Becoming a personal trainer is an exciting career choice that lets you help others live a healthier life. But, like any other career, personal training can seem daunting. It’s natural to make rookie mistakes when you’re just starting out, but if you can learn ahead of time what common mistakes to avoid making, it will help you get off the ground with as few setbacks and embarrassments as possible. In this guide, we’ll help you pinpoint five common mistakes that personal trainers usually make early in their careers and how you can avoid them.
Neglecting Client Assessments
There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all plan. Beginner personal trainers often make one of the biggest blunders by neglecting or speeding through their client assessments. Even if your fitness plan includes all those great techniques you’ve learned through your personal training courses, it won’t help your client if those exercises are incorrect for their goals. Without this first step, it’s hard to design a workout program that really meets their needs. Or even worse, you could miss an injury or health issue that might cause a setback or let your client suffer during training.
How to avoid it: Always start your workout plans with an extensive client evaluation. Find out about their fitness background, injuries and goals. Then assess them for flexibility and strength before doing any planning of the program. You should also regularly assess their progress during training to figure out what’s working for them and what isn’t. It’ll assist you in refining the program as needed.
Overloading Clients Early On
When you’ve just Rookie personal trainers are naturally enthusiastic and passionate about helping their clients by all means. Due to this passion and dedication to get results, it’s tempting to push hard. Many new trainers expose their clients to a very high intensity level or volume of training too early in the process. As much as we’d all love quick press-to-regress magic solutions, you’re doing your clients a disservice by throwing them in the deep end and risking burnout or injury. Clients often feel overwhelmed and find it hard to trust their trainer.
How to avoid it: Use a balanced plan in line with your client’s fitness level, then gradually increase the intensity by adding more volume as they advance. Be patient with your clients and remember that they need physical as well as mental help to keep them motivated.
Ignoring Proper Form and Technique
When you’re new to this coaching thing, it’s easy to get caught up in creating programs and pushing clients toward more challenging workouts. But there is one element you often overlook: form and technique. Good form is also key to effective workouts and preventing injury. You’re responsible for the form and education of your clients, and if they’ve been training with poor form for some time now, it can be difficult to break the habit, putting your clients at risk of injuries.
How to avoid it: Focus first and foremost on teaching proper form during any exercise. Explain to them which muscles are targeted by each form so they know if something is wrong during their workouts. Fix their form even if it means bringing the workout into slow motion. With time, perfect form and good technique will become second nature to your clients, and it’ll be easier to speed up the process for better progress.
Failing to Communicate Effectively
Communication is crucial to helping you build strong relationships with your clients. They are entrusting their fitness to you, and if you don’t understand their challenges or visions, it’s hard to set to work creating a plan that will succeed. If you don’t do it well, your clients are frequently confused, disappointed and under a spell of misunderstandings.
How to avoid it: Make yourself approachable and available to your clients whenever they need. Get friendly with them so they feel comfortable speaking with you about what isn’t working for them or when it’s hard to continue. You’ll also need to connect with your clients and get to know how they’re feeling and what their struggles are. Then you talk and find solutions, and make only those promises that you can realistically rely on.
Not Continuing Education or Professional Development
Once you get certified to work as a personal trainer, it’s easy to believe that you already know everything. But the world of health also evolves through time. New fitness trends, new approaches, new procedures and new devices are constantly being developed. If you don’t keep up with the speed of change in the fitness industry and best practices, you’ll get left behind. Only those trainers get that extra edge over their competition and the trust of their clients who continue pursuing further education and training.
How to avoid it: Brace yourself to be a lifelong learner. Participate in workshops, webinars or classes to keep up to date with the latest updates from the fitness world. Obtain new certifications in fields of specialization that interest you. Again, what this means is you will be able to do a better job for your clients in the future.
Final Thought
Nobody is a successful professional from day one. We all begin somewhere, we mess up, and learn from it to be the best version of ourselves. If, however, you can avoid these very common mistakes that others are making, you can move faster to a successful career. At the end of the day, always keep your clients first and continue to educate yourself to become an industry expert that everyone could trust.
