This post is based on local and successful Personal Trainer Liam Bowater based at The Village Hotel, Bournemouth and his interpretation of a day in the life of a Personal Trainer.
Liam has been a Personal Trainer for 5 years and to this day continues to love his job.
“Keep yourself motivated to motivate others” is one of Liam’s mottos. He explained the various ways you can remain motivated;
- With your own training
- Staying up to date with industry knowledge
- Seeing clients get results
- Making sure you enjoy what you do
If you aren’t motivated with your own training you cannot expect to motivate your clients. To stay motivated you need to keep your training varied and always set yourself goals. Periodise your training so that you have a specific time frame to work towards, to reach your goals.
Attending different courses allows you to stay up to date with what’s new in the industry and improve your knowledge. This can really motivate you as you gain further skills to help your clients reach their goals and possibly even broader your client base to a more specific clientele such as individuals that suffer with lower back problems.
All your hard work for each client is paid off when you really see them progress e.g. can lift heavier weights in strength training, and when results are achieved. This is a great source of satisfaction and therefore motivation.
To wake up early every morning and work challenging and demanding hours, you have to ensure that you enjoy what you do; helping people. A Personal Trainer has to have fantastic customer service skills as it is equally a PT’s personality, arguably more, to his skills/knowledge as a trainer that helps grow a solid client base and have longevity in his/her career.
This is underlying in Liam’s average day as a Personal Trainer. On the surface, his days consist of training around 10 clients per day, teaching spinning classes, training himself, cooking and eating well, engaging in hobbies such as cricket, badminton and socialising to ensure a good work life balance.
Furthermore, in conjunction to the importance of motivation, Liam stresses the significance of assessing your clients when he said, “always asses, never guess”. A full body assessment needs to be carried out prior to your client commencing training with you. This will help to decipher the programmes you set for them, give them a clear understanding of why they are undertaking a specific exercise and be able to set realistic goals. Assessments need to be continuous! Once objectives are met, reassess.
A training balance needs to be set so that a client’s training is kept fresh, don’t let them get bored but at the same time don’t just change their programme for changing sake. Make sure their objectives are reached.
Being a Personal Trainer is not easy. It is however an extremely enjoyable career path and very rewarding, for both yourself and your clients.