Creating Chaos - For Fitness & Sport Professionals

One of the most important aspects when understanding, communicating with and motivating yourself and your clients is knowing how they view and approach the world. People are either the cause of their own reality or the effect. People who are the cause of their reality accept full responsibility for themselves and their situations. They are resourcefful, responsible, in-control and commonly see the bright side of any situation. However, people who are the effect of their own reality often blame external factors, feel out of control and struggle to see the bright side in many situations. The fact is, we can only ever control things that are within our control. This sounds blatantly obvious...and it is, but many people focus on things that are not within their control which often has them feeling miserable, upset and restricted. By looking at things that you can control, you're able to always affect change for yoruself and find ways of creating positive situations. The one constant is that you can always change what you are thinking. We all have the power and ability to do this. One of the most powerful examples of how focussing on a positive I have ever come across was from my days in the forces. I completed a course which was to train soldiers in knowing how to act and behave in the event of becoming captured. We met and were given stories of incredible situations that had occured. Back in the conflict of Vietnam, an american pilot was shot down over a jungle and was taken prisoner by the viet cong. He was stripped naked and help captive within a cage, physically abused, mentally tortured and in a horrible situation. Having found a photograph of his family and some of his details, the captors told him that they were going to abuse his wife, children and family. This went on for not just weeks but years...in fact, almost 10 years. He was completely mentally broken down and conditioned. However, during all this, in his head he decided that a great way to escape the situation was to distract himself. In his own mind, he decided to build and develop a hotel complex in Mexico. He built it brick by brick, hired staff, calculated a rosta, set holiday periods, pay packets, management structure, marketing strategies, client retention programmes and eventually, he turned it into an international franchise. The reality of the situation was horrible, he had very little hope and wasn't aware that the threats against his family were purely loose threats. However, he had full control of what he thought about and mentally focussed on. He knew that focussing on the what he didn't want to know would do him no favours for his own sanity and survival. He knew that getting angry and emotional would lead to further torture and abuse. After over 10 years of being captive, the pilot was eventually released and returned to his healthy and pining family. Remarkably, the pilot was still, after all that horrible exposure, very emotionally balanced on his return and had full sanity.
Needless to say that ideally, being at the 'cause' side and taking responsibility for thoughts, life and reality helps us remain much more focussed on what we want in life and not what we don't want. The mind is an amazing and powerful thing but is something that we are all able to control like a muscle. Before you decide what to think about and spend your emotional energy on, it's always worth while checking that it is what you want. For more on how you can very simply help to motivate or reframe situations for yourself and clients, send me an email and I'd be happy to advise.

Phill

I've decided to put together a blog that shares some tips and hints that can help people become more successful in Personal Training. After a good few years gaining great success with my own business and then managing a vast number of trainers, I've come across some excellent and some dog poor examples of this thing called PT.
My first hint is one that can save you time. Have a system. One of the greatest trends that I've noticed in personal training is that good trainers spend and dedicate so much time to their clients with programme writing, nutritional planning, writing up reports and much more. However, for some reason, they seem to re-invent the wheel everytime and run themselves into the ground whilst trying to cater for all their clients. Have a system in place that makes your life easier. Not just the consultation as most trainers have at least some format for this. (If you don't already then get one - there are some great examples that you can google to give you pointers). What I mean is, have a structure that has literature that you can just hand to people specific to their goals. It would be quite easy to come up with a set number of general goals that people are looking for: weight loss, increase strength, more energy etc. Why not come up with a starter pack for each of these that discusses nutrition, exercise and how to approach it and lifestyle. This is where the greatest results are made, educating your clients. Not just thrashing your clients or giving them excellent workouts but giving them the information. The more you can guide them towards making the right decisions, the better informed they will be towards making the right choices. However many sessions you have weekly with your clients will not make up for 7 days of bad living. Put the ball in their court and guide them.
Slaving yourself to your clients is risking giving poor service too. The number of trainers who I've seen looking majorly tired is shocking. Turning up tired will almost always result in under performance on the trainers part. Poor coaching won't do you any favours in getting new business or retaining existing business. Having more time to yourself will give you what it takes to feel refreshed and on form when delivering. The best way to do this is through streamlining your systems as much as possible.
I'll chat a little about language patterns and influential ways in which you can get your clients to stick to healthy lifestyle or make the better choices more often.

Phill Wright