Personal Trainers and the Benefits of Learning Coaching Skills
Are you a personal trainer or P.E teacher?
Coaching might be that special skill you need to help your clients to become the very best version of themselves.
DISC Master Trainer and Coach, Dave Pill, has worked with many trainers in his 15 years of owning a chain of health and fitness clubs. In today’s article, he’s sharing the key to the success of his top-performing trainers. Read on!
Sometimes you have a grand plan to get where you are going and other times you just arrive and acknowledge where you’ve been to get there! In my case, it is and was the latter. I did plan to become a P.E. Teacher in a Comprehensive school and enjoyed my time in that role for 6 years in the lovely market town of Ludlow in Shropshire.
That was where the pre-planning ended though as I went on to be a Lecturer for 4 years for a change of pace rather than a planned next step in a career and then became an ‘owner operator’ of a chain of health & fitness clubs over the following 15 years – That journey is a whole other story for another time.
In fact, there have been many adventures since then, including becoming an NLP practitioner, DISC master trainer and of course a life coach among other things.
I am sharing my potted history with you to pre-fame this blog because, during this time, I would like you to know that I worked with a great many personal trainers over the years, many of whom were not great and many who were… and when I looked at the reasons why some fared better than others, I managed to identify their keys to success.
The personal trainers I worked with, without exception:
• Were very well qualified by training with a professional organisation
• Had a great understanding of how the body worked
• Knew the right training formulas to help clients achieve results
• Understood how the body responded to various forms of exercise.
• They had excellent personal form when they demonstrated exercises to clients and encouraged the same from them
• They knew how to promote their products and services
Generally speaking, the ones that got a fair bit of repeat business were the ones who could build rapport easily or to put it another way, the ones who could build rapport by understanding their client’s communication style and then modify their own communication preferences to mirror that of their clients (DISC Personality Profiling). Clients just seemed to be at ease with them.
Beyond the above, however, I recognised early on that there was a ‘special’ talent the top performers had (whether they knew what it was or not).
That special talent was coaching, not sports coaching though, rather coaching people through to owning their success.
I found that the top performers who had repeat clients, returning over and over again were the ones who could help people set specific and realistic (whatever that meant for them) goals and then go on to support them, encouraging and adapting along the way, all the way to their ultimate success.
The ones who could help their clients work through their ‘limiting beliefs’ such as “I’m a lost cause”, “I’ve left it too late” or “I’m too old”.
The ones that could help people navigate the return from injury or illness and coach them through their fears and doubts with empathy.
The ones who could appropriately challenge their clients and give them some accountability without ruining the relationship.
Coaching skills and their professional/expert delivery in my experience was the difference that made the difference when it came to the ongoing success of personal trainers.
True, some personal trainers have learned this through experience or by doing, others have a natural ‘coaching approach’ however, there is massive value in formalising your coaching skills, taking the time to train to be a professional coach and having the realisation that there’s a lot about coaching that you probably don’t know, things that could possibly be vital to your ongoing success.
With Coaching Skills you can:
• Help set powerful goals that align with your client’s core values and beliefs.
• Unlock the real motivation for success
• Become skilled at listening for limiting beliefs that can lead to ‘drop off’
• Help more people more often
• Become a master of motivation
• Build a better, more sustainable business through repeat business
• Offer life coaching in addition to personal training for an additional income stream
Personal trainers, sports ‘coaches’ team managers, P.E. teachers and alike can all gain massive benefit from acquiring and applying coaching skills once learned.
Helping people succeed in life and achieve their goals or targets without pre-judging the size of the goal, helping people overcome obstacles to success and feel better about themselves. Learning to coach will enhance the job you have, and in my experience can help you get an even better job.
If you are a personal trainer or P.E. teacher, team manager, sports coach, nutritionist or are working with people to help them achieve, you can find out more about learning coaching skills by contacting one of the Life Coaching Academy Team Members on 1800 032 151 or emailing us – info@lifecoachingacademy.edu.au