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Stronger Sundays

Dominate your fitness business with this weekly collection of strategies, tips, and tricks.
By trainers, for trainers.

03/29/2024

Quote of the week:

“The same people that tell me year after year that they can't lose weight are always the same people who refuse to walk because they think it won't do much.

Trust me when I say walking is a game changer. It's the first doable habit for many people to start losing weight. And if you do it consistently, it helps you burn a lot of extra calories to aid with fat loss.

Never underestimate getting your daily step count up.”

                                                                                          - Calvin Huynh on Facebook
Watch for this newsletter from the Personal Trainer Development Center each Sunday.

In this issue:

  1. Big changes are coming. Are you ready?
  2. 10 old myths you still need to debunk in the new year
  3. Recently on the Online Trainer Show
1. Big changes are coming. Are you ready? – Jonathan Goodman (follow him on IG @jonathan_goodman101)

The fitness industry will be disrupted in massive ways in the coming years by emerging technologies.

Gyms as we know them will cease to exist, especially the largest commercial facilities. Most of the current educational institutions are already out of date and will be obsolete. Additionally, personal training as we know it will go away.

This isn’t negative. It’s positive. A tremendous number of opportunities will soon present themselves.

For consumers, those opportunities include better, faster, cheaper, more personalized, and higher-quality fitness options.

For fitness professionals, emerging technologies will give us superpowers––allowing us to punch above our weight, equipping us with exciting new capabilities. The resulting outsized improvement in performance will allow you to be more human, granting you the time and space to give your clients more attention and compassion.

Right now the education required to work in our profession is woefully inadequate, resulting in distrust in our industry, a low skillset, and a general feeling in the population that our services aren’t worth the money. And most of the time, they’re right. Most personal trainers don’t even know what great personal training is right now. It’s quite sad, really.

Fortunately, things are going to change for the better in the next 3 to 5 years.

There is going to be a redefinition of what it means to be a fitness professional. As one example, trainers of the future will not be involved in building programs––but they will be in charge of delivering them.

This will lead to an entirely new profession where we become fitness care professionals, and we augment our intelligence with technology to deliver a service that’s highly efficient, highly effective, and eminently human. This will result in better service, more demand, and more job stability.

In 2021 and beyond, leading training companies and coaches will reimagine what it means to be a personal trainer, achieving outsize improvements in efficiency, effectiveness, and performance. On the other hand, most companies and coaches will be slow to adapt and will be left behind.

This future is coming fast. Many other industries are going to disappear completely but the fitness and health industry will thrive for passionate, empathetic, skilled coaches. For this, I’m very optimistic and excited. Our industry has felt a lot of pain these past few years but pressure makes diamonds, and we’re going to come out much better as a result.

I’m already building teams, tools, and education programs to support you throughout this change. And I can’t wait to see what the future brings for you.

2. How to debunk old myths in the new year

The calendar may say it’s 2021, but almost every new client you’ll meet is stuck in the past, at least when it comes to fitness and nutrition.

In his newly updated article, author Kevin Mullins explains why so many people still believe there’s a “best” diet, that they need hours of cardio to lose weight, and that lifting weights will make them “bulky.”

Among the new (or recently revived) myths Mullins tackles:

  • Exercise weakens your immune system.
  • Older men and women are too fragile for serious training.
  • Everyone should deadlift from the floor.  

Check out the entire list here:

--> 10 Straight-Up Wrong Things People Still Believe About Fitness and Nutrition in 2021

Go deeper:

Mullins also wrote “Why Fitness Is Not Essential in America,” which our team says was the best fitness article published in 2020.

You can find it here, along with the best videos, podcasts, and social media posts of the past 12 months:  

--> The Best Fitness Content of 2020
3. This Week on the Online Trainer Show
The Online Trainer Show is proud to be sponsored by PT Distinction. After carefully reviewing all the major software platforms, we recommend PT Distinction because it offers a unique combination of flexibility, coaching tools, and ease of use. That’s why we use it in Online Trainer Coaching, our just-launched personal training business.

Click here to get a full 60-day FREE TRIAL to try PT Distinction with your own clients.

Here’s what podcast cohosts Jonathan Goodman, Carolina Belmares, and Ren Jones talked about the past two weeks on the Online Trainer Show:

In Episode 61, What Your Clients Are Really Paying for (When Information Is Free), Jon explains the line between information and insights you freely share and what you reserve for your customers and clients.

By sharing what you know about nutrition or training—information that’s probably available online to anyone who knows how to look for it—you don’t just help people, as important as that is. You also showcase your unique personality and perspective and give potential clients a sense of what it would be like to work with you as their coach.

In Episode 62, Preparing for When You Strike Gold, Carolina asks a question inspired by The Queen’s Gambit:

“Where will you be when your thing becomes the thing?”

Imagine what it was like to be a chess coach in late 2020. After years of building your reputation and client base, a popular Netflix series makes demand for your service explode overnight.

Now think of how you would capitalize if an event created sudden interest in what you do. Jon, for one, doesn’t have to imagine. When COVID-19 forced gyms to close for much of 2020, every fitness professional needed to train clients online. And the Online Trainer Academy was ready and waiting for the influx.

Even before then, in early February, Carolina had her Queen’s Gambit moment when Shakira and Jennifer Lopez, two incredibly fit women in their 40s, blew audiences away in their Super Bowl halftime show. Carolina benefited because she specializes in training women in that age range.

Ren then asks a related question: How fast can you pivot when your thing (like training clients who work out in gyms using barbells and kettlebells) becomes inaccessible?

If we learned nothing else in 2020, it’s that none of these questions are theoretical.

In Episode 63, How to Simplify Your Online Business in 2021, the team closes out the year with a reminder that the best online businesses are typically the simplest.

How simple? Jon says most online training can thrive with one program serving one target audience, using one marketing channel to find new prospects and one conversion method to turn those prospects into clients.

You’ll find every episode here:

--> The Online Trainer Show
P.S. Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways we can help you:

1. Grab a free copy of The Wealthy Fit Pro’s Guide to Online Training
It’s your blueprint to building a fitness or nutrition business online. --> Click here

2. Join the Online Trainers Unite Group and connect with other online trainers  
It’s our Facebook community where fitness and nutrition pros like you can share insights and advice about starting or running a successful coaching business online.
--> Click here

3. Join the Online Trainer Academy
Our world-class certification course is everything you need to responsibly and profitably coach fitness or nutrition online. --> Click here


**Thanks for reading. What to do next**



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--> Enroll in the Online Trainer Academy now. (Start for just $87/mo)
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