Miscellaneous

We’ve seen it before with the Barry Bonds and Major League Baseball saga – personal trainers who go too far in recommending supplements and substances to their clients.

For those who haven’t been following the latest scandal, it involves a personal trainer and Eddy Curry, a New York Knick basketball player. According to reports, which are denied by the trainer, Curry was given ephedra to help him lose weight (30+ lbs) before last season when he was a member of the Chicago Bulls. The allegations never would have mattered except Curry began having issues with his heartbeat. At the end of the season, the Bulls demanded that Curry take a DNA test to see if he was predisposed to a specific genetic heart condition before they would resign him to a new contract. Curry refused and was traded to the Knicks. Now, these allegations brought forth regarding the personal trainer, raise questions about how ephedra may have played a part in his condition.

The scandal brings up a couple of issues:

1. Does the public believe in good results, or do they always believe in some other explanation to explain weight loss?
As a business person, the integrity of the trainer is now compromised, whether he provided the ephedra or not. Can you imagine another athlete choosing to use his services? Not likely. Any results achieved by another client are going to be scrutinized to no end. How can he prove that the results Curry achieved were genuine and not brought about by supplements? Are these types of scandals the price that a personal trainer might pay for having celebrity clients?

Lastly, is it possible for a trainer to repair a reputation damaged by such an account and develop a thriving business?

2. Did the trainer cross the line and unwittingly give a client, who happened to be pre-disposed to a genetic heart defect, ephedra?
It’s easy to imagine the kind of pressure that the trainer might have felt he was under, particularly if the pressure was from Chicago Bulls team management, which would have wanted to get results out of its multi-million dollar investment in Curry.

How can trainers handle celebrity-sized expectations? Is it realistic to assume that the traditional methods of training can “satisfy” a hungry media, etc. looking for results?

A month ago, we wrote about a story that looked into emotional trauma caused when personal trainers and their clients “break up”.

The Daily Telegraph writes a short piece on the emotional toll caused by this breakup and cites a story by the American Council on Exercise that says that the emotional toll caused is similar to that of divorce.  The study seems a little overblown due to the fact that it ignores the financial implications of divorce as well as the fact that more people are hurt and involved emotional than in a personal training relationship. Nevertheless, the break up of a personal training relationship can be emotionally stressful.

Interestingly enough, a number of client rejections are caused by the trainer wanting to move on due to their increasing success or lack of progress on the part of the client.

The author, Elizabeth Day, discusses the concept of “personal trainer promiscuity” that occurs after someone has been rejected by their existing personal trainer. After the rejection, there is a period of moving from trainer to trainer to find “the one”.

This article leads us back to the topic of the original post: is there a better way to end a client relationship than by simply not returning phone calls? Areyou potentially damaging your business if you fail to implement a “better” breakup method.

In one of the interviews cited in the article, the individual explained that her personal trainer simply stopped returning her phone calls or e-mails. While it may seem like a hassle to return all client phone calls, especially if you no longer have room in your schedule for that client – it may be worthwhile to do.

The method you might use for ending the relationship with the client might differ, depending upon the nature of your relationship. One thing you might want to keep in mind is to actually refer the client to someone else, even a competitor. Doing so allows you, the trainer, to more quickly end the relationship and feel better knowing that the client is now being helped by someone else.

There are about a dozen potential "professional names" out there in the marketplace that relate to the personal training business and just when we think we’ve heard them all, a new one appears.

From "certified personal trainer" and "athletic trainer" to "personal wellness coach" and "personal performance advisor", we’ve seen quite a few different job titles for a career more commonly referred to as "personal training".

We often get to thinking: why have so many different job titles appeared, especially when most of these positions do the same thing? Is there a certain amount of unfamiliarity to the industry?

More importantly does it matter to the consumer? Do they see “personal performance coach” and “personal trainer” and think that person does the same thing?

We've been considering the effect of industry specialization that can take on a number of characteristics within the personal training industry. There are possibilities to specialize for a certain type of client (male or female - seniors or young professionals) or a type of training (athletic, weight loss, rehabiliation to name a few) and more.

Should specialization have an impact on you label what choose to use? The answer seems to be if that label better explains your services to your clients... then go for it!

The Boston Herald published a great piece this week and after reading the title, we just had to check it out, the title: “Gusty move: Breaking up is hard to do… with your personal trainer”. A Classic!

At first read, we couldn’t help but laugh – the title of the article reminds us of something we might find in Cosmo or in the checkout aisle at the supermarket.

But, after the reading the article again, we realized that it brings up an important point for both you and your business: After building a relationship with your clients, what happens at the end? Especially, if you’re disappointed about losing a client and are feeling hurt by the experience (it’s never easy!).

One of the most important things you can do at the end of the relationship is to learn from it. If the client decided that they were no longer interested in personal training services or are switching to another trainer, you would be best served to ask a few questions. Find out why the client wants to switch, ask them if there is anything you could improve upon or more importantly ask the client: “What could I do better?”

On the other side, what would it take for you to break up with one of your clients? It’s a serious question! A trouble-making client can cause you to rearrange your schedule – only to cancel at the last minute causing you to lose revenue and time. Not good! Take some time and think about how you would let a client go, what you would say, how many warnings you might give and at what point you would finally draw the line.

Last week, we had someone ask us if we knew of any health related handouts that they could print out from their computer and give to their clients as a handy resource.

So, here are a few of the best resources that we found. Note: These are FREE handouts that are recognized by national health organizations.

Cholesterol Progress Chart
A great tool if you have clients who are fighting high cholesterol.

The Colors of Health
A simple, and very effective, guide that explains the importance of

Children’s Health Brochures
The links below are designed to be used by parents, health educations and teachers to promote "healthy youth" for children.
http://www.cdc.gov/HealthyYouth/physicalactivity/brochures/index.htm
http://www.cdc.gov/youthcampaign/materials/order_form/

I like the fact that the article "Finding The Right Personal Trainier" from last month in the L.A. Daily News highlighted something I can't recall seeing in articles of this kind in the past... personality. It's probably something that's often overlooked by most trainers who are eager to impress their clients and eager to help them achieve results.

It doesn't matter what the situation is, consumerswant positive interactions with others. Whether their ordering a sandwich at Subway, purchasing a car or working with a personal trainer. It's the interactions that make the difference - but are often easily overlooked.

If you think about it, is a person likely to recommend their personal trainer based on their qualifications and certifications - probably not. But they will recommend based on how easy they are to work with and how that trainer makes them feel during training sessions.

The money quote from the article:

"It doesn't matter how good they are at their job if your personalities clash. Chances are, you're not going to last very long."

Think of all the times that you've recommended a product or service because you knew the service was going to be a good "fit" for that person.

Being able to work well with someone on a personal level builds trust and from trust you can build success.

Was forwarded a great article today about what astronauts do to keep their muscles active when in space. Story at FloridaToday.com

A bunch of surprising statistics given in the article including the amount of exercise needed on daily basis to prevent muscle atrophy: 2 1/2 hours daily! Given how busy the astronauts seem when they've conducting missions, it's a wonder they have the time to fit in exercise.

I had heard in the past about the effects that zero gravity had on the body, particularly the back/spine, but had never read much on what steps are taken to prevent it.

Make sure you check out the descriptions of some of the equipment used - very impressive stuff - from the article:

"...they can use the TVIS (Treadmill Vibration Isolation System), a free-floating treadmill held together with bungee cords. The astronaut straps into the TVIS and literally goes for a little walk around the Earth."

Came across an interesting article on MSNBC yesterday dealing with picking a personal trainer. Specifically how can someone, an average consumer, tell the difference between a well-educated, certified personal trainer and someone who earned a "certification over the Internet in a weekend".

The question actually reminds us of an old Saturday Night Live skit where a character tries to get compensated on "Judge Judy" after being ripped off by a supposed "personal trainer".

Back to business, so if consumers fail to see the value in certifications you're going to have to put together a better package to earn their business.

Of course, we're partial to the services that we offer, but other aspects of your business from business cards, marketing materials, etc. can go a long way to proving to a potential customer that you're a legitimate trainer.

Earlier this week, we were happy to see a brief article on the front page of the Marketplace section in the Wall St. Journal covering web based software. The article covered hosted software products that help you manage your to-do list. Actually, we're big fans of the second product mentioned in the article, Tasks Jr., from KingDesign - we use it to manage our internal development process and todo list.

We're thrilled to see positive press and reviews of hosted/web-based software products coming from such a major publication.