See You at Summit!

We are very busy at IDEA headquarters planning activities for our 20th anniversary and getting ready for the 2002 IDEA^® Personal Trainer International Summit in Baltimore, Maryland, March 1 to 3. Since this is our special “Summit issue,” we thought it would be a good time to highlight some of the sessions programmed for the event.

As most of you probably know, we had our first convention for personal trainers in 1989. Eleven years of planning experience have taught us to use your feedback
to design conventions that truly meet your needs. We take great care in choosing the best presenters in the industry, as well as the topics you have requested through our surveys. We also solicit feedback from our personal training committee on where the industry is headed in the future. In addition, we conduct two industry surveys each year to determine the newest trends. These layers of information help us determine the must-have topics for the following year.

The caliber of personal trainers has increased significantly over the years and we have adjusted by offering a higher level of education at our conventions. We not only offer program design and training techniques, but we also focus on business training and financial prosperity. Our goal is to help you maintain a profitable livelihood and develop a successful career path.

This year we will focus on some exciting new trends, including lifestyle coaching. We are bringing in one of the country’s foremost experts on the subject to give a keynote address, and we’ll follow that up with a track on how you can incorporate coaching into your business as an additional revenue stream. Also prominent at this year’s event is Pilates and yoga for trainers. Four sessions are planned in the body of the convention, plus two pre-conference sessions will address this trend. We also are excited to offer you many new and unique nutrition sessions this year. Your survey feedback tells us this is a very important area of focus for you.

We hope you will join us in Baltimore next month for an exciting event where we also will announce the IDEA Personal Trainer of the Year. We look forward to seeing you there.

In this issue, you will find feature articles written by two of our Summit presenters. Juan Carlos Santana, MS, gives us a preview of his session in his article “The Four Pillars of Human Movement,” in which he has distilled the complexity of human movement into four major categories. Susan Cantwell’s article, “Lifestyle Coaching Evolves,” underscores reasons why coaching is a viable profit center.

Finally, we would like to welcome the new executive editor of IDEA Personal Trainer, Sandy Todd Webster. Sandy comes to IDEA with publishing experience in sports, health care and fitness. Please share your ideas with her to help shape IDEA Personal Trainer into an even better resource for you and your colleagues.

We hope everything is going well for all of you. We welcome your comments and feedback; just e-mail us at www.IDEAfit.com.

In good health,

IDEA PERSONAL Trainer FEbruary 2002