Continued from "How to Become a Personal Trainer: Part 02" 

Each and every one of your clients will need to attain some level of function in each to be “fully functional.” 

If you decide to work with competitive athletes in your career, you may encounter an athlete who is very strong, fast and powerful, has great anaerobic and aerobic endurance, has terrific agility, balance, coordination and 8% body fat.  Yet the athlete comes to you for help because they constantly experience serious muscle tears and don’t know why.  During your fitness assessment you discover that the athlete has excellent evaluations in each of the 10 components of fitness listed above, but you discover they are hypertonic in virtually all their muscle groups.  Your fitness assessment has discovered that your athlete is super tight in virtually all muscle groups and that is the probable cause of all their muscle tears.  Your exercise prescription (Section three) will be to assign specific flexibility exercises for each of the muscle groups that prevent your athlete’s “full functionality.”

The other end of the spectrum is the inactive senior citizen.  During your Client Consultation and Goals Assessment, you discover that your client is very concerned about their losing their ability to balance.  It seems they have been losing their balance and have been relying on a cane to prevent them from falling.  While it may be intuitively obvious that the client may be losing their agility, balance and coordination, it is not until you conduct a fitness assessment and determine that the client is far below average in strength.  You will learn in Section five: Exercise Management that a functional level of strength, speed and power must be maintained to keep agility, balance and coordination at a functional level.  You, your client and every other human being on the planet needs the fast, strong and powerful, Type II B muscle fibers to catch themselves when they slip or about to fall.  It is the powerful Type II B fibers that rapidly contract to make them regain their balance.  Without a functional level of strength, speed and power they cannot have agility, balance or coordination.

Once your fitness assessment determines the client’s underlying cause of loss of balance, that being lack of strength, your exercise prescription will be resistance training.

Section Three:  Exercise Prescription

The 10 Components of Fitness form links in a chain of functionality.  You and your client’s functionality are limited by the weak link or links in the chain.  The exercise prescription is to “fix” the weak link.  Typical exercise prescriptions are listed below, but these are only a few examples and are by no means meant to be an all-inclusive list.  You will find as you progress in your career that there is often overlap in these components.

Component of Fitness	Exercise Prescription
1.  Strength	Resistance & Strength Training
2.  Speed	Speed Work, Sprinting, Plyometrics
3.  Power	Plyometrics, Medicine Ball Work
4.  Anaerobic Endurance	Sprinting, Muscular Endurance Work
5.  Aerobic Endurance	Aerobic Exercise
6.  Agility	Core Training
7.  Balance	Static & Dynamic Balance Training
8.  Coordination	Core Training
9.  Flexibility	Flexibility: PNF, Static, Ballistic Training
10.  Body Composition	Strength & Aerobic Training Combined

 Section 4:  Program Design

Program Design is the detailed plan of your exercise prescription.  For example, once you determine to begin a strength training program for a new client who is beginning an exercise program for the first time, you may begin with a program design that looks like the following:

Muscle Group	Exercise	Sets	Reps	Load
1.  Chest	Bench Press	1	15	100 pounds
2.  Back	Seated Row	1	15	80 pounds
3.  Quadriceps	Squats	1	15	100 pounds
4.  Hamstrings	Leg Curls	1	15	50 pounds
5.  Biceps	Arm Curls	1	15	50 pounds
6.  Triceps	Arm Extensions	1	15	60 pounds
7.  Shoulders	Side Lateral Raise	1	15	30 pounds
8.  Trapezius	Shrugs	1	15	100 pounds
9.  Abdominals	Crunch	1	15	0 pounds
10.  Calf	Heel Raise	1	15	100 pounds
11.  Low Back	Back Extension	1	15	100 pounds
12.  Forearms	Wrist Curl	1	15	50 pounds

The exercise prescription is to develop strength within all major muscle groups.  The twelve major muscle groups are listed above with a standard exercise prescribed to develop strength within that muscle group.  One set of 15 reps (repetitions) is also standard for a beginner strength training routine.  The “Load” is hypothetical.  You will determine the actual load based on the precise capabilities of each individual client.  A typical exercise prescription for a load for a beginner strength trainer is 15RM (Repetition Maximum).  RM is the maximum amount of load the trainee can handle with perfect form for a set number of repetitions.  Therefore, 15RM means the trainee will have sufficient strength to handle a specific load (determined by the trainee’s strength) for 15 reps.  A 15RM set means they will do precisely 15 reps; not 16, not 14, but 15 reps if you, the personal fitness trainer, have set the correct load on the bar.

There are reasons within the exercise prescription for determining the RM Range, i.e.: each RM Range will elicit specific adaptations.  You will be taught the specific adaptations in the chapters in Section five: Exercise Management.

It should be obvious that without an accurate Client Consultation & Goals Assessment and an equally accurate Fitness Assessment: Testing & Evaluation, you will not have the facts and information essential for you to develop a safe and effective exercise prescription.  Without an accurate Exercise Prescription, you cannot develop a safe and effective Program Design.  Each phase of the personal fitness training process builds on the previous phases and each phase relies on your KSAs in all 7 phases.  You must study and learn each phase separately, but you must also study and learn the synergistic relationship of all 7 phases.

The next phase you will study is:

Section Five:  Exercise Management

This is the phase most people visualize when they envision a personal training session.  They see and hear the personal fitness trainer standing over the trainee, giving instructions and words of encouragement as the trainee struggles with an exercise.  Exercise management requires a great deal of KSAs in: exercise physiology, anatomy, kinesiology, biomechanics, safety, teaching ability, motivating ability and tracking the client's progress.  Before you start to panic over the referenced "ologies", remember, the IFPA is the leader in practical education and certification.  The IFPA goal is not to focus on the "ologies", but to provide you the essential KSAs you need to be a safe and effective personal fitness trainer.  This can be accomplished without an entire year of study devoted to each "ology".  You will learn, from the chapters in Section 5: Exercise Management all the KSAs an entry level personal fitness trainer should know to conduct safe and effective personal fitness training sessions.  Advanced study will always be available to you later in the over 100 courses and certifications offered by the IFPA and our Education partner, the Fitness Institute of Technology.

The KSAs you learn in this section will enhance your ability to maximize your performance in the other phases of personal fitness training.  In all practicality, it will be impossible for you to adequately address any of the previous 4 phases of personal fitness training without a high level of mastery of all the KSAs contained in this section.

Section Six:  Nutrition Education

This is the next section in the manual and this course.  Educating your clients on nutrition, specifically Sports Nutrition, is an absolutely essential step in helping your clients achieve their health and fitness goals.  A famous trainer once told one of his clients:  "I can't be taking you through a world-class workout and have you go home and eat a half-gallon of Häagen-Dazs ice cream!"

The fact is that the vast majority of your clients do not have a clue on how to eat healthy and will have even less of a clue on how to eat correctly to maximize their potential in your fitness program.  You will discover that nutrition will be 80% of the battle in helping your clients achieve their goals.  And it will be a battle!  Many of your clients will have long established eating habits.  Some of those habits will be completely contrary to achieving their goals.  It is going to require you to have extensive knowledge on nutrition to accurately articulate what will help them toward their goals vs. what will hurt them from achieving their goals.

Not only will you be required to educate them on the basic nutrition concepts listed in the job description, but you must educate them on how to read labels.  Manufacturers have found very creative ways to hide the amount of fat, sugar, calories and salt in their products.  Your client's cursory glance at a 20-ounce bottle of soda reveals 100 calories and 25 grams of sugar per serving.  What they fail to realize is that when they consume the whole bottle, they are consuming 250 calories and 63 grams of sugar because the bottle is not one serving, it is 2 ½ servings!  Most of your clients will have no idea how many calories they consume a day and how many they expend.  Recent research shows that the majority of people consume 40% more calories per day than they think they do, and expend 40% less calories than they think they do.  This "self-delusion" is a major cause of the obesity epidemic plaguing our great nation!

Fortunately, Section Six:  Nutrition Education is designed to help you, help your clients.  This section will answer your basic questions, the same questions your clients will be asking you about nutrition.  For more in-depth knowledge on nutrition, the IFPA offers several courses, including the IFPA Sports Nutrition Certification, the IFPA Advanced Sports Nutrition Certification, and the IFPA Weight Management Instructor Certification.

Section Seven:  The Business of Personal Fitness Training

This is the last, but certainly not the least section of this manual and course.  The IFPA promised you a practical manual, course and program, and having business KSAs is a requirement for your success as a personal fitness trainer.  You can become a world-class personal fitness trainer, but if you don't know how to sell or market yourself and your programs, you are never going to make any money at it.  The IFPA would be doing you a great disservice if we did not include the KSAs you need to build a successful business.  You will not be tested on the material in this section because the KSAs in Section 7 are not critical to the safety and effectiveness of conducting personal fitness training sessions, but you must learn these KSAs in order to be successful as a personal fitness trainer.

The IFPA is often ridiculed by our competitors for adding this section, and they have called us "mercenary" and accused us of being "all about sales."  You should not confuse jealous accusations of being mercenary, with career success & practicality!  The IFPA decided to add this section after seeing our highly trained, educated and dedicated IFPA Certified Personal Fitness Trainers losing business to the highly questionable, often incompetent and unethical, so-called "trainers" who were highly skilled salesmen.  Despite a high degree of skill in sales, they lacked skill in personal fitness training.  This section was added to prepare and train IFPA Certified Personal Fitness Trainers to compete with and win over the incompetent "sales" trainer.

The seven sections in this manual are designed with one purpose in mind; to make you a world-class personal fitness trainer, a true "master of your craft."  In the work that is to come, you will learn the KSAs required to become a leader in the fitness industry.  You may be feeling a bit daunted by the work before you.  Perhaps you are feeling overwhelmed.  You may have had a great deal of success as an athlete and feel confident about your physical abilities, but feel less confident about your academic abilities to succeed in this course.  It might help you to know that research states that only 8% of the people who buy a book get through the first chapter!  The 92% of the people who fail to read the book lack the discipline to follow through.  It might help you to know that estimates are that less than 1% of the people who set a goal for themselves actually achieve that goal.  The 99% who fail to achieve their goals lack the discipline to follow through.

"Research in Motivational Psychology" provides insight into the techniques on how achievers develop the perseverance to achieve their goals.  It has absolutely nothing to do with their intelligence, wealth, status, looks, neighborhood or any other "luck factors".  Smart or dumb, beautiful or ugly, skinny or fat, rich or poor, none of those qualities have anything to do with achieving a goal.  Achieving a goal has everything to do with discipline and commitment.  If you have achieved an athletic or physical goal, you can become an IFPA Certified Personal Fitness Trainer.  Even if you have not ever achieved anything in your life before, you can become an IFPA Certified Personal Fitness Trainer.  Follow the steps below and you will achieve.

Step One:  Think!  What do you really, truly want out of life?  Focus!  Do you want money and financial independence?  Why?  Concentrate!  What does financial independence mean to you?  What will it bring?  What does it look like? . . . feel like?  Do you want to make a difference in your life?  Do you want to help others?  . . . save others?  Think long and hard about what you want and why.

Step Two:  Write it down and keep writing till you get all your goals, wants, and desires on paper.

Step Three:  Summarize your thoughts into a clear, concise Goal Statement.  You want it clear and concise, but make sure it conveys your heartfelt feelings towards your goals.  You will carry this goal statement with you and review it a minimum of 6 times per day.  At the bottom of the goal statement you will have the phrase:  I will achieve this goal by:______________.  Next to the date you select, you will sign your signature as your commitment to achieving your goal by the date you set.  Make sure you set a realistic date for your goal. Example: I will complete preparation for & pass the IFPA Certification Exam by 12/22/2007. Dr James T. Bell

Step Four:  Set short term, medium term and long term goals.  You can even get more specific by setting different and specific goals for different aspects of your life; i.e.:  professional, physical, mental, emotional, artistic, academic, social and/or spiritual.

Step Five:  Start a Goal Board.  Begin to clip pictures, articles, phrases, quotes, etc. that depict in your mind, your goals and you achieving your goals.  For example, you want to get yourself in top-top shape, you might look for fitness models whose shape and physique you want to achieve.  Find the model, cut out the picture and glue it to your goal board.  You can also post the pictures in other places you will view often throughout the day. The refrigerator, bathroom mirror, office board, etc.

Step Six:  Review your goal statement a minimum of 6 times a day and review all your goals at least once a day, preferably first thing in the morning and before you go to sleep at night.

Step Seven:  Begin to Journal.  Keep a journal of what you do or don't do to help keep you moving toward your goals.  Or what you do or don't do to move you away from achieving your goals.  Resolve each night to improve your performance toward your goals and reduce the distractions.

The achievement process outlined above is for your use now, but in the future, you will find it highly effective in helping your clients to achieve their goals.  The better you get at using the process, the better prepared you will be to teach it to your clients.

Everything you learn in the course of this IFPA personal fitness trainer program is designed to make you a world-class personal fitness trainer, but you will learn that many of the lessons you learn here can be applied to numerous aspects of your life.  The personal characteristics you need to be "Number One" as a personal fitness trainer are the same personal characteristics you need to be "Number One" as a parent, child, sibling, employee, employer, spouse, friend, professional, entrepreneur or virtually any other goal you wish to attain.  There is a great speech made by Vince Lombardi, who some argue was the greatest football coach of all time.  Though the speech was made concerning the sport of football, the title, "What It Takes to Be Number One" can be said about every endeavor you embark upon, including becoming an IFPA Certified Personal Fitness Trainer.

"What It Takes To Be Number One"

"Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all time thing. You don't win once in a while; you don't do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing. I have finished second twice in my time at Green Bay, and I don't ever want to finish second again. There is a second place bowl game, but it is a game for losers played by losers. It is and always has been an American zeal to be first in anything we do, and to win, and to win, and to win. Every time a football player goes to ply his trade he's got to play from the ground up - from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play. Some guys play with their heads. That's O.K. you've got to be smart to be number one in any business. But more importantly, you've got to play with your heart, with every fiber of your body. If you're lucky enough to find a guy with a lot of head and a lot of heart, he's never going to come off the field second. Running a football team is no different than running any other kind of organization - an army, a political party or a business. The principles are the same. The object is to win - to beat the other guy. Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I don't think it is.

It is a reality of life that men are competitive and the most competitive games draw the most competitive men. That's why they are there - to compete. To know the rules and objectives when they get in the game. The object is to win fairly, squarely, "by the rules - but to win.

And in truth, I've never known a man worth his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn't appreciate the grind, the discipline. There is something in good men that really yearns for discipline and the harsh reality of head to head combat.

I don't say these things because I believe in the "brute" nature of man or that men must be brutalized to be combative. I believe in God, and I believe in human decency. But I firmly believe that any man's finest hour - his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear - is that moment when he has to work his heart out in a good cause and he's exhausted on the field of battle - victorious.”

Coach Lombardi so eloquently describes precisely what it takes to be number one in any career or endeavor.  Those same seeds of greatness that were within the football players he coached are within you now.  And while you may never have the opportunity to look into a camera with millions of fans watching you walk off the field following a Super Bowl victory and tell them, "I'm going to Disney Land," you may have an opportunity for something much, much richer.  You cannot imagine the thrill you will receive each time one of your clients walks up to you and tells you, sometimes with tears in their eyes, "Thank you so much, you saved my life."

You may never get a Super Bowl ring or your picture on a box of Wheaties, but you will never forget the look of gratitude in a client's face when they tell you how much you did for them.  Most people can't tell you who made the winning play during a Super Bowl ten years ago, but your clients will never forget the trainer that took 60 pounds of fat off their body and saved them from a early death due to heart disease.

If you admire the time, effort, energy, discipline, courage and perseverance an athlete puts in to become number one, then how much more should you admire the time, effort, energy, discipline, courage and perseverance you are to put in to become number one?

Which is more valuable--an individual, such as yourself, who dedicates themselves to a profession to improve people's lives, perhaps SAVE people's lives, or a football player?  Which is more valuable to the person whose life has been saved by the dedicated personal fitness trainer?  Which is more valuable to the person's children, spouse, family and friends whose life has been saved by the dedicated personal fitness trainer?  Complete this manual!  Complete this course!  Become an IFPA Certified Personal Fitness Trainer and you will find out the answers to those questions--firsthand!

Best regards,

Jim Bell, PhD

CEO

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Special Thanks to the IFPA's Sponsors:

Doctors Fitness Centers

Fitness Institute of Technology

VORTEX

SCIFIT

A4M

ACASP

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James T. Bell, PhD is the founder and president of the International Fitness Professionals Association, IFPA.

More Books from Jim Bell, PhD

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