“Resiliency is the art of learning to repeatedly refuse to do anything else other than rise again after any and all setbacks!”

– Brian G. Jett

 

Personal Training is an emotionally draining career. You are constantly attempting to deal with your clients' needs; they are constantly attempting to deal with their wants. You know they need to exercise, but they want to be lazy. You know they need to eat healthy, but they want to eat junk, and a lot of it. You know they need to improve their lifestyle and make good choices and they want the instant gratification that comes from bad choices.

 The result is that you are left with feelings of frustration and inadequacy because you could not persuade them to start or stick-with your program. The harder you try, the more you care, the more intense your efforts-the greater the negative feelings of failure.

Be resilient! Be aware of the facts of life. On the planet earth, if you drop an object in a vacuum it will fall at 32 feet per second - everything and everywhere on our planet. That is a fact! On our planet earth, not every human being will start an exercise program, and of those that do start, a very high percentage will dropout. That is a fact! There are many, many, opinions as to why 80% of the American population does not exercise with enough regularity to receive any health benefits, but let us stick to the facts.

The facts of personal training are that you will never be able to convince everyone to start exercising or eating healthy, and of those that do many of them will drop out. It does not mean you are the world’s worst personal fitness trainer (PFT), though you should always strive to improve your knowledge and skill. It does not mean you are an ineffective communicator, though you should always strive to improve your communicative skills. It does not mean you are an ineffective motivator or teacher, though you should always strive to improve your motivational and teaching skills. Many times it will have absolutely nothing to do with you and have everything to do with them. Accept it as a fact of personal training and be resilient.

You should always analyze why the relationship ended, but do so unemotionally. One thing you can do is to ask them to fill out an “Exit Survey.” You can often times find out more from a departing client than you can from someone who has been with you for years. More emotionally draining, are the clients who stay! The clients who stay can actually be more of an emotional drain than those who leave. In my mind, once a client was out of the program and out of my care I felt no emotional tie to them. However, I felt very close emotional ties to the clients who stuck with the program. These clients were putting in the time, effort, energy, expense and making sacrifices simply because I asked them to. This left me feeling highly responsible for their results. In each and every training session I used tremendous volumes of emotional energy to motivate them through every session. I felt like I was a pitcher of water and my clients were glasses. I poured my life-force into them so that by the end of the day I may not have lifted a single weight, but I was empty, the pitcher was drained dry.

I didn’t notice early on because I was still exercising hard and maintaining my fitness level, but as I began to get busy, my own workouts started to suffer. Eventually I was working way too many hours and even when I did attempt to get a workout in, someone would constantly be interrupting me to ask a question about exercise, nutrition, sports conditioning, or who won the World Series in 1969? {N.Y. Mets, 4 games to one over the Baltimore Orioles}.

I am going to give you some advice that no one gave me back in my PFT days:

(1) Learn to say NO! It is always ego gratifying when someone walks up to you and says “they told me you are not taking any more clients right now, but my friend told me I should only work with you.” Learn to say no. If you want to last a good long time as a PFT don’t allow your ego or greed to force you into a situation that will burn you out.

(2) Develop Professional Emotional Detachment. Just as doctors, lawyers, and other professionals learn to cope unemotionally with their client and patients, so must you.

(3) Don’t let yourself get into a programming rut. Don’t be lazy - it is real easy to develop a one size fits all training program with all your clients getting the same program, but it’s not right for you or them. They are not getting their needs met and you are getting bored to death.

(4) Maintain the health and fitness lifestyle.

(5) Maintain the highest caliber of ethics. Every time you cheat, lie, or steal it will place a stress on you that will eventually come back to haunt you. If you don’t understand, please read Charles Dickens' “A Christmas Carol.”

(6) Maintain a healthy balance in your life. The Ancient Greeks had a “Whole Man” concept. The Greeks felt if you did not develop yourself mentally, physically, emotionally, artistically, and spiritually, you were not a “Whole Man” {Update to read “Whole Person”-since the IFPA has as many female as male trainers}

(7) Re-Assign “Difficult Clients.” You are not going to get along with everyone, so don’t put yourself through the stress of trying.

(8) Become a master of your craft! Learn from your peers, college, books, IFPA CEC courses or Advanced Certification courses, attend the IFPA conference (Aug. 26th - 28th, 2004), visit chat rooms online (IFPA-Forum), find a mentor, take advantage of the numerous venues to learn.

(9) Strive for personal and professional excellence. I have always believed the marvelous richness of human experience would lose something of its rewarding joy if there were not limitations to overcome. Be resilient!

Sincerely,

Jim Bell, President, IFPA