Introduction
Breaking into the fitness industry as a newly qualified personal training can be intimidating. It is a highly saturated market with professionals all offering similar services, however, the positive news is that the demand for high quality personal training services continues to grow. The key to standing out isn’t about being louder than the rest, but instead about building a brand and approach which is engaged with by your target audience. In this article, we’ll go over how you can do that.
Principles Over Methods Approach
When starting out in your personal training career, it is tempting to latch onto the most on trend methods or programmes and build your identity or personal brand around them. However, you should remember that the most successful personal trainers have always focused on principles rather than methods. Principles include things like movement efficiency, progressive overload, and recovery focused. They are universal and timeless approaches, which are tried and tested to be effective. They provide a degree of flexibility for you to adapt to your clients’ needs, as they don’t prescribe a specific method to achieve the goal.
Methods on the other hand can be seen as tools in your toolkit. For example, prescribing HIIT 3 times per week might work for one client, but not another, who may respond better to a Push, Pull, Legs strength training split. The idea is that methods are hyper specific, much like how each tool has a specific purpose, for a specific context. By focusing instead on foundation principles, you can personalise your coaching for each individual. This in term demonstrates your competence as a coach, improving your coach to client relationships, which in the long game will pay off over being married to specific methods.
Go Broad Before You Go Deep
It isn’t just the case in the fitness industry, but in the entire world. People will tell you that you should find your niche as soon as possible to fast track yourself to success.The reality of the situation is that rushing into it without having a breadth of experience can really limit your potential growth.
You should look to get ahead as a new personal trainer by working with a diverse range of clients, with different fitness levels, ages and goals This will help you to learn who you enjoy working with and refine a broader range of skills. Getting this broad experience lays out your foundations to help you find your niche more organically. Once you have worked with various types of clints, you can begin to narrow your focus down to the demographic you feel that you excel at serving. Going through this process builds out your expertise and allows you to position yourself as a real expert within a niche, rather than someone who jumped into a niche upon starting their career without baseline experience.
Localise within your Region’s Market
Becoming an online personal trainer is quickly becoming the default option that many personal trainers turn to immediately after qualifying, however you should never overlook the value of starting local. Starting local can help to build you a solid base within your community as a trusted health and fitness resource. You can build relationships with local businesses such as gyms or coffee shops, which lend themselves to word of mouth and referral. You can begin to offer community events for your network, and then once you’ve established yourself, you can brand out to online and have an existing and engaged audience already.
Invest in Continuous Education
Investing in continued personal training education is something we are bullish on at the PFCA, especially as the industry is always bringing to the fore new knowledge, research and methods. Investing in further education will keep you at the forefront of these updates, and show that you’re a personal trainer who is dedicated to providing the best client services.
If you’re looking for further education in personal training, then taking a look at our personal training courses is a good place to start. Following the level 3 personal trainer course, FFC and FFC 2 will respectively take you to the next level of pro coach.
Conclusion
In conclusion, really standing out as a personal trainer doesn’t have to be about having the most certifications in a niche, or pumping out online content. Instead, building a reputation which is rooted in valuing training principles over methods, building expertise across the whole breadth of fitness, having a trusted reputation, and being someone who invests in their growth can help to build your share within the personal training market.