Communication
Streamline Your Yoga Cuing
When you were new to teaching yoga, you had a lot to focus on. You navigated the room, demonstrated poses, gave hands-on adjustments, held space for emotions and skillfully managed time. In the early days, it may have felt like a victory just to make it through a class successfully!
7 Ways We All Can Bridge the Gap
Over the course of writing this column, I’ve had the opportunity to interview 60-plus experts from a variety of fields, including medicine, nutrition, exercise science, fitness and psychology. In this, the final installment of the series, I highlight major themes and key insights that professionals across the healthcare continuum use to help clients bridge their personal gaps and challenges.
Get in the Game!
Fitness facilities compete to offer cutting-edge movement trends, but what about cutting-edge technology? The fitness world is becoming ever more virtual, and incoming clients are looking for more than a fun indoor cycling class or a cool cardio machine; they want to play a game!
Physical Literacy Is a Journey, Not a Destination
Steve Boyle is the CEO of the National Association of Physical Literacy (NAPL) and principal/founder of 2-4-1 Sports, a national organization that teaches children physical literacy using sports sampling through camps, clinics and school-based programming. Recently recognized by the Aspen Institute’s Sports & Society Program as one of eight model programs in the United States in the original Project Play report, 2-4-1 Sports embodies its motto, Life’s 2 Short 4 Just 1 Sport
6 Ways to Help Clients Rediscover the Joy in Exercise
Getting people to move more begins with shifting the fitness conversation from tomorrow’s gains to today’s joy, experts say.
Behavior Modification Strategies
Behavior modification can be a tricky thing when it’s just you and your client working through challenging issues. But what happens when others are proving to be obstacles to progress? IDEA asked a handful of fitness professionals how they assist or advise clients whose friends and family may be sabotaging their efforts to get healthy.
I often ask clients about their social habits and suggest, for example, that "girls' night out" could be replaced by a fun activity that does not revolve around eating. Discussing strategies with clients in preparation for events like that is often helpful.
Clinch Your Coaching Style
You look across the hall at Popular Instructor’s class and marvel at how she packs the house day after day, week after week. You’ve studied her style and tried your best to emulate her music, cuing, choreography—even the way she dresses—but your numbers are shrinking instead of growing. What are you doing wrong?
Building Positive Client Experiences
Pete McCall, MS, CSCS, is an ACE Certified Personal Trainer and longtime educator in the fitness industry. For the past 15 years, he has dedicated himself to helping clients improve their fitness levels and educating fitness professionals in countries ranging from Russia to Thailand. Prior to starting his own personal training and consulting business, McCall served as an exercise physiologist for ACE, where he was instrumental in helping to develop the ACE Integrated Fitness Training® Model and contributing to the ACE Personal Trainer Manual (4th Edition).
An Introduction to Motivational Interviewing
Motivational interviewing is a communication approach where a coach helps a client work through ambivalence toward behavioral change. It is highly effective for people who are ambivalent about change.
Tailoring A Behavior Change Intervention
Fitness professionals can get a good sense of how ready a person is to change their behavior by using motivational interviewing’s “readiness ruler.” The ruler includes two questions aimed at understanding how important change is to a client and how confident the client is that he or she can make a change.
Dynamic Duos
“Every day we get to get up together with this joint goal of challenging the world to change. Every day we gain traction,” says Colin Milner, CEO and founder of the International Council on Active Aging® (ICAA), which he runs with his wife Julie, the chief operating officer.
How Single Steps Lead to Grand Results
Homeward bound.
About a year ago, personal trainer Jordan Rudolph received word that a married couple in their 60s wanted to meet with him. He had been working at Snap Fitness at the time, but the potential clients insisted that home-based training was nonnegotiable. Rudolph was initially nervous to meet with them—this would be his first experience training in a client’s home.
A Best HIIT Protocol?
High-intensity interval training seems all the rage these days, as both anecdotal information and scientific evidence support its claims to be an efficient and effective form of exercise. However, many experts are concerned that deconditioned clients may think the programming is too tough. Is there a way to facilitate HIIT sessions that doesn’t leave novice exercisers feeling overwhelmed?
A new study says yes.
Keeping Attention in Relevant Context
Once you have your clients’ full attention, their brains start processing the information you are sharing.
Are You Creating a Supportive Customer Experience?
Whether you run a large personal training facility or a one-person business, treating your customers well should be at the heart of everything you do.
Four Language Swaps to Improve Client Adherence
What you say to your personal training clients can can affect how well they perform. Be sure you choose your words wisely so that clients maximize their potential.
Chronic Pain in Fitness Professionals
An Objective Eye
It can be difficult to take a step back and be objective when it comes to your own health. Katy Bowman, MS, director of the Restorative Exercise Institute in Ventura, California, and author
of Move Your DNA: Restore Your Health Through Natural Movement (Propriometrics Press 2014), suggests you write down
the following:
How Do Personal Trainers Stay Motivated?
IDEA asked two personal trainers this question: “How do you stay motivated as a personal trainer?” Here are their answers:
Fitness Prescription Works!
Praise for IDEA Personal Trainer Institute™ East
I am the health and wellness coordinator for the City of Bloomington
Parks and Recreation Department in Bloomington, Indiana. I’m writing to
tell you about the Bloomington Walking Club. This informal group meets
for a guided group walk on the paved trails surrounding Olcott Park
every Thursday evening, weather permitting, April–October. Walkers of
all ability levels are welcome, and participants choose their own pace.
Profiles of Pain and Perseverance
In February 2006, Danny Strong was on top of the world. After years of working as a gym manager, he had opened his own personal training gym, making his dream a reality. The husband and father was also eager to welcome a second child into the family. A month after receiving the keys to his new facility, he took his family on a trip to visit his godmother. While on the road, Strong lost control of his vehicle and was hit by a tractor-trailer traveling at full speed. His pregnant wife, Sandra Urbano Strong, was killed instantly.