Lets face it, trust in the fitness professional is at an all time low – it was on the slide, but the advent of ‘The Online Coach’ + the lack of governance and regulation around their practices, seems to have turbo charged the degradation of respect for ‘The Coach’.
We could say the barrier to entry is too low? Or we could say that the gate keepers of said barrier have long since left their post.
For instance, the L3PT has become a tick box exercise, with providers of this ‘education’ taking advantage of their position in the market and becoming complacent – going through the motions – very few linking this qualification to any real world utility that the new coach requires in order to hit the ground running.
Insert the ‘Guru’s’. Playing on this pain point, these racketeers with a modicum of business acumen [but more importantly a large dose of ego and thirst for financial status], inject themselves into the psyche of the young, insecure and confused coach with promises of digital nomad status, coaching business success, big bucks, and fast!
This works – they don’t lie, BUT, it isn’t coaching.
All fitness offerings built upon smoke and mirrors can be linked back to the Guru and their tactics. Here, the coach is instructed to get off the gym floor and go online in order to scale – ‘scale’ before they’ve even learned how to coach.
Click bait social media + aggressive sales and marketing templates follow in order to manipulate the fitness consumer… but only until the client sees light and leave – serving to add to the ever declining trust in the coach by those who we’re supposed to serve.
In this instance, the coach quickly becomes a digital sales and admin assistant. Nomadic in nature, sure, but not a coach. They get fed up with the churn and lack of meaning in their work. Disillusionment follows, and they soon pack their bags before they really started; usually inside of 3 years.
If time in the game was the metric of success, we could say that the coaches who find themselves a guru are lucky, in comparison to 80% of new coaches who don’t make it beyond their 1st year anniversary!!
Here, thrust into the chaos of the commercial fitness world, armed only with their useless entry education certificate and zero support from their employers, these poor bastards have no hope in this dog eat dog setting. It quickly becomes a race to the bottom… which unfortunately is likely a true representation of the value on offer. Again, disillusionment follows and bags are packed, but this time even quicker.
In neither of these scenarios is a lifetime career in fitness tabled or considered. I wonder why that is? Is it really so difficult to visualise today?
Perhaps the folk who control both these environments for the unsuspecting coaches don’t really care for fitness? Perhaps their interests and therefore personal definitions of success lie elsewhere? Maybe they haven’t been lucky enough to experience first hand the profound impact the fitness coach can have on the lives of others? Perhaps they failed in their own coaching pursuit, meaning their resentment for the industry drives their current endeavours? Who knows. All we know is that an alternative pathway is the only option for coaching success in this crazy industry…
At the PFCA we have reverse engineered what it takes to be a master coach, and built the structure of our coaches career around that. Our education pathway forms the back bone of that career, meaning that what you learn on day 1 of your apprenticeship with us, connects to your practice in year 30 as a master of your craft.
For us, our L3 PT Course offering is our most important piece of education. It lays the foundation for a legitimate lifetime career in fitness. We believe that at no point in your career should you need to double back and fill in gaps of knowledge: All education should move you forwards, not straight; The PFCA L3 does just this.
What lies between this and our pinnacle, is iterative, practical education, challenge and support. Each intricate part has its place – no fluff or filler, and no promises of anything that will not serve your long term career in this game.
Easy? No. Fast? No. Fancy? No.
Meaningful? Yes. Fulfilling? Yes? Long term? Yes.
We’ve created a collective where it means something to be a coach – to reinstate the status and respect of the coach. We’re anti noise and pro action – The PFCA coach walks the walk and continues to strive for better – by creating incomparable client outcomes, success in business comes as a natural side effect.
The PFCA is the mark of excellence in an industry riddled with mediocrity and sleight of hand.
So, if coaching is your passion, and a lifetime practicing it is your goal, there’s literally only 1 place to go.
See you in ’24, in pursuit of mastery.
