and at least 1 to 3 years of working experience in the fitness industry. You must also know first aid and an up-to-date certificate to that effect, and have a working knowledge of cardiovascular and resistance training.
Now let’s take a good look at some of the more advanced subjects that you should be aware of.
Anatomy – knowledge of anatomy is a must. This covers knowing the different parts of the human body and what each part does. This helps you know not only about the different muscle groups and their functions but the workings of the internal organs that keep people functioning. Knowledge of the cardiovascular, respiratory, and nervous systems are particularly important, as these are most heavily affected by exercise.
Physiology – anatomy teaches you what each body part does. Physiology teaches you how they interact with each other. The human body can be likened to a machine, and each part of the body has its role in keeping the entire thing going. Knowledge in physiology lets you know not only how certain exercises affect related working muscle groups but also lets you know what kind of impact the drills will have on the rest of the body’s systems as well. This lets you avoid certain exercises for people with, for example, weak hearts. Some grills don’t overstress the cardiovascular system in such cases, and those are what you would apply in such situations.
Kinesiology – this field of study specializes in the study of human movement and its impact on the body. It takes information from the other fields given above like anatomy and physiology and applies it to such areas as physical and occupational therapy, massage, and chiropractic.
Knowledge of Kinesiology is applied in fitness training by giving an accurate analysis of the impact of a certain movement on a human body and giving the correct, ergonomic approach to correct movements so that they will have an as little negative impact as possible on the person performing the movement. This allows you to teach your clients to perform a movement in a manner that minimizes injury and maximizes efficiency and effectiveness.
Pathology – while not as seemingly necessary as the three fields given above, knowledge of pathology is important for fitness trainers. Pathology in the broadest general sense is a study of damaged body cells to analyze the effects of damage and disease on them.
For a fitness trainer, studying a special branch of pathology dealing with the effects of physical injuries on body tissue is important. This lets you know the signs when a person’s muscles are getting overstrained, or when a person may have some sickness that they were previously undiagnosed for (like heart illness). Knowledge of pathology lets you know when your clients are starting to feel pain, and can let you diagnose the potential cause of their discomfort before they overextend themselves and take serious injury from training.
Diet and Nutrition – knowledge of diet and nutrition for both normal and sports applications is important for a fitness trainer. If we were again to compare the human body to a machine, then food would be the body’s fuel source. Knowledge of what foods are healthiest and provide ample supplies of energy is just one application for this field of study. Knowledge of the potential drawbacks to certain foods if eaten by people with certain medical
conditions is also important. An obvious example is avoiding excess sugar if you’re diabetic.
Business Management
Business Management Applications for Fitness Trainers
Fitness trainers in the current decade have evolved far beyond their predecessors in the industry. Before, the qualifications and standards to be a fitness trainer were loosely defined, and anyone who had a decent physique and the skills to impart some basic knowledge of exercise to people could already pass as a fitness trainer. With recent developments in medicine and new branches of study like kinesthetics, ergonomics, and sports sciences, being a fitness trainer now has as much to do with scientific knowledge as with sheer physical skills.
Fitness trainers have even expanded into other fields in an attempt to learn new things that could be applied, both directly and indirectly, to the betterment of their profession. Aside from the obvious things like learning anatomy, physical therapy, and massage, some fitness trainers have seen how most successful business managers operate and have adapted their business practices into techniques that can be applied in fitness training.
One of the most important lessons that a fitness trainer can learn from a business manager is the skill of leadership. Leadership skills used by successful managers have more to do with a humanitarian approach than in previous years, where people were treated simply as drones. Current managerial practices stress the need to see people as people, with needs, personal lives, emotions, and feelings.
Leadership training seminars for managers place a great difference between being a leader and being a “boss”. Leaders lead by example and action, instead of simply telling people what to do. Applied to fitness training, this means that a trainer must work out alongside his or her trainee instead of simply telling them what to do and then leaving them to their own devices.
Another aspect of leadership training applicable to fitness training is the practice of empathy. Empathy is the ability to gauge people’s emotions based on subtle clues like body language, verbal intonation, and facial expressions. Managers use this skill to determine what the people they’re leading are feeling and thinking so that they can do right by workers without any underlying bad feelings. Fitness trainers can use this skill in a much simpler fashion, to find out more about their trainee’s distinct personalities and tailor a teaching approach to suit them.
Marketing Standards are another aspect of business management where a fitness trainer can learn useful tricks. Marketing standards are a predetermined level of quality that is used as a basis for whether a new plan, product, employee, etc. is up to snuff or not. Applied to fitness training, this can be an ideal “goal” of fitness that the trainer can use as a standard towards which he can train his clients.
On another note, marketing standards are also partially determined by the manager’s competition. Industry standards for performance help managers gauge what levels they and their companies must be at to remain equal to or above the rest. Fitness trainers can also use this comparative benchmarking style when determining if their training methods, equipment, fees, and such are up to par with other fitness trainers at their level.
Ethics are the last key point of being a good manager. Taking an ethical approach means playing straight and doing right by all parties who depend on you. In the case of middle managers, for example, they have to keep their team happy and productive, make sure they get paid on time and don’t get “shorted” by the company. They have an equal responsibility to their superior officers to make their teams perform at levels that will benefit the company, and a duty to make sure those shirkers who are essentially cheating the company of valuable resources are corrected and dealt with.
In fitness training, this simply translates as a duty. As a fitness trainer, ethics means that you’re not in it simply for the money. This doesn’t mean you need to be altruistic; rather it is a matter of balance. You’re there to make sure that your clients get what they pay for, and to help them achieve their personal goals as far as exercise is concerned. Your primary concern is their health and well-being, as a doctor except that your actions are more preventive and supportive rather than recuperative.
Fitness and First Aid
First Aid’s Importance in Fitness Training
One of the basic requirements of certification for becoming a fitness trainer is learning CPR. While this may be enough for most basic trainers, if you’re planning on expanding your career as a fitness trainer you have to learn first aid fully, as well as study other fields of medicine that can be applied, both directly and indirectly, to your chosen profession.
Being