Meridian Gyms | Best Meridian Gym

Meridian Gyms | Best Meridian Gym

This is Brett Denton with Kvell Boise gyms and Kvell Meridian gmasked a very good question from a potential new hire this person is switching from a different field and is thinking about getting into the fitness industry. And they had a very good question. They actually had a few good questions. But the question was What am I going to hate about the industry or the job. Meridian Gyms And what am I going to absolutely love. And so today we’re going to dig in at least if we have time into all the things that you could hate about the fitness industry as a coach or as an employee and some of these things you can actually hate as a client as well. And then we have time we’ll get into the things that you could love. All right so really good question and let’s go ahead and jump right into it here. You know first working with people is something that you could hate. All right. So if you’re an introvert or if you just don’t like working with people you better not get into the fitness industry because the fitness industry is predominately about helping and coaching people. Now unless you’re in supplements or you’re an online type of information or program generation type software system something like that then you’re going to be working directly with people. Meridian Gyms You’re going to be coaching people. You’re going to be helping people achieve their goals. You’re going to be assessing people you’re going to be asking people questions are going to be around people. The majority of your job. And so if you don’t like people then you’re going to have an issue with the industry. Another thing that you want to make sure that you’re aware of is there’s a lot of sweat involved with fitness and not everybody likes sweat. Not everybody likes being around sweat. Not everybody likes being around sweaty stinky people. Not everybody likes touching sweat. And so if you’re going to be a fitness trainer or if you’re going to be in the fitness industry better be ok with sweat you better OK with touching people who are sweaty you better be able to handle people who don’t necessarily smell that great. You know I don’t know how many times we’ve had to tell people that they need to take a shower wear deodorant wear new socks wear clean clothes those types of things in the industry. And this is something that just happens. I don’t know why but some people just don’t have the hygiene that they should have. And so as a coach you have to be able to deal with those situations whether it’s just to ignore it until it’s over or to actually have that conversation with somebody. And so you have to be able to deal with sweat and germs is another thing. Right. So there’s germs everywhere. Meridian Gyms You know it’s very similar it’s like the petri dish of school right your kids go to school. They come home all of a sudden the whole family is sick. All right. Very similar in the gym environment. Granted we probably clean more in a gym environment disinfect more. But nevertheless you get a lot of people through the doors there and your Hands-On when you’re coaching people. And so you come into contact with a lot of germs right. You’re shaking people’s hands you giving high fives. You doing all these things that are great ways to spread germs and contaminate yourself and others and so you got to be OK with germs you’ve got to be OK with staying healthy so that you’re you know fighting the sicknesses. You got to be OK with that. You can’t be a germ a phobe. All right. Next you got to understand that you are going to have to constantly convince people that it’s a long term approach. You’re going to have to constantly convince people that what they’re doing will prove fruitful. If they just continue to do it you’re going to have to constantly be convincing people that they need to eat healthy and exercise for a significant amount of time in order for them to see sustained progress. This is one thing that drives people nuts and on both sides of it. Right. So you have your client who wants immediate results because that’s what our culture has taught them right. That microwave thinking it’s like I put my you know I put my goals in the microwave. Meridian Gyms I put it on a minute. And next thing you know my goals have been accomplished. And so in the fitness industry we are constantly trying to battle that. And this is in part due to the fitness industry itself. Right the fitness industry is very good at selling instant results selling six week fixes

selling supplements that are supposed to have overnight success for the client. And these things aren’t true. These things don’t happen if you want long term healthy sustainable results. And so you have to constantly be convincing people that. It’s a long term approach. They need to take it easy. They need to take it slow. They need to work on their lifestyle not on some simple program. And so if you don’t have the patience to be able to tell people the same thing over and over again with them only understanding about a quarter of it and listening to almost none of it. Then the fitness industry is not going to be a good fit for you. OK. Meridian Gyms So you got to have patients in that area and you have to be OK. Room beating yourself time and time and time again just about every single client you ever work with. All right. We do this at our Boise gyms every single day every single training session with all the people that we’ve trained over the years which at this point is over a thousand. All right. And then you have to understand that it’s always going to be your fault as the trainer or it’s going to be your fault as the gym or it’s going to be the program that you wrote is not working for them when in reality it’s almost never your fault because almost everything works if the client does it. Meridian Gyms If it’s a sound program. Right. And so if somebody is not losing weight it’s almost always your fault because it can’t be their fault because they’re doing everything properly. When in reality they’re probably the only doing a quarter of what you told them to do. And you have to be OK with it being your fault and you have to be able to deal with the conversations they get them on the right path and get them results. You have to be OK calming them down and helping them understand what they’re doing without making it sound like it’s their fault or like you’re accusing them. You have to understand that this is how people work. People don’t want to take accountability for themselves and so they look for other things to blame. Many of the times this is going to be you because you’re their trainer so therefore their result is your problem. Meridian Gyms And if they’re getting no results that is your problem it’s not their problem of course because that’s why they hired you. They hire you. They pay you the big bucks to get them results and that’s what you’re going to do. And that’s where you separate the great trainers from mediocre or poor trainers. All right. Meridian Gyms Everybody can go online and find a program that’s going to work and give it to their client. Not everybody can convince their client to do it. Dana and day out for long enough to see sustained progress. Not every trainer is going to be able to find the ways to get their clients to do the things they need to do when it comes to their nutrition in their sleep and their recovery to get the results they want. So that’s what makes the difference. All right. [00:07:01] So you have to be OK with it being your fault and you have to be OK having the conversations that calm these clients down and get them to start doing the things they need to do. You have to be OK with long and strange work hours. Right. So training people is typically a job that is early in the morning and late evening when other people aren’t working. Right. So in normal people are going to work who are going to be offered your services. You’re usually not going to be training people. Now you will have your random your business owners your lawyers attorneys you know some of those people can take off in the middle of the day and come out and train. But even a lot of them don’t want to take off in the middle of day right because they’re busy. They want to work during the day when everybody else is working. Meridian Gyms So therefore they want to work either really early first thing in the morning especially the type a type of people some of those type type of people will get up at 4:00 5:00 in the morning they want to train get their day started and then get off to work. Right. Or he might have to work in late an evening like six seven eight nine o’clock. Meridian Gyms And you have to be OK with your day being split up like that or are you going all day early in the morning to late at night all right because that’s when people can train. And since you are a trainer or you’re in the fitness industry you have to train people and you have to work when they are willing to pay you to come do it.

So you got to understand that before you get into that industry as the hours are a little crazy you have to be able to understand that most of the things the media says is not accurate or at least a half truth. And you have to be able to talk to your clients about how this information is not true and they shouldn’t follow it and you have to be ready to constantly talk about the barrage of different media snippets coming at you from your clients. Right. Most clients that come to you are going to think that they’re the expert because they read something online or they search something on Google. Now there is a few clients who are going to really do some deep research and might know more about something than you do and that you will see right away because you’re going to be able to tell that they’re going to have the facts to back up what they’re saying and if they do then great listen and then go research yourself. By and large what happens with most people as they read the headlines after they read the fitness headlines then they think they’re an expert and they come to you thinking they should do something else. And unfortunately this is what happens. A lot of the times and people change the programs that they’re doing so they’ll go from one trainer to another trainer or one program to another program just because one little headline caught their attention and told them they should be doing something else. And this gets me into the next point of fads. There are fads galore in the fitness industry like fads everywhere. Right. You got your cross fit fad. You got to Zumba fad. You got your high intensity training fad. You got all these fads and that’s not going to stop it’s just going to continue for as long as the fitness industry is an industry and these things cycling fad. You know these things come and go. But at the baseline you have your foundational fitness and really where you want to focus. You know you can mix some of those fads into your training programs but you really want to stick with that foundational fitness. You want to get people strong. You want to get people mobile and you want to increase their cardiovascular health. How do you do that isn’t as important as doing those three things. So again you want to increase their strength. You want to increase their cardiovascular health and you want to increase their mobility and flexibility and through doing those things you can help them decrease their fat. And then you want to help them work on nutrition. Right so if you cover those five things as your foundation you’re going to be solid and you’re going to have a program that works time and time again for the people that work it. And that’s exactly what we do at our Boise gym and in our Meridian gym locations. And that’s what you want to do as well. All right. Don’t pay attention to the fad but you have to be able to deal with them and you have to be able to market and get people who are wanting those fads. All right. And then you have to be. You have to look the part you have to be ready to be constantly judged. Right. Your clients are going to hold you to a higher standard because you are the model of what they are trying to achieve. And so you’re going to be held to a higher standard. And so if you are the type of person who is not going to stay fit who is not going to be healthy who is not going to eat correctly and who cannot stand people judging how they’re eating then this is probably not a good industry for you because they’re going to hold you to a higher standard because they want to be you. Right. So you have to make sure that you’re ready to be judged every step of the way and you have to make sure that you meet that standard if you want to be in the industry. And then there’s competition everywhere. So in the fitness industry it’s very easy to get into in America. All you have to do is say your personal trainer and boom all of a sudden your personal trainer doesn’t mean you know anything doesn’t mean you’re any good and it doesn’t mean you can train anybody or get anybody results. But regardless it’s very easy to get in. And so there’s competition everywhere. There’s a gym just about on every corner in Boise and there’s a gym in just about every corner in Meridian. And so if you’re going to be good you’ve got to differentiate

yourself and you’ve got to set yourself apart and there are endless ways to do that. You just have to figure out what it is for you and you have to be OK with competition right as you’re always going to have competition in the fitness industry because it is such a big industry. Everybody wants a piece of the pie. All right so be ok with competition. All right. And then you have to put up with people in the industry. Now the half the reason that the fitness industry has all these issues is because the people who were in the fitness industry right. When you have your body builders your figure competitors who are showing these grotesque morphed and extremely lean pictures of themselves on stage. Meridian Gyms You get a bad name right you get your meat heads who go to the gym throw around the heavy weights and groan and yell at people with terrible form and you have an issue. Right. You have your super petite fitness bunnies who you know all they do is work out and eat no food. And that gives the fitness industry a bad name. But most people are normal people right. Most people in the world are normal human beings. And so you want to be a cut above that when it comes to your fitness because you’re modeling an elite level of fitness but you don’t need to be a bodybuilder. You don’t need to be some fitness bunny you don’t need to be a professional athlete. You can be a normal person at an elite level of fitness. All right. And that’s going to get you the most success but you have to put up with all these people in the industry and you have to either you know ignore them or they have to get along with them. Either way it works. But you got to kind of figure out what that’s going to be for you. And you have to figure out what you want to show to the world when it comes to your fitness your personality and your attitude. All right. So those are kind of things a lot of people dislike about the industry and dislike about the job in general. There’s a lot of things to like about it but those are kind of the top 10 issues that people see when they start being a personal trainer a personal trainer lifespan is about two years two years and not a very long time to be in a career or a profession. And there’s a reason for that. And these 10 are some of those reasons. Now of course everybody has their own reasons. But these are some of the tents if you’re looking to get into the fitness industry if you’re looking to work in one of our Boise gyms or one of our Meridian gyms you want to think deeply about these things and think if these are going to be issues that are going to prevent you from enjoying the job. All right guys. Meridian Gyms So this one out there was for all of the people who want to get into the food industry because they think it might be fun or they think that it’s something that looks interesting or something that maybe easy they can make a lot of money. I can guarantee you that. It’s not unless you can get over these things and deal with these things.