For various reasons, people take an interest in their health and fitness at the beginning of the year. Whether we appreciate the reasons or not this is a great opportunity for those who have the desire to become personal trainers. Personal training means many different things to different people and represents a big part of the health and fitness industry. If you’ve ever considered becoming a personal trainer in Zimbabwe we have a few insights for you.
Personal Trainer
The personal trainer is equivalent to a coach. While social media may have you believing that personal trainers yell at people to do one more push up there’s more to it. A lot more. Personal trainers design, implement, evaluate and motivate people’s plans for their health and fitness. They are involved in choosing the exercise program, executing the plan, combining the plan with other matters like nutrition and therapy while evaluating the plan’s effectiveness and making changes where necessary. Personal trainers also deal with psychological and emotional aspects of health and fitness. Being a personal trainer, a good one at least is very involving.
Training and certification
As you have gathered by now to train people one needs to know what they are doing. Training and certification are the first steps in becoming a personal trainer. It’s not just about knowing how to do press-ups. Training will help you identify issues such as the right press-ups for a pregnant woman or someone recovering from a shoulder injury. That said not all training is created equal and you want to research your options and make sure you’re getting a good one. Training and certification with these institutions do not come cheap so it’s best to make sure you’re getting training that’s worth your money. The idea is to get training that equips for the realities of the work and certification that has recognition.
Peripheral issues
There are other matters to consider when it comes to personal training that is not directly linked to the training itself but are important tools to have in your arsenal. First aid training is a necessary part of most if not all training courses. As mentioned before you will also be dealing with psychological and emotional aspects of people’s lives when you become their trainer. So some training and study in psychology, as well as emotional intelligence, will be of great benefit to you as a trainer. The personal aspect is important to the business.
Pick an area of speciality
To gain a strong advantage in the market a trainer is best picking an area of speciality. In addition to being a very technical business personal training is also influenced by trends and popular culture. The best evidence of this is the rise of Zumba. Many other trends have risen to dominance in health and fitness. You will do yourself a few favours by identifying an in-demand speciality to work on. You could also look at from the perspective of demographics such as women, men, youth, mature and anything else that you think could work. The greater the clarity on the people you want to serve the more likely you are to find and succeed with them.
Partners
This is not a journey you can or will want to walk alone. While many people have struck out on their own you will find they did not start on their own, they partnered. The most obvious type of partnership for a personal trainer is with a gym or fitness centre. Naturally, gyms have a clientele and many personal trainers find their feet through working in and for gyms. Fitness cannot be separated from nutrition so you will find partnership opportunities with sports nutritionists as another good example. These partnerships are symbiotic relationships as the referrals go both ways.
Target customers
Finally, you have to be very clear about the customers you want. While businesses the world over will accept money from just about anyone that they can legally accept money from it doesn’t mean they don’t have an ideal customer in mind. Knowing your ideal customer helps your business focus its marketing and communication efforts to get maximum reach. So be clear about that as well. It will have implications on your marketing channels and choices as well as your pricing.
