: Please keep your shirt on]

Click here to download an Excel example of Martin’s exercise database.

About the Author

Martin Rittenberry is a fitness professional who brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to the suburbs of Minnesota. He has trained hundreds of individuals including professional and college athletes, the elderly in a post-rehab setting, and regular folks looking to lose fat and feel and look better. He has dedicated years (and a lot of late nights) researching and experimenting to find out what really works and what doesn’t. Be sure to connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, and of course, YouTube  for some great fitness info.

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Spending 30 minutes or an hour 1-on-1 with a person is intense.

Doing this multiple times a week and you must like the person.

Doing this multiple times a week talking about your insecurities and doing stuff you’re bad at is a lot of peoples personal hell–but it’s what our clients do.

We’re trainers and this is what we deal with. Breaking the ice as quickly as possible and starting on the road to a strong relationship with a new client or member is what today’s article is about.

Incorporating these 5 habits and making them unconscious behaviors in your training business will help you with your sales consultations, get better results with your clients, and create stronger bonds with current clients to get more referrals.

1 – Listen, Pause, and Respond.

It’s hard to slow down sometimes as hectic as a personal trainers day can be. You sometimes need to go from being an intense motivator to compassionate listener to salesperson. Seconds before greeting any new client repeat to yourself these words, “listen, pause, respond” until it becomes second nature.

Count to 2 steamboats anytime a client has presumably finished their sentence. Take stock of their thoughts, paraphrase them back, and decide on your response. You should not be planning out your response while they’re talking. Try concentrating on your breathing right now and I bet it makes it hard to concentrate on anything else. No matter how hard we try, human beings are terrible multi-taskers.

2 – Oh, You Went to Mexico too. How Was it?

Whenever a client comes into the gym new or old you should say two things before describing your workout for the day, starting the warm up, or beginning the sales consultation:

1. Give them a sincere compliment. Take a second to look at them, smile, and identify something that you feel they may care about. If they dress nicely and seem to be peacocking with a particular piece of clothing or handbag, compliment them on it. Maybe she just got her nails done or he’s got a sweet pair of sunglasses. Try to find something; it could be material or physical.
2. Connect with the client on a level outside of the fitness realm. If he’s got on a Hard Rock Cancun shirt, start the meeting talking about his recent trip to Mexico. If there’s nothing discernible on the client to comment on you can choose to omit this part.

Bonus tip: When I trained clients I got a newspaper delivered to my apartment each morning. At 5am I didn’t read it, but I skimmed the headlines. This way whenever there was a break in silence or I wanted to talk about something outside of fitness, I’d merely have to mention the big news that day even if I didn’t know the details. My clients would inevitably take over the conversation about the current event after I brought up the topic. I recommend you keep up to date with current events even if you’re not personally interested as it ensures you always have something to talk about.

3. The Day I Fell on My Butt

3 of my best friends and I have birthdays within 4 days of each other. Every year we do a big bash together. When I turned 25, we decided to rent out a curling arena and mixed too much alcohol with a game nobody had played that involves brooms and sliding on ice.

I fell on butt.

Ironically I recognized how important it was to share this story with clients as I was icing my bruised butt. While exercise comes naturally to most trainers, it’s foreign to new clients. Telling them a story about a time when you screwed up trying something new allows you to both have a laugh and connect on a different level. If it’s an athletic endeavor, even better.

4. Practice Isopraxism

Mimic your clients behavior. On an unconscious level, it creates a strong bond. Consider a walk with a close friend or a loved one. Without thinking, you both tend to walk in stride with one another and the pace and volume of your speech will be the same.

Isopraxism helps establish rapport and empathy. Follow your clients lead: If he or she speaks softly, so do you. If he laughs, you laugh. Lastly, if they sit, you should kneel down or sit to speak to them on their level and if they stand, you stand. Be on their level and never talk down to a client even if he’s taken a knee in between sets to catch his breath. Kneel down beside him to explain the next set.

I’ll also add to this section that it’s important to speak to them on their level technically. A medical doctor may appreciate the use of jargon but a 35 year old mother of 3 may be turned off when you talk about the importance of accentuating the eccentric phase of a medium grip seated row to focus on control of the middle trapezius.

5. How Approachable Are You Really?

I know that you’re super nice, passionate, and deeply want to help. But if you’re in great shape and/or good looking, you may come off as intimidating to an un-seasoned exerciser. Lack of information isn’t what’s keeping unconditioned people out of our gyms, it’s largely because the environment is so intimidating and getting into shape is daunting for a lot of people.

Put yourself in your clients shoes and imagine that you’ve never stepped foot into a gym before or have failed multiple times. You can’t seem to lose the weight and it’s left you with a lack of confidence. After another year trying to motivate yourself to try to get in shape again you finally take the plunge. Sweating from your armpits hoping nobody else notices, you dapple the beads of sweat off of your forehead and open the door to the gym.

You see the pretty girl at the desk that looks like she could eat chips every day and immediately decide that this is a best idea. But you forge on and walk forward. To your surprise, she greets you with a big smile, says hello, asks how you are, compliments you on your bag asking you where you got it, and invites you to have a seat telling you that Tim will be right with you to show you around.

Tim shows up and looks to be in great shape but isn’t wearing a skin tight shirt. As you stand to greet him, he smiles, compliments you on your shoes, and asks you if you just went away on vacation because you have a sea shell necklace on. Another trainer walks by walks by, Tim introduces her as Jessica and she gives you a big smile saying hello and asks you how you are before walking out of the door. Tim then walks you to his office, takes your coat and offers you a seat before he takes his. Smiling, he asks you about your day and seems actively interested.

Smiling, taking an avid interest in others, and being approachable is important all the time; in a gym it’s imperative. The second somebody new walks into your gym, everything from the person at the front desk to the sales tour and all other employees need to understand that their appearance alone can be intimidating enough to ensure a new member never comes back.

We’re in this together. The obesity epidemic is real and is not being caused by lack of information. Adherence to exercise and nutrition programs is embarrassingly low. Let’s work to make people comfortable and look forward to our gyms first before even thinking about what program may be right for them.

If you haven’t already, be sure to grab a copy of Ignite the Fire: The Secrets to Building a Successful personal Trainer Career. It’s full of actionable strategies to help you master the soft side of personal training. For new trainers, it teach you everything you need to know to get started. If you’re already a trainer, it will help you take your career to the next level.

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Ok. So we’ve all heard the reasons why women should lift weights yet, there’s still confusion in some circles. This is wrong and the silly myth that a woman will get bulky or hairy or manly if she lifts weights needs to end.

I polled thePTDC Facebook page for their best pitch in under 3 sentences on why women should lift weights. So this is it, 77 different trainers from every corner of the World telling you to lift weights. Spread this to help offset the damaging effects that some publications and news sources have as they promote myths perpetuating things like “toning” and the ability to “bring the muscle closer to the bone”.

-Jon

“Strength training can increase the amount of muscle in your body, which in turn will decrease your body fat percentage, and improve your overall body composition” – Cynthia Redford

“Don’t go shopping for the clothes you love, don’t have any children and don’t complain that you want bigger boobs- you can’t carry any of them -___-” – Ashley-Louise Sinclair

“but light weights won’t get you strong to carry your shopping and luggage around Canada’ (holiday for a client).” – Tania Rowan

“Lifting weights means you can eat more without getting fat” – Reece Mander

“How much does your father weight? If he falls to the floor, how could you help him? Can you lift him or you will need to call someone??” – Antonio Ventin Cptrainers

“I would explain that her testosterone levels are too low to produce those types of results and lifting heavy weights will be the quickest and most efficient way of shedding fat. I might throw the word “toned” in there too.” – Dave Baker

“Strong is the new skinny” – Angelo Todaro

“What are your goals? Has what you done in the past worked? Are you willing to try a new approach?” – Patrick Beriault

“You don’t have the balls to bulk up” – Steven Hicks [note from Jon: This was my personal favorite]

“Women are made to be able to lift her child and run when there is danger. Being able to lift heavy stuff without getting hurt makes your life a lot easier, if speaking beyond survival.” – Nattha Ploy

Kate Horney of Beyondfitphysiques

“It’s higher intensity than most cardio so raises your metabolism. This causes quicker (and longer term) fat loss and sexy “toned” curves.” – Ben Singh

“If you don’t lift heavy weights, then everything pretty much goes further south a lot quicker than you want.” – Matthew White

“What is it that every female wants to accomplish? Lifting heavy weights isn’t going to make you “bulky”. It will make you feel strong. When you feel strong you feel confident. Best of all you’ll look better naked and gain that “toned” look every woman always tries to achieve, without stepping on the treadmill.” – Trent Dubois

“With do you usually do? Is that getting you the results you want?” – Jesus Acuña

“Contrary to popular thought, lifting heavy weights will not make you bulky like a guy because women don’t have nearly the amount of hormones that men do to “bulk up”. Strength training will help you gain muscle; muscle takes up less space than fat and this will give you a lean physique. Your body fat percentage will also decrease.” – Lavanya Krishnan

“Lifting heavy will change your life like nothing else. Not only will you become stronger physically, but mentally and emotionally stronger as well. You will be able to handle anything that life throws at you.” – Kimberly Mills

“You don’t gain muscle by accident; you have to constantly kill yourself to make it happen. Show her pix of hot girls who lift.” – Rick O’Shea

“Everything you want is on the other side of fear. If you learn how to lift correctly the number on the weight won’t matter, but your sense of achievement and increased confidence (as well as a smokin hot body!) will make you feel AMAZING.” – Sarah O’Neill

“Here’s my card. Let me show you a few lifts. See for yourself.” – Dean Trinklein

“What is it about weights that you are afraid of?….You will never end up looking like The Hulk because females don’t have the testosterone men have to bulk up. BUT…lifting weights will give you a better body shape, better posture and you’ll feel better about yourself – so when do you want to start lifting?” – Fiona Compston

Nardia Norman

“Adipose is gross. You need to lift to have any real change in metabolism, ADL’s improve exponentially with a stronger core/body.” – Scott Murray Jr.

“Ok, enjoy your flat ass.” – Christina White

“Lifting weights will not make you big….cupcakes will make you big.” – Kevin Smith

“Do you have any children? How heavy are they?” – Michael Park

“Shut up and lift” – Joseph Baird

“Weights= increase lean body mass, which equals a faster metabolism which equals and leaner stronger sexier body. Why wouldn’t you lift weights” – Aimee Stevens

“Skinny runs, sexy lifts” – Shawn Murray

“Strong is the new sexy” – Xavier Stravens

“Look at me, I don’t look like a man and I lift weights’ – Strong is the new skinny!” – Gail Ball

“I’m a female. So when i hear this i say “honey, if a woman could hulk up from lifting heavy, I’d be green”. Their response, without fail, is “omg! You’re so skinny!” Yup” – Wendy Miller Standridge

Ana Paula Viola

“We simply don’t have the testosterone to get bulky. Option one – run on the treadmill at little benefit for 12 months and see some results. Option two – weight training begins today and in 12 weeks you can thank me.” – Emma Barkeley-Smith

“Wanna eat more? Lift weights” – Jason Clarke

“Did you know heavy weight lifting is the best defense against aging, keeps shopping for clothes enjoyable, and gives you the ability to lift and play with your children and grandchildren?” – Erika Nall

“Tone doesn’t exist love, it’s a word that should only be used when referring to ones musical ability, fat loss and muscle gain!” – Daniel mark Anthony Ebbage

“Jessica Beil lifts heavy” – Franco Crincoli

“It doesn’t make you big, but helps bone health preventing osteoperiosis later in life. It always helps you lose weight.” – Kristy Lageson

“More muscle = higher metabolism which burns more calories at a resting state. Plus our body don’t bulk with our artificial supplementation. Lifting heavy is how you tone. Not cardio” – Katie Jones

“Well, going to the gym in your nice little workout outfit, with matching shoes and earbuds, wearing your hair down with makeup, walking on the treadmill for 20 minutes sure as heck ain’t gonna cut it sista’!” – Jason Ryan Edenfield

“best way to keep fit is humping and pumping, lightweight!” – Lorraine Chi

“Woman shouted for equal rights,u got them,now lift it bitch,lol,” – Wendy Mitchell

Sonja Franzmann of sonjafranzmann.com

“It builds lean muscle mass which burns fat. It will give you definition and tone. It will make you move better, faster and stronger! Besides, all the sexy women are doing it.” – Robert Foster

“lift like a man …look like a goddess….” – Mark Doherty

“So you’re saying you don’t want a rock hard body? – Johannes van Niekerk

“I ignore them and tell them that what they’re gonna lift isn’t heavy…the heavy ones are what the Men lift!!! They soon wanna lift those because women NEVER wanna be second to men…EVER…Reverse psychology!!!” – Paul Howell

“start lifting heavy weights or else you will get fat haha” – Øwen Ļewis

“Show her a picture of a bunch of female crossfit athletes doing overhead squats with the exact body she wishes she had.” – John Prather

“Never be afraid to do something that will benefit you on so many levels ! The real fear is that you never try so never realise how good you can be !” – Maria Donohow

“It took me (insert number of years training) to build the muscle on my body, as well as the testosterone that I have by being male… You will not look manly from lifting weights, try it out for a few weeks and if you’re unhappy we will adopt another strategy” – Simon Price

“Ask a female athlete how much weight they push” – Tyson Bethany

“I would say “you wanna tone and firm ure body and get a sexy body?? So get up there and move ure butt!! Train like a man!!lol” – Bracha Paris-Shwartz

Sarah Mac Millan Larsen

“Healthwise lifting heavier weights fights off sarcopenia and osteoporosis as you age allowing you to keep your strength and function as well as keep you independant and out of an eldercare home even later in life. Dont you want a healthier, happier, better quality of life??” – Ricardo Negron

“Also “just do it” works” – Karen Lachance Mosley

“With only cardio you will go from a big pear to a smaller pear but you will still be a pear. Weights will help change your bodyshape not to mention all the health benefits.” – Claudia Popoviciu [Note from Jon: I like this one because of the imagery it provides and how succinct it is]

“With out testicles and if your eyebrows don’t meet in the middle like mine it’s nearly impossible otherwise I would look just like the Arnold ” – Ben Riley

“Your fear is unfounded.” – Trey Atarhe Mujakporue

“Lifting weights removes bingo wings. Lifting weights makes you tone up and loose body fat. Simple.” – Brian Soupy Campbell

“It raises your metabolism and burns calories when your not working out during recovery process.. Higher metabolism equals increased fat loss during cardio…” – Suzanne Markey

“I will tell them the way to help get the curves and FAT loss they desire is to lift heavy. I will then ask them if I look like a man. They say no then I tell them how heavy I lift. I follow it with the same info Cynthia Redford posted.” – Maria Andersen

“Ask a question to dig into their reasoning then base my reply off of that. What if they said they had a injury that held them back and it had nothing to do with gaining muscle. Gotta know their fear first!!” – Darrell Gallow

“All she has to to do is look at me! I lift very heavy and not bulky” – Kim N Tim Ruth

Nazia Khatun

“Walk up to the biggest guy in the gym and ask him if it was easy to get big” – Simon Ward

“Just try it, what have you got to loose… Apart from a whole heap of ugly!” – Simon Wolohan

“You want the body of a fitness model don’t you? Well lift like one!!!!!” – Neil Paterson

“Wot is the point in being afraid? In order to build a mountain, u need a strong foundation.” – Craig Guest

“Everybody wants a bikini body, but nobody wants to lift no heavy ass weight. If you want to look average, train average, ill wave to you on the stepper… Want to look above average?… Ill see you at the squat rack” – Callan Headrick

“Then enjoy the flab under your arms and the butt:)” – Ray Vanags

“What does your child weigh ? How many times have you lifted and carried then and for how long.” – Gerard Sheehan

“That we will conduct 3 sets of higher reps with lower weight, with very little rest between sets to help burn more calories and to get that sexy tone going!” – Antony Walker

“There is nothing sexier than “lady guns”. Besides, the more muscle you have, the more calories you will burn all the time.” – Stacey Mitchell

“How heavy are your kids?? How heavy are the groceries??” – Joanne McCarthy

Joy Victoria of Fitnessbaddies

“What are you afraid of?” – Sheri Heaston

“Tell her you are afraid for her not to be lifting heavy weights.” – Jerry Hamill

“Lifting weight burns more calories give you that toned figure you want and doesn’t make you bulky as we don’t have the same amount of testosterone as males do.” – Robeka Nestorovski

“I’m not trying to be a body builder, I just want to look good in a t shirt.” – Julie DuBois

“Weight bearing exercises are great to help againt and prevent osteoporosis. It also helps your nervous system stay alert and active. So let the weights be scared of you!” – Christopher Lane

“Women don’t have the hormones to “bulk up”, however, lifting weights will increase lean body mass, which burns more calories at rest than fat, and will firm up those jiggle spots!” – Joy Rake Lanier

“The only thing to be afraid of is feeling you never gave it a go ” – Tim Venus

And just in case you needed more convincing

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I’m going to start by making a few key points.

First, I have had the opportunity to work as an independent physical fitness instructor for a few years while completing my degree in university. I have also worked in a commercial facility for the past 8 years. My wife spent a good 2 years working for a small private personal training studio. I have a lot of good close friends who have worked at both commercial facilities as well as different training studios, some of them actually built and owned them on their own.

In other words, I’ve seen a lot, studied a lot of different business models, seen what works and what doesn’t work, and I’m going to give you my unbiased opinion of where you should work if your goal is physical fitness instruction.

There’s considerable debate where to work as a personal trainer: either in a boutique training studio, Crossfit style industrial gym, or in a commercial health club. While I won’t discount any of the above-mentioned facilities, I can honestly say that I know many of each that are run well and do extremely large volumes of physical fitness instruction, and also those that are poorly run, quickly go out of business, and leave their employees holding the bag as to where to gain employment.

Each venture has to have a good solid business plan in place prior to being considered as “the place” to get a job and to not only survive, but thrive to the fullest.

The Crossfit style Industrial Facility

The major benefit to a Crossfit style facility is that the type of building being leased is typically a warehouse space, so the cost per square foot is fairly low. The equipment needs are basic, consisting of at the most high end a good set of competition barbells and at the low end anything heavy found on a construction site. Many of these types of facilities operate on a group physical fitness basis, very rarely working with individuals in a private setting as the cost per hour doesn’t generate as much income, although there are those that do private sessions. A few trainers can work the space with little cross-stepping, which means the facility will typically only need a small handful of trainers, thus keeping employment costs low. They’re no frills, no gimmicks, and have the potential to do quite well in the physical fitness instruction world.

A major downside, specifically of the Crossfit business model, is that each location pays a licensing fee to have the Crossfit name attached to it, but there are no pre-defined territories, which means if you opened your doors and paid your fees then started to market, another trainer could be setting up shop right next door to you and there is no legal recourse against it. This will cut into their market penetration and in the end wind up hurting both locations as they split their potential memberships.

While I won’t go so far as to say that all Crossfit instructors have minimal experience in training some of the complex lifts and metabolic systems they give their clients, there are quite a few that tend to avoid individually screening their clients for potential risk factors such as thoracopelvic rhythm, scapular mechanics, and other primary biomechanical concerns prior to throwing them into the mix. As a result, Crossift tends to have a higher rate of injury than other classifications of personal training, which means that their drop-out rate is higher, leading to a potential drop-off in business after the initial groundswell.

That being said, there are those out there who do take the time and qualify their clients for specific exercise prior to having them go through the paces, which makes them have a lower risk of injury and consequently a lower drop-out rate. From my experience, these trainers are in the minority.

The benefits of these types of facilities is that there is a different type of client looking to work out here, which means there is less chance of having “flaky” clients walk through the doors. Some that makes physical fitness instruction much easier. They tend to get more weekend warriors who want to increase their athletic capacity, as well as those who want to lose weight and gain muscle, plus the type of equipment utilized means that there is a larger emphasis on creativity and body weight movements than at other facilities. The group environment is also second to none, emphasizing cooperation and mutual encouragement among all participants. Most of the instructors are great coaches.

Some of the downsides to these facilities are that they can be intimidating to even seasoned active adults. They tend to be in more remote locations due to the cost of location and the types of facilities used (warehouses, industrial parks), which can make commuting difficult. Another downside is that anyone with a basic level of certification can open a facility after paying a licensing fee,  which means the quality of instruction may or may not be there, leaving the door wide open to criticism and liability. They also have to outsource all secondary services, such as accounting and maintenance.

Private Studios

These facilities tend to have much smaller overall square footages, but focus more on private physical fitness instruction or small-group training sessions. They tend to have more of an aesthetic appearance, some even going as far as having hardwood flooring, branded weights, furniture, lobbies, etc to make the clients feel as comfortable as possible.

The locations tend to be more commercial space than industrial, meaning the zoning restrictions increase the overall lease cost per square foot, limiting the potential size of the facility. Many studios can do extremely high profits from a 1000 square foot location, and some are even ran out of the owners’ basements or garages. Facilities will tend to “rent” space to contract trainers who wish to train their existing clientele, or may hire employees to train clients while taking a small dollar amount from each session. The typical pay per session to the trainer is between 50-70% of the session cost. Some facilities tend to work with between 5-20 trainers. Studios work with a mix of private, semi-private and group fitness training options, depending on space and clientele.

The types of trainers in these locations tend to focus on specific niche markets of fitness. Some work specifically with athletes in a specific sport, some work with more clinical populations or obesity, and some prefer more of the aesthetic training for bodybuilders, figure competitors, etc. They focus on delivering more individualized programs with more specific knowledge of their niche. The educational level here can vary, from entry level certifications up to graduate degrees and beyond for physical fitness instructors. The key component isn’t necessarily the amount of education the individual has, but how they apply it and interact with their clients.

Some benefits of studios when you’re looking where to work as a personal trainer are that the locations tend to be more convenient to high-density population areas, the additional frills tend to appeal to more of a comfort for the potential clients which increases retention, and there is a relative level of freedom to run the business how the trainer sees fit. More advanced facilities have business managers on site, receptionists to handle payments and scheduling, and tend to have more equipment and more specialized equipment as well.

Some downsides to studios are that the advertising budget is typically much smaller and possibly even non-existent, meaning acquiring clients is much harder. The cost per session or per time investment is typically higher than in industrial facilities, and the cost of facility setup and leasing tends to be higher as a result of the location and type of environment. The limited space can present a problem when the facility is busier, meaning the overall comfort level of both the client and the trainer is reduced. They also have to outsource all secondary services, such as accounting and maintenance.

Commercial Facilities

These facilities tend to have much larger square footages, more equipment variety, and an existing membership base to draw from. To work out in these facilities, members have to pay a time-based membership fee (monthly or bi-weekly), as well as any additional fees for perks like lockers, towel service, laundry, and physical fitness instruction. They also have methods in place to acquire new clients and place them with trainers. They have receptionists, all secondary services are in-house, and managers are in place to handle most membership issues and to provide ongoing coaching and development. Some facilities also have specific services or features, like tennis, swimming, golf, or other services included in their memberships, which can become a goldmine for industrial trainers who want to capitalize on the captive markets.

Some facilities have continuing education calendars in-house, giving trainers the ability to acquire CEC’s without spending any additional money to travel or register for courses, and occasionally bring big names to speak to the staff. They may also provide educational scholarships to their trainers to attend functions that interest them, in the hopes that it increases their productivity and the results they can get for their clients. They tend to pay their trainers a percentage of the cost of the training session performed, and also use a grid system where the more the trainer works during the month the greater the percentage of the session cost they get.

This grid can be very lucrative, or very difficult to earn an income with, which means they also tend to have a higher rate of turnover than in other facilities that offer physical fitness instruction. The grid will pay anywhere between 40% of the session cost to 66%, depending on the number of sessions trained each month.

Some of the benefits of working in these facilities are the ability to begin training clients within a very short period of time, all secondary services and marketing are already handled, and an existing membership base from which to gain new clients. Continuing education, health benefits options, and the potential for promotion all become very enticing. The structured systems involved allow you to have a template to follow, making your job much easier versus trying to figure it out on your own, or hoping the owner of your facility has figured it out. The clientele tends to be much broader, encompassing everyone from rehabilitation to competitive athletes to geriatrics. They also tend to include sales bonuses for monthly thresholds, contests and other benefits t encourage drive among trainers.

Some of the drawbacks include the graded pay system, having to wear uniforms, policies like no chalk use or barefoot training, and having the additional costs of memberships and other perks. On an entrepreneurial note, they tend to also discourage trainers from earning secondary income through supplements, clothing, equipment sales, etc, which can limit the income potential versus studios or Crossfit style facilities. Training is also limited to the confines of the facility as they tend to get trainers to sign non-compete agreements on employment.

My Take

While I work in a commercial facility, there are definitely parts that if I have the opportunity to change would be gone in a heartbeat. First, I hate the music we play. It’s god-awful. Second, I would get rid of half the equipment and isolation machines and order about a half-dozen more squat rack and oly lifting platforms. Third, we’d change the payment model used from a session cost model to a time-frame cost model, which would reduce cancellations and no-shows and increase the training frequency and results people saw when working with their trainers, and also provide a guarantee on payment to the trainers each month. The desired result would be retention in the physical fitness instruction program of the club.

One of the benefits I’ve been able to see from working in a commercial facility is the fact that I’ve been able to take on a portfolio handling all the medical referrals in and out of the companies 30 locations. This means I’m working closely with a lot of doctors, physiotherapists and chiropractors, giving me an experience I wouldn’t necessarily get working within a studio or industrial facility. I also have the opportunity to teach a lot of the continuing education courses, giving me speaking experience that helps on applications to speak at various conferences and providing an income stream that is fairly consistent.

Additional perks I’ve received by working with World Health have been winning trips to Cancun 4 times, traveling to various conferences and achieving different certifications, all paid for by the company. I’ve also been able to develop my own career path for Post-Rehab training to help individuals recover from injury and illness, which allows me to grow as a professional and chase a physical fitness instruction career direction that I want to follow.

In Closing

It doesn’t really matter where you decide to gain employment, be it in your own basement or in a big-box gym. What matters the most is that you find a way to make the situation work for you, and use any limitations that may be present with the specific facility to your advantages, and make it your own.

Continue to increase your knowledge base as much as possible in whichever direction you feel empowers you the most. No facility will ever stop you from reading more, listening to more audio recordings or watching more educational videos, and they will all openly encourage you to form business relationships with providers of similar services. Regardless of where you hang your hat, make it your home and work hard at being the best you can be.

Please pass this on via email or social media to a trainer you know that may be looking where to work as a personal trainer

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Spread the word, Personal Training is Prevention

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”

“Use it or lose it”

“Exercise is Medicine”

Somehow these common sense sayings have yet to translate into medical professionals and their patients busting down personal trainer’s doors. There is only one reason for this delay, people must not understand that exercise is the primary prevention tool, and it is also the primary modality of personal trainers!

So, where do we start? How do we bridge this gap? The following will give you some steps and resources to take this weakness in our industry and make it an opportunity for all of us.

Step 1: Give a shit, and share that enthusiasm

If you’re like me you got into the health and fitness industry to make a difference in the health, happiness and performance of people- in large part because we ourselves have found the magic in moving regularly and with intensity and have the burning desire to share that magic. Dr. Mike Evans does a great job at detailing the benefits of giving a shit about your health for just 30 minutes per day in case you run into someone who doesn’t already know in the video below

Find opportunities to spread the word of exercise and prevention, sharing is caring afterall.

Step 2: Identify who you want to help

If you want to position yourself as a prevention specialist you have to make some decisions about what population you want to work with. Prevention can be as broad as reducing all-cause mortality and musculoskeletal injury (MSI), to more specific secondary prevention of the recurrence of cancer, or cardiovascular events all the way to reducing the number and severity of painful sites in fibromyalgia sufferers or the improving the functional scoring of a Parkinson Disease patient.

Once you’ve identified the population you want to work with, find out where they are physically and digitally (as exampled in the links throughout this article) and what resources and language is being used presently and reach out!

Options to connect include attending education sessions relevant to the population you service, seek opportunities with local groups to speak and share your story and goals and in general get involved in the discussion.

Step 3: Provide relevant services

Once you’ve found your niche and identified the gatekeepers and the language required, ensure you have a relevant and realistic assessment process to support them and you with enough information to make appropriate recommendations and training programs.

This requires an understanding of industry standards for testing and assessing and an ability to move through the research to find interventions and concepts that will make a difference. If you plan on training clients with special needs, do a Google search for their professional association and get in touch.

One quick phone call or email should be enough for you to obtain all of the appropriate scales and measures that they use to measure their patients. It’s your responsibility to find out these relevant services and use them to monitor your client.

Step 4: Stay Current

New data comes out all the time, set Google alerts and Medscape alerts for the topics of interest to you and let your clients and your network know what you’re up to by sharing what you’ve learned via direct messages or social media posting… again, sharing is caring!

Step 5: SEEK COLLABORATION!

Act professionally, record-keep professionally (SOAP notes are the medical standard and will help you learn much more about your client) and you should feel no intimidation speaking with a doctor or any other member of your clients circle of care. Jon Goodman and physical therapist Mike Reinold wrote a piece on collaboration that’s a must read. Click here to open it in a new window to read after.

Put Your Heart In It…

…Your goal is to change lives, change the world, help people enjoy life to its fullest. Have this passion firmly rooted and the rest is just back-up material, but have a handle on it, because we need excellent professionals to spread the word!

photo credit: Matthew Kenwrick

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“Hi and welcome to Jon’s Totally Awesome Fitness, I’m Jon.”

“Hi, great to meet you. I’ve heard good things, my name is Jenny.”

“Hi Jenny, I am an NSCA CSCS and certified Kinesiologist. My passion is helping others and I love working with people from all different walks of life including, but not exclusive to, the following: older age men and women, athletes, weekend warriors, people completely new to training, people getting ready for an event, or men and women that just want to lose an extra couple of pounds and firm up.

Here are a bunch of testimonials to show you that I’m great at what I do…

*PLUNK. Testimonials get dropped on the desk*

My personal fitness philosophy is that fitness should be made simple. You see, I believe that there’s a lot of conflicting information today–noise–it’s everywhere and it doesn’t help anybody. Unfortunately, a lot of people are more interested in selling you their system than they are in teaching and empowering you to take the best of all different systems FOR YOU.

Nutrition is the same way. You see, the supplement industry is rampant these days. There’s a lot of money to be made in selling you fat loss pills or powders to help you gain muscle. I don’t believe that most people need to take any of these. Instead, I’m going to work with you to build up great habits to eat a full diet of real foods.

I love this stuff, so let me do the work for you. I attend tons of conferences each year, every single one is listed below on this page of paper. Here–look. I read a lot of books that make me look super smaht when I tell you about them because they have fancy names. I also do a lot of certifications so I can have 27 letters behind my name that resembles alphabet soup but looks super important.

So yeah, umm, want to buy training? It costs $500/month. I’ll provide you with workouts built specially for you and a diet plan that will help you get more energy, burn more fat, and build more muscle.

Ok, ready to go? Good. Great! Use this paypal button and pay me and we’ll get going.”

Holy hell, shut up already!

A Client Intake Doesn’t Go Like This So…

…Why do most contact forms on personal trainers and gyms websites look like this.

When a client comes into your gym for an initial intake, you should be asking as many questions as possible to get to know the client and create a relationship with them. Only then do you decide which specific services or aspects of your education would be of most interest.

Yet, when I look at the web forms built by trainers promoting their online training services or even  for trainers looking to gain clients online to train locally in person, they inevitably look something like my asinine example above.

This article will teach you exactly what you need to know to construct web forms to mimic a sales meeting. Careful consideration must be made when choosing your questions and writing the simple questions. Most of all, like a sales meeting, price isn’t mentioned until the client is convinced that you are the right person to help them.

Where to Put the Web Form

The example I’m going to use is the form I used to gather information for applicants to my Viralnomics Pro^TM and Viralnomics Elite^TM coaching groups. While this is for an online business and branding developing program, the concepts are identical.

The first and most obvious place to put your form is under a “coaching” or “training” tab on your page.

The second place is the “about” page on your site. I actually consider the “about” page to be the most important page on your website. Whenever somebody new comes to your page, they will check out the original blog post or piece of content that originally brought them there (or home page if it’s through search) and want to know who you are.

The about page should not be about you, it should be about the benefits you offer the person landing on your page. After you’ve extolled the benefits, you can add in a couple lines about why you’re awesome. To save my phalanges in explaining how to optimize the entire page, I’ll refer you to a previous post I wrote called, The Most Important Page on Your Blog–The About Page.

If you are wanting to get online personal training clients or offline clients through your website, you might want to put your contact form at the bottom of this page as well.

The 5 Mistakes to Avoid

1. Talking About Yourself First and Revealing Price.

When you first meet a lead offline, you don’t hammer them with everything you can think of that you think makes you look awesome. In Selling Personal Training in 5 Steps I talk about the importance of asking open-ended questions and building a strong relationship with your lead before breaching the subject of training or price. You should do the same online with your online form.

Nowhere on your website should you have a reference to price. If a client hasn’t yet been convinced of value, the cheapest trainer in the world is too expensive. If you’ve built a relationship and the client is convinced that you are the right person to help them, price becomes secondary.

2. Asking Only Fitness Questions.

Ask questions to get to know your client. In my form on the Viralnomics coaching page, you’ll notice that I ask applicants to tell me their favorite books. Reading is a big part of my life and, chances are, that if an applicant names a couple great books we’ll get along.

What are your interests? Do you love to travel? If so, then ask the person filling out your form their favorite place to vacation or their favorite locale in the world.

Getting people to fill out this information has 3 benefits:

1. Sets you apart. – Conventional is boring. Conventional gets ignored. Ask somebody to quote their favorite line from a movie and they’ll start reminiscing about a fond memory. Immediately your services become associated with that fond memory.
2. Gives you a talking point when you contact them. – When you contact a potential lead would you rather say, “thank you for your inquiry. My prices for training are……. Would you like to get started?” Or would you prefer to say, “Wow! You love Indiana Jones too. Remember that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana and Sallah uncover the Wall of Souls?”
3. Helps you pick out the people you really want to work with. – Your time is your most valuable commodity. My clients became some of my closest friends when I trained. Asking questions to pre-determine whether or not you’d enjoy working with a client is just as important as finding out their exercise histories.

Most of all, people buy trainers, not training. The easiest way to get somebody to do business with you is to get them to like you first. And why not? You’re hella likeable, so show it.

3. Not Using Testimonials Effectively.

You should absolutely include a couple testimonials on your contact page above your form for social proof. There are a couple things to consider when including your testimonials:

1. More is not necessarily better. – This page should be kept short and clean. I suggest one testimonial that represents each major demographic you want to appeal to with your services.
2. Include as much detail as you can. – Ask permission to include the full name, job, and a picture (perferable a bright picture of the person smiling).
3. Try to have them include a line on overcoming the biggest problems facing your target market. – For example, do you want to train busy professionals? Well then at least one testimonial should be about how great you are at programming short workouts and tailoring it to a busy schedule. Know your target audience and all the reasons they feel they might have when considering purchasing training. Use the testimonials to assure them you can help them with exactly that problem.

4. Not getting the Client to Sell Themselves to You.

This could be the BIGGEST reason why people aren’t valuing your service enough, and it’s your fault. Don’t tell people to fill out the form for a free consultation or assessment. Instead, tell them to fill out your form TO APPLY for a 30 minute consultation.

At least one of your questions should be getting your lead to tell you why they specifically chose you as a coach or why they want coaching or how committed they are in achieving their goals (or all 3). By the time a potential lead clicks your button, they should be thinking of all of the different reasons why they want to buy your service and will be checking their email hourly waiting for a response.

5. Not Making the Button Name Specific.

It’s been shown that click rates are higher the more specific the button name is. So instead of using a basic “submit”, name your button specific to the service that the lead the applying for. You’ll notice in my example above that the button says “apply for my strategy call” and not “submit”.

Bonus Mistake to Avoid – Not Being Yourself.

Crack jokes and show your personality. You must like the people you work with. Like attracts like. If you’re a nerd, make some nerd jokes. If you’re a guys guy, make some manly man comments. I can’t help you figure out how to be yourself, that’s up to you. My best advice is that if you want to say something or make a silly analogy, you should probably go ahead and do it.

Looking to Build or Grow an Online Training Business?

You should be. Training clients online is a great way to supplement your income with a couple thousand dollars a month for predominantly offline trainers. Or if you want to make a full switch, online trainers can often make upwards of 6-figures a year working from anywhere in the world.

The example I used for this email was from the form I use for my Viralnomics Pro^TM and Viralnomics Elite^TM coaching groups. These groups offer both group support and one-on-one support for people looking to develop or grow an online business in the health and fitness industries. If you’re a SERIOUS ACTION TAKER and tired of spinning your wheels, one of these groups may be right for you. This is for both aspiring and experienced online fitness entrepreneurs.

To apply for a free 30 minute consultation with me, go to http://www.viralnomics.com/coaching/

The best software that I’ve come across for managing, automating, and systematizing an offline or online personal training clientele is this one (click to sign up for a free 30-day trial today). Aside from an easy to use interface, you can link it to an existing webpage or use a free custom web page provided for you. In addition, you can easily build workout templates and integrate with YouTube to take advantage of the biggest exercise library on the net.

Sign up for your free 30-day trial today at www.theptdc.com/trainerize

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The following is a guest post by Mark Fisher of Mark Fisher Fitness in New York City. He’s going to teach you how to harness the power of ninjas to build a successful training business, all while riding a Unicorn…

My goal in this article is to put a nuclear bomb inside your bunghole to ensure you live up to your epic potential.

I want you to have the business of your dreams. I want you to swim around in a giant vat of dollar bills like Scrooge McDuck. I want you to have the lifestyle of your dreams, whether you work for four hours a week, or you crush it 24/7. But most importantly, I want you to honor the reason you got into this business. I want you to make a difference in people’s lives.

I co-own a boutique gym in midtown Manhattan called Mark Fisher Fitness. We may very well be the weirdest “gym” in the world. We don’t even use the word “gym.”

In fact… we hate gyms. This is why we have a Clubhouse. An Enchanted Ninja Clubhouse of Glory and Dreams. (We call our clients Ninjas.) We have a book club, we do a lot of fund raising for charities like Broadway Cares/ Equity Fights AIDS, and we are as crass and vulgar as we are relentlessly positive and nurturing.

At MFF, we train a lot of people who never have (and never would) workout elsewhere. We’ve been called the “Broadway Fitness Cult” because we also train many of the top theatre professionals in the country (directors, composers, stars, chorus boys, stage managers, agents… the whole gamut of the industry). Our clientele is shockingly diverse in age, gender, size, ethnicity, nationality… we are a rainbow of the human experience.

Don’t worry. We’ve since installed a disco ball in the window too.

We are RIDICULOUS humans. But we are also very serious about fitness. We are as well known for our consistent and dramatic results as we are for our outrageous antics.

And we are also serious about business.

In 15 months, MFF has expanded three times and may have to expand yet again because we’re bursting at the seams. In this same time span, we went from 3 full time employees and a part time office manager to 11 full time trainers, 5 full time office staff, and about 20 work study Ninjas who run the front desk in exchange for bartering. We also went from zero clients to nearly 400.

After chats with some trusted fitness industry rockstars like John Romaniello, Dan John, Clif Harski, and Neghar Fonooni, we’ve come to appreciate MFF is a rare bird in our field.

If you’re running a brick and mortar facility, I hope to expand your horizons as to what’s possible. For those running boutique gyms, I believe we are in an age of artisanal fitness. If you currently own or plan on owning a gym, this Bud’s for you.

Your Team is EVERYTHING

Seriously. They are EVERYTHING.

The rest of this article is worthless if you don’t have the right people working with you. Particularly if you’re going to grow. Your biggest logistical bottleneck will always be attracting the right talent. And if you don’t know how to take care of people and be a leader, you won’t have the right people working with you.

At the end of the day, the most important marketing you can do is having world class customer service. This means finding amazing humans beings who are passionate about your vision.

It’s a cliché, but it’s true; you can train people on skillz, but you can’t make them burn with the light of a thousand suns to change people’s lives. And if you’re in the fitness industry, I hope that’s your end game.

One of our very first hires is one of my best friends who had never done any training before. My business partner came into town for the night, and after an evening of partying and hanging out at a strip club, we decided he was the perfect person to come onboard.

(As an aside, I also know people recommend that you shouldn’t work with friends. I disagree. It’s of course prudent to make sure there are contracts and everyone is on the same page, but I actually recommend it. Yes, not all friends are ideal for shared business ventures. But if you have NO friends that you would do business with, I think you need better friends.)

Hire for awesomeness. Hire for reliability, hustle, and passion. Hire for a Give A Shit-ness. If they really, truly Give A Shit, you can train for everything else.

Then once they’re onboard, pay them, empower them, and train them to kick ass.

PAY THEM: As Daniel Pink notes in Drive, you need to first pay them enough to get money off the table as an issue. Does this mean our payroll is higher than it could be? Yes. Does this mean we could be more profitable? In the short term, sure.

But we’re playing the long game. This means more ownership from everyone on the team. It means less turn-over. It means affording a certain quality of life to the very people who are building our business.

And while you need to pay them “enough,” if you’re creating a world-class working environment, people don’t need you to bribe them to bring their bare minimum to the table.

To be clear, I completely and totally reject the E-Myth myth. Yes, there is a difference between entrepreneurs, managers, and technicians. But I don’t think it will serve you to reduce your team of Artist Warriors to a bunch of Robot Monkeys.

But what about creating Systems with a capital S? Sure! I’m all for systems. We create protocols and systems for EVERYTHING. Training the trainers, designing programs, nutrition recommendations, customer service, marketing, sales, prospect funnels. Systems are necessary but…

EMPOWER THEM: My whole life is a War with Robots, and I only want to work with artists. It’s messier that way, but that’s life. I need people who don’t need to refer to a manual for delicate, raw human encounters.

I need people who know how to handle a Ninja when they burst into tears because they’re boyfriend broke up with them. I need people who can intuit from a Ninja’s energy on a given day that he’s stressed about work and shouldn’t do a deadlift PR. I need people who can feel the energy is lagging in class, so everyone in the Ninja Clubhouse should stop what they’re doing and have a spontaneous dance party.

An automaton can’t do that. Find people you can trust to make good game time decisions based on your core values, then let them have at it.

TRAIN THEM: While I want them to be artists and honor what is intrinsically unique about them, our culture is built on kaizen; never ending improvement. We have TWO weekly team meetings. We relentlessly drill not only the nuances of technique cueing, but we also work the hell out of our life coaching skills (two of our team members are Life Coaches and we offer it as an add-on service).

If you want the best team possible, you have to help them pay for education, you have to get them books to read, you have to encourage them to follow their particular fitness passions. You also need to understand that they will burn out if they don’t have any work/ life balance, and they will not be able to blow your clients’ minds if they work the typical trainer-triple-split day of before work, lunchtime, and after work.

And while I “manage” by providing guidelines, checklists, and accountability, I think the more important position is “servant leader.”

I give them feedback when I see something that can be improved, but I also constantly look to catch them doing something right. I try to check in with them as often as I can to see how else I can improve their life here. I want their perspective if and when I’m inadvertently being an obstacle. I celebrate them and cherish them every chance I get because without our team, there IS no MFF.

Lastly, leadership is different than management. To paraphrase a quote, if you want to build a rocket ship, it’s necessary to have people who have the skills and technical know how. But it’s more important to light them on fire with a longing for the stars.

Only Connect

Jazzhands are an underrated element of business success

At MFF, Ninjas come for the six pack, but they stick around to cope with the anxieties of modernity.

In an increasingly connected world, many humans still seek a sense of community. Say what you want about Crossfit, but it’s something they’ve done really well as an institution.

Not only is social support a well known factor for fitness results and sustainability, I believe a sense of community is going to be key in the age of artisanal fitness. For years, most gym goers had two choices; they rented equipment and slogged away listing to their iPod, or they paid someone to give them one on one attention. Both of these models still have their utility for a certain type of person.

At MFF, we prefer group classes and semi-private training. Not only is it a great business model from a financial standpoint, the sense of community dramatically improves results and member retention.

We spend a lot of our time, energy, and money on trying to create the best possible customer service possible. We throw parties. We have theme days where we decorate and everyone gets dressed up. We write hand-written cards to celebrate their fitness victories, send condolences about deaths in their family, and wish them well on new jobs. In spite of having 400 clients, the entire team knows the name of almost all the Ninjas. We know their goals, we know their backgrounds, we know their movement needs.

We also rely on the Ninjas to help create the culture.

Two of MFF’s most notable images are Ninjas and unicorns. Both of these came from our Ninjas latching on to an off-the-cuff comment I made while teaching class. By listening to what sparks their imagination, it allows us to build a sense of ownership into our community. We also constantly look for feedback about what they like and don’t like, and immediately take action as soon as they make us aware of an opportunity to do something better.

Perhaps the greatest testament to this community is the fact that we have several groups and programs run by Ninjas, for Ninjas (just like FUBU!).

Our most popular portal program is a six week intensive called Snatched in 6 Weeks. The Ninjas have organized their own alumni organization called Snatched By Association that functions within the broader MFF world. It includes a Facebook forum, a Gmail calendar to coordinate classes, nutrition accountability buddies, and daily inspirational emails. With no official MFF effort (outside of love, emotional support, and a bit of donated space), the program has been wildly successful and further strengthened our community.

If you’re looking to create an artisanal fitness business, creating a strong culture is important. This is achieved via a relentless focus on customer service, empowering your clients to co-create the culture, and by listening closely to their kudos and jeers.

Let Your Freak Flag Fly

This is a picture of me soaring through the sky while riding a dragon.

Perhaps the most important element in building a kick ass business is being authentic. This requires courage; you have to own whatever is unique about you. Invariably, people will think your nuts.

And so it goes…

In the mid-2000’s, the elite ranks of the fitness industry interwebz was dominated by the Strength Coach Era. And these guys are still around for good reason; they’re awesome. They’re super smart and done a lot to move our young industry forward. They created gyms and businesses with words like “athlete,” “results,” “elite,” “performance,” and of course “strength and conditioning.”

They provided a bridge from the bodybuilding world to more progressive training protocols, they wrote articles for T-Nation, and a generation of young men who loved sports got better and faster results.

In the past few years we’ve seen the rise of the Nerd Fitness Era. Embodied by a generation of men a few years younger than the Strength Coaches, these guys not only applied these sexier training protocols… but they also played Dungeons and Dragons in high school. They were “gamers,” they could quote Lord of the Rings, and their blogs, fitness products, and podcasts were filled with references to 80’s Saturday morning cartoons.

These pioneers brought these new rules of lifting to a new demographic. Yes, many of them also wrote for T-Nation, and many of them did in fact find a way to be strong and jacked, but they spoke to (and as) the guys who got picked on in high school. And another broad swath of young men was inspired that they too could achieve their fitness goals.

As the internet was ushering a new era of fitness, another shift was taking place in the brick and mortar wing of the industry. This same 10-year period saw the slow decline of the big box culture, and the rise of the boutique, coaching-intensive training facility. These studios took the progressive information the internet had to offer and focused on actually getting results for their clients. These smaller businesses have often out-maneuvered larger and machine-ier gym franchises, and the industry and society as a whole benefited.

I believe we are in the dawn of a new era. This is the dawn of artisanal fitness.

We are already seeing this online. The mostly white straight male rockstars of progressive online fitness are already starting to share the stage with important female voices. Different ethnicities, sexual preferences, and ages will not be far behind.

And as pertains to our conversation, the brick and mortar training facilities also have a new opportunity. Simply getting great results is no longer enough to differentiate yourself as more and more boutiques are opening up. If you want to build a superior business, you need that extra special “something.”

I want to be clear, I’m not suggesting finding a gimmick per se. Your extra special “something” is the love child of whatever is unique about you (and your team) and whatever niche you’re looking to serve.

If it’s not authentic, it’s not gonna work.

At MFF, we are ridiculous humans who are serious about fitness. We are legitimately not right in the head. I don’t recommend copying us because I don’t think you can pull it off.

We constantly reference vulgar sexual images and fantastical imagery as a teaching tool. One of my trainers often takes off his pants and teaches with a “mangina” (don’t even ask). Our clients spend as much time laughing as they do sweating, and it’s not uncommon to have group sing alongs mid-class.

As one of our Ninjas said, at the Ninja Clubhouse, we all sit at the cool kids’ table. The former and current jocks have been well served by the strength coaches. The nerdy straight guys have been well served by the nerd fitness bro-thaurities. The blue ocean opportunity is the 80 plus percent of the country that doesn’t currently belong to a gym.

At MFF, we pride ourselves on being the aisle of Misfit Toys.

The obese but sassy woman who is terrified by what her doctor told her at her last check-up. The chronically underweight gay man who wants the physique confidence to finally proposition a sexy stranger at the bar. The corporate lawyer lady who is secretly in a punk rock band. The IT start-up guy who is over 50 and is finally willing to tackle the trauma of always being picked last for sports.

These are the courageous ones. They are bravely jumping off a cliff to forge a new life of health and hotness, and it is our honor to catch them.

We know MFF is not for everyone, and that’s ok. Our credo can can probably be summed up by legendary fashion designer Mary Quant; “Good taste is death, vulgarity is life.” Everything about our brand of fitness is completely authentic to who we are as ridiculous humans, and we speak in the voice that is most effective and enjoyable to our target audience. We completely respect that a lot of people will NOT vibe with how we roll.

So I ask you…

What is different about YOU? What is YOUR story? What do you and you alone have to offer the world? How are you going to imbibe the most progressive strategies in training and make something new?

And who is your audience? Who are the people with whom you long to create a community? Who do you love most in the whole world?

Too many folks stumble in this industry because they love sports or exercise science, but seem to lack a profound love of humanity. Yes, being great at training is a must. Master your domain knowledge. But if you don’t genuinely love love LOVE people, I don’t think this is the right business for you.

And if you think there’s nothing special about you, or you can’t think of what particular audience you hope to serve… think harder. Many of us were brainwashed by a school system that wanted to produce Obedient Beige Robots.

You are not a robot. You have a freak flag, you just misplaced it. Your audience is counting on you to find it. They’re waiting to hear your unique voice.

Figure out what makes you unique. Take the time to be specific about what type of person you love most. Then let this shine through in every piece of marketing, every training cue, and every choice of decoration in your space.

As Seth Godin has noted, the Industrial Age is over. We are all artists now.

I can’t Wait to Get Out of Bed in the Morning

I don’t want to pretend like I have it all figured out. I don’t. I’m just like every other intellectually serious person, painfully aware I’m making it up as I go along. But I’ll say this; I’ve created a business that I love so much I literally can’t wait to get out of bed in the morning so I can start working. I want this for you too.

I think if anything really sets MFF apart from some of our competitors, it’s a willingness to lean into the discomfort and go our own way.

We don’t care about competing for money or fame. We care about competing in happiness. We want to create the maximum amount of smiles. We barely even consider ourselves to be in the fitness industry. Yes, we do fitness training. But if you really want to create the magical business of your dreams, it’s about a lot more than reps and variables and protein.

I love Cirque de Solei. They are superlative at every element they incorporate into their shows. They put different pieces of different arts together, they’ve completely revolutionized the cultural concept of a “circus,” and some of their shows occasionally suck. Because that’s just part of the deal when you walk the tight rope.

I want MFF to better than Cirque de Solei. There. I said it.

We’re not trying to just build a nice business. We love money, but that’s not why we exist. We want to be an institution. We want to be around for 100 years. We want a modern art exhibit curated as part of our group fitness classroom. We want to one day have a non-profit foundation that allows us to pursue various charitable causes. We want to produce Broadway musicals, and we want to write books and produce TV shows about psychological jujitsu and progressive technique in mental hygiene. We want the mayor of NYC to commission a statue of a unicorn to be placed on the corner of 39th st. and 9th ave. to commemorate the birthplace of the Grand Unicorn Experiment.

I think business should be the most profoundly satisfying and creative art form imaginable. If you think business is lame or boring, I lovingly submit you’re doing it wrong. Dream bigger dreams.

I’m passionate about the fitness industry. I’m so proud of how far we’ve come and I’m overwhelmed with excitement for the potential we have to take it to yet another level. There are tidal changes taking place in the larger economy, the mercurial nature of the technology threatens to disrupt entire industries in the blink of an eye, and we face the very real possibility of health care epidemic. You are well positioned to make your dreams come true by helping others make their dreams come true.

While I hope some of my observations can spur you to actually take some action steps to build or improve an amazing business, most of all I hope there’s a nuclear warhead in your bunghole.

I hope you’re dreaming epic dreams that threaten to swallow you whole. I hope you’re emboldened to be willing to fail again and again on the path to “better.” No pressure, but the whole world is waiting for you…

[Note from Jon] The pictures were fun, but you gotta watch this video to get the full idea of just how inane, crazy, ludicrous, and ingenious Mark is:

About the Author

Mark Fisher is the co-owner of Mark Fisher Fitness, a boutique gym in midtown Manhattan.  MFF particularly loves working with folks that hate working out and/or sat alone at lunch in middle school.  Our philosophy of training and nutrition is based on the Albert Einstein dictum, “Make everything as simple as possible, but not any simpler.” In his spare time, Mark likes dropping F bombs and playing with puppies.   Check MFF out on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and YouTube.  Seriously, do it.  You’ll be stoked you did.

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The video below is a live webinar run by PTDC coach Karsten Jensen

In this presentation, Karsten gives a full description of his flexible periodization system. After spending decades in Norway training Olympic and World Class athletes as the Danish strength and conditioning coach, Karsten has taken high performance periodization principles and made them accessible to the general public.

In the video below and accompanying links, Jonathan demonstrates creative new exercises that give you the best of both worlds (stability and mobility) to ensure that yours and your clients abs look great and function.

To access the webinar and download the handout, please be sure you are logged in and are a member of the Inner Circle program. If you are currently logged in, you will see the video below. If not, please log in below and then scroll down to the “webinar archives” section to find this post. If you are not a member, learn more and subscribe to thePTDC.com Inner Circle program.

[Content protected for Inner Circle members only]

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