The Real Deal On Personal Training

Call me a low-life geek, but I’ve been surfing the online Fitness and Personal Training forums lately, just getting a pulse for the training industry and promoting Super-Trainer. Well, I was pretty shocked to find what the biggest point of discussion is in the field of Personal Training …

There’s a pretty heated debate from within the training community on the issue of credentials in Personal Training. There’s concern, interest, and just plain mud-slinging going on about what qualifications trainers need to have and what makes a good trainer.

Now, making better trainers is what Super-Trainer is about - you’ll notice a high density count of the words value, integrity, quality, knowledge, experience, and service in the posts here.

Our purpose is to help trainers get committed, step-up, and reach the higher ranks. That’s the way we combat the issue of low-quality training in the majority of settings today. Continue Reading »

Tags: career in fitness, Personal Training, personal training certifications, top-level trainer

Last week we lost one of the best trainers in the country. Jason Hadeed of E.A.T.S. in Germantown Maryland was senselessly murdered in his apartment complex. His killer turned himself in to police an hour later.

Jason leaves behind 2 children, the many people whose lives he’s improved through fitness, and the numerous others that he’s influenced by the human being he was.

I had the chance to speak to Jason on January 18^th in an interview for Super-Trainer. It may have been his last interview, and you can find it at the end of this post. Continue Reading »

Tags: career in fitness, exercise specialist, fitness career, Personal Training, top trainers

It’s time to talk about something fun, but at the same time probably the most important topic in your career - and it doesn’t have anything to do with your career at all:

Your Lifestyle

When it comes down to it, this is the reason behind everything we do professionally: that’s why it’s called “making a living“. In Personal Training this is even more important because a lot of our marketability has to do with our lifestyles as well.

In getting the kind of life you want, you’ve got to have goals and be assertive. Don’t think for a second that it’s selfish for you to think about creating your ideal lifestyle, because no one else is going to do it for you. Continue Reading »

When you’re a Personal Trainer, venturing outside of the comfort zone of a home base is a little scary. That’s probably one of the reasons why more trainers don’t make the jump into starting their own practices - because they don’t have a solid place to train their clients out of.

I got to talking to a trainer recently that’s solved that problem for the trainers in his city and built a tremendous business in the process: Billy Polson. Billy’s the co-owner of DIAKADI BODY, a serious training gym in San Francisco. Check out the virtual tour and you’ll notice that it’s a fully stocked and exquisitely designed place - a real trainer’s paradise. Incidentally, DIAKADI stands for Do It All, Kick Ass Doing Do It - not such a PC name which is what I love about it. From talking to Billy, I found out that not only his gym’s name but a lot of his approach to training breaks the mold of the usual mindset we see these days. Continue Reading »

Purdue University is now offering a four year degree in Personal Training - yeah, that’s right, the same job that until now only required little more than a weekend certification can be yours after four years of pricey full-time college education. Depending on how you look at it, this could either be a very good idea or a scam, so we need to go deeper.

Right off the bat, it doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. Not that having a degree is bad; there are already degrees in specialized areas of athletics like kinesiology and exercise science that are important for those that want to specialize in those areas. But to offer a degree in Personal Training seems blatantly like an attempt to cash in on the popularity of this field. Continue Reading »

Tags: fitness marketing, how to get more clients, Personal Training, personal training certification, personal training certifications

When most kids grow up they dream of being doctors, lawyers, or even astronauts. If they only knew what being a Top-Level Trainer was like, they might change their minds!

The truth is Personal Training doesn’t always get the respect it deserves as a real profession. While the public and media generally paint a really favorable image of this job, it’s within the industry that I see most of the apathy. Too many people look at it as just a hustle or a part-time job, not a real career track with tremendous potential and room for growth.

For that reason I wanted to get a guest on here that would change all that. The first person that came to mind was Dave Parise, one of the consumate pros in this business with a long history of top flight training. Continue Reading »

Tags: career in fitness, exercise specialist, fitness career, Personal Training, top trainers, worlds best job

Just when you thought having a website was enough, things online have changed. Creating a static web-page where people come to get information isn’t enough anymore; you need to tell a story that people can connect with. But since you’re a living, growing human being, this story is constantly changing, and if you want to form a strong relationship with your customers, it’s one they’ll want to know about.

This is where a blog comes in.

With the Internet being about information, that’s precisely what your prospect is looking for when they’re searching for a trainer online. In order to be comfortable with you, they want to form a relationship before they even meet you. While in some ways your website can do that, it’s better to go even deeper. Often, the person that gives the visitor the most access and personal information is the one who’ll win the sale. That’ll be the person that formed the stronger relationship with the prospect, and the relationship is everything. Continue Reading »

Tags: fitness marketing, how to get more clients, Personal Training

It took almost three weeks of back and forth, speaking through assistants and balancing time-zones. I didn’t have any friends in common with the man, so it was a shot in the dark, but one day while sitting in a Starbucks, I got what I was looking for: my phone rang and the person on the other end said “Hello Kaiser, this is Gunnar Peterson!”.

I know every single person reading this blog knows who I’m talking about; for all purposes, Gunnar’s the face of the Personal Training industry. He lives in a Hollywood Hills Mansion and is as much a celebrity as many of the stars he trains. Besides speaking to someone with such notoriety in this business, for me the thrill was even more significant: I was talking to the man who basically got me started and serious about Personal Training in the first place. Continue Reading »

Tags: celebrity trainer, exercise specialist, fitness career, fitness marketing, fitness press, gunnar peterson, health-club industry, top trainers, worlds best job

In making sure I made it to my sessions on time this morning with daylight savings time today, it made me think of an article I wrote not too long ago about punctuality.

I have to admit that with my full schedule and commuting, I don’t have a 100% on-time rate (pretty darn close, though). But I do have some real strong feelings about being on time.

There’s a lot more to punctuality than just a few wasted minutes; it’s a matter of self-esteem, respect, and image. You communicate a lot by how you value your time and the time of others. Valuing time management is a characteristic of only the top people in our society. If you don’t have this control over your own schedule, you communicate to others that you aren’t one of these top people. Continue Reading »

Tags: career in fitness, Personal Training

Staying on top of your game in this business is very important. While doing some continuing ed recently, I found out one glaring weakness in my training arsenal - kettlebells. You see them in every gym and studio these days, and I have to admit that I knew little about their use and benefits.

In doing some research into it, I learned about one of the front-runners in this field, who himself started as a Personal Trainer and is now the world’s leading educator on kettlebells: Steve Cotter.

A lot of times in Personal Training, we see trainers with little technical knowledge or personal experience getting ahead on just personality and connections. But that’s not the case with Steve. He’s an example of someone that’s really paid his dues, first as a full contact fighting champion, and then earning his degree in kinesiology and as I mentioned, beginning his career as a Personal Trainer. Continue Reading »

Tags: career in fitness, exercise specialist, Personal Training, personal training certifications, top trainers