We’ve arrived at a golden age of trainer certification and continuing education options. There’s an extensive range of possibilities in fitness to update your skills and to expand your value to the membership of your fitness organization.
As you probably already know, continuing education is a fundamental feature of the profession. Adding to your skills and qualifications helps grow your organization if you pursue it in a coordinated manner.
Considerations When You Choose Your CECs
Choosing your present courses and credits depends on your accrediting institution of course. However, the leading fitness education organizations have diverse choices of new skills and those that you might just want to brush up on to strengthen your business.
You can follow up on your certifications with additional courses that integrate with your career goals and advance your fitness business in the right direction. The best choices for continuing education are the courses that bring you more revenue and grow your membership.
When you increase the skills base and knowledge of your team, you open opportunities to provide additional services and also add value to your current offering. The impact on membership makes it easier to retain the clients you have and also appeal to new prospects when they inquire about joining your club.
How you develop your people depends on where they are now, your business model, and your plans for the future. There are some skills and certifications that organizations are promoting based on what they know to be successful and popular and they might be just the ticket for your club.
Fitness Nutrition
Nutrition guidance will help your members get better results from training and faster. The benefit to you is the higher value you can deliver will attract new members, boost your reputation, and help you retain the members you have longer.
Special Populations
Again with the special populations! Yes, I write a lot about this particular vertical, but there’s a vast range of potential for trainers and fitness clubs to create revenue streams with one or more of the special population fitness categories. Specialized training services that cater to expectant mothers, seniors, and children provide valuable niche opportunities to contribute to the health of your community.
MMA Fitness
Humans were meant to be vigorously active in ways that aren’t usually available in modern life. I think that fact has created the trend toward intense activities and adventures such as Spartan Races and mixed martial arts. Aggressive and energetic people struggle to express their natural instincts unless they can act out the aggression in an acceptable environment. That is why you might want to consider taking your training career in a direction such as MMA Fitness, providing training and facilities for the modern warrior.
Leverage Means Getting Results From Continuing Education
Numerous other options might fit your career better and bring higher revenue to your small gym business. The point is that by providing a well-rounded knowledge base that helps your members reach their fitness goals, you’re much more likely to achieve your own goals at the same time.
With this and any other investment remember the Eighty-Twenty Rule that says do the things that take twenty percent of the investment to get you eighty percent of the results. Once you’ve done that you’ll be able to get the resources over time that take you the final twenty percent of the way to your goals.
Career Development For Your Team
Do you expect your team to take the initiative in developing their careers? In principle, it’s a positive thing to offer encouragement and even to pay for courses for credit. Fitness certified gym employees are always looking for ways to advance their careers; they’ll probably do it with you or without.
It’s better for your business in the long term if you foster the career goals of your people. While you can probably hire for skills, you’ll lose trainers eventually if they don’t see a way ahead by working with you. When you can retain employees longer, it costs you less and helps keep your business running smoothly.
So What Are The Current Best Options?
The current best options for continuing education are the ones that make your business and team stronger, able to work together to reach goals that were previously unobtainable. Coordinate your plan of action with your trainers so that a few continuing education credits win an outsized impact on the potential for your business.
Bibliography
Becoming A Trainer. Top 5 Best Personal Trainer Certification Programs. https://www.becomingatrainer.com/best-personal-trainer-certification/ (accessed December 16, 2017).
Fagan, Lawrence. 3 Special Population Fitness Categories To Boost Your Gym. November 25, 2017. https://blog.gyminsight.com/4762-3-special-population-fitness-categories-to-boost-your-gym/ (accessed December 16, 2017).
-. Get Gym Management Leverage With the 80/20 Rule. November 25, 2013. https://blog.gyminsight.com/2204-get-gym-management-leverage-with-the-8020-rule/ (accessed December 9, 2016).
-. Spartan Up! Reading The Spartan Race Philosophy. March 13, 2014. https://blog.gyminsight.com/2488-spartan-up-reading-the-spartan-race-philosophy/ (accessed January 24, 2015).