Let's talk about clients!
Why is it so much hard to get personal training clients online?
Firstly, it's worth noting that success doesn't happen overnight. It takes time to build trust and to get your message out to the world.
Working face-to-face with clients and building a successful career in the gym is not the same as an online career.
Building a successful online personal training career is hard work.
How can you possible stand out in a 'sea of sameness?'
How do you attract your ideal clients?
The online personal training market has gone nuts. You don't need to look very hard to find online trainers and fitness businesses achieving huge success.
Without a doubt, there is an online market for personal trainers. And yet, for every success story there are thousands of personal trainers failing to build a career online.
I recently wrote about an important life-changing moment in my life - becoming a gym owner. Being a gym owner was one of the best experiences of my fitness career, and I would do it all again, but in 2018 I decided to sell the gym and move back to Australia.
It's never an easy decision to give up something you've worked so hard to achieve, something that you're very proud of. They say the first 2-3 years of business is the hardest part, and yet, after 4.5 years, I was ready to walk away from a hugely successful gym business.
Why did I sell the gym?
Five main reasons lead me to sell the gym and move back to Australia.
In 2010 I decided to change careers and become a personal training. I walked away from the high paying technology industry to start a career in the health and fitness industry. This is not the important life-changing moment, but it's the beginning of a journey that would lead to it.
Before I get to the important life-changing moment, you might be wondering why I would share this story?
Well, I've decided to hit the reset button and take a moment to check in with my values.
Who am I?
Am I living a life that aligns with my values, and if so, how are these values showing up in my life right now?
Back in the day, when I was training and competing in marathons and triathlons, I started to experience certain food sensitivities, poor sleep, diarrhea, and nausea. I put it down to stress, high training volumes, and working long hours as a personal trainer. Although doing a food sensitivity (IgG) test helped me remove particular foods that increased the symptoms (whey, eggs, gluten, cashews, alcohol, etc.), it wasn't enough to fix the underlying cause. I later found out I had a leaky gut, and once I fixed it, all of these symptoms went away.
…
Leaky guy played havoc with my sleep, my ability to recover and, therefore, my health and happiness. Today, my gut health is significantly better, and I wish I had addressed the problem sooner.
I've experienced my fair share of gut issues over the years. From leaky gut, inflammation, diarrhea and even nausea. Did I share too much? The thing is, I didn't take action until I started to realise how the gut plays a vital role in overall health and well-being. Your gut health controls everything from your weight to your mood to brain health, inflammation, exercise tolerance, recovery, and immune function.
Not only that, 90% of your serotonin, the happy, feel-good hormone, is produced in the gut. So if you’re feeling depressed, it could be an underlying gut issue. Serotonin is also a precursor to melatonin, the hormone that helps you sleep.
We all know that eating protein can help you lose body fat and increase your fat-free-mass. But research has also shown that a high-protein diet can reduce food cravings, help you eat less, improve your recovery, balance your hormones, reduce inflammation, regulate your metabolism, and reduce impulsivity.
We have made the mistake of thinking we only need 50-60grams of protein per day for far too long. When scientists first started focusing on protein intake, they looked at the amount of protein we human need to prevent malnutrition. The recommended dietary allowances (RDA’s) were formed on the minimum amount of protein we need to survive, but not what we need to recover, build and maintain fat-free mass, increase strength and power, lose body fat thrive.
If you’re chronically stressed, your fat-free-mass literally start to break down. Stress researchers call this wear and tear allostatic load. The fat-free-mass breakdown is caused in part by collagen proteins being used faster than they can be replaced. More preliminary research suggests that chronic stress may also contribute to obesity through direct mechanisms (causing people to eat more unhealthy foods) or indirectly (decreasing sleep, decreased exercise tolerance, blood sugar management issues).
When working with recreational athletes, it's important to understand their body type and the energy demands of their training and competitions. In a future post, I want to write about the protein demands for different sports. Still, it's critical to understand how to exercise's frequency, volume, and intensity impact the macronutrient (protein, carbohydrate and fat) intake requirements.
No one diet is right for everyone. The right diet should be based on many individual factors. The food we eat contains information that speaks to our genes, not just calories for energy. Science tells us that obesity is ultimately the result of a hormonal imbalance, not a caloric one. It's not about "eating less". It's about eating more of the right foods that nourish and fuel the body and mind. It's not about "moving more," it's about how movement supports your health and encourages positive adaptation, not fatigue.
The two main factors that control the size of your furnace are what you eat and how you exercise. In the previous blog post, I said "protein is the key ingredient to building the components that make up your furnace. It's important to note that your body prefers to not use carbohydrates and fats as the fuel that burns inside the furnace. The body preferentially breaks down carbohydrates first, and then fats and finally proteins only if the other two fuels are depleted. This is important as proteins are generally less efficient at generating energy. In addition, proteins perform several important functions so if they were broken down several systems could fail."
Both the quality and quantity of protein has a key role to play in building and maintain the size of your furnace.
Before we start to digest the juicy protein details I want to take moment to debunk the "calories in and calories out" equation.
