Best Skills for Personal Trainers

September 17, 2018

When you have a certain type of job, there are always going to be the skills that stand you in good stead and help you to perform to the best of your abilities. As the title suggests, in this blog post, we are going to shine the focus on personal trainers. So, if you have always imagined yourself helping others to reach peak fitness, here are some of the qualities which you can work on improving.
Passion
Without passion for helping your clients to achieve their goals, you are never going to be able to stand out from the crowd. This is a highly competitive career path, and clients will be able to tell if you are not 100 percent committed to it. Your passion and drive could end up being which sets you apart from your competition.
Industry Knowledge
From the moment you write your first personal training covering letter all the way through your career, you need to be able to demonstrate a high level of industry knowledge. You need to keep up with all the latest trends with regards to exercising, nutrition, workout routines etc, and you will need to pass this knowledge onto your clients as well. Clients will simply not want to hire someone who appears to not know what they are doing.
Communication Skills
The ability to communicate well is invaluable to personal trainers. You need to describe particular workouts in detail, demonstrate how exercises are done, tell your clients what exercises that they need to be doing in their own time etc. Poor communication can end up leading to injuries and health issues, which is inevitably going to damage your reputation as a trainer. But the other central part of communication which you need to focus on is listening. Every client has specific goals, individual needs, and personal concerns. You can’t simply give them a one-size-fits-all training program and assume that it is going to work for everyone.
Self-Motivation
A lot of personal trainers have a great deal of control and flexibility to set their working schedules as they see fit. And while this may seem like a dream come true, it is simply not going to work without a great deal of self-motivation. You are going to have to show that passion and enthusiasm on the days when you simply don’t feel like it.
Self-Promotion
Following along closely on the heels of self-motivation is self-promotion. You need to be able to market yourself effectively in order to reach your target market and prove to them that you are the right man for the job. This means becoming adept in the world of digital marketing, networking etc. While you don’t want to come across as arrogant, you do want to appear to have bags of confidence.
A combination of these five skills will certainly serve you well as a personal trainer. But all of them can be improved, so always bear this in mind and don’t feel disheartened if you still have improvements to do. Determination is another skill which will come in handy!

Mark Asquith

That British podcast guy, Mark is co-founder of Captivate.fm, the world's only growth-oriented podcast host. A Harvard, TEDx, Podcast Movement and Podfest speaker (amongst many more!), he's a wildly approachable Brit and Star Wars/DC Comics geek.

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