Communication
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.
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.
The Best Interview Questions You’re Not Asking
The search for top talent can be difficult and is often made no easier during the interview process. How do you choose questions that will elicit the information you need to select the right person for the job?
Mind-Body Personal Training
When Tanya Colucci, MS, trains clients, she pulls from many different resources to offer the best results possible. Owner of Tanya Colucci Myofascial Release Therapy in Bluffton, South Carolina, Colucci believes in an integrative mind-body approach, which appears to resonate with many people. Case in point: client Aileen Worthington, age 71, who has osteoporosis.
Four Easy-to-Use Email Tools to Launch Your Email Newsletter
Learn the pros and cons of four popular tools.
How to Teach HIIT to Everyone
High-intensity interval training has been riding a wave of popularity, and it seems everyone wants to give it a try. However, intense interval training is nothing new. Group fitness instructors have been teaching HIIT for a long time. Fartlek training, for example, was big in the 1970s. The 1980s brought us high-impact classes, and the 1990s introduced indoor cycling (think repeat hill training). HIIT is a fantastic workout and an effective way to train energy systems; build muscle; lose weight; enhance strength, power and agility; and prevent adaptation.
7 Ways to Help a Client Boost Adherence
Once a client has decided to make nutritional changes to support weight loss, you can play a key role in developing an action plan that is most likely to support those changes and contribute to long-term adherence. following are seven strategies a client can use to support adherence to a particular diet, or rather “eating plan” or “lifestyle change.”
Seven Reasons People Join a Fitness Facility, Part One
The daily responsibilities of owning and managing a fitness facility can be overwhelming. Along with all the usual details, like class scheduling and staff management, a primary concern is the danger of reduced revenue due to member turnover.
How to Become a Better Negotiator
Learning how to negotiate is a necessary business skill. Whether you’re dealing with opening a new business, developing a client contract or asking for a raise,
your ability as a negotiator can have a significant impact on the outcome. Eldonna Lewis Fernandez, author of Think Like a Negotiator, offers the following tips to up your negotiation game:
Eight Principles of Behavior Modification
The ongoing and stubborn health epidemic in the United States, combined with healthcare reform and a growing body of behavior change research, has sparked a revolution. It has become clear that “expert advice” does not translate into behavior change for people who are not ready to change. After all, despite doctors’ orders, nearly a third of prescriptions are left unfilled (Tamblyn et al. 2014). Despite federal dietary guidelines, the average American’s food intake lines up with MyPlate recommendations on only 2% of days (NPD Group 2011).
