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 in Birmingham 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:
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:
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.
The Coaching Academy was established in 1999, and is now the world's largest coaching school.
In that time we have trained over 14,000 people to become life coaches.
We are accredited by the International Coach Federation and the Association for Coaching, and we're rated 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot.
