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Best Practices

Creating a Successful Internship Program

Internship programs provide supervised practical experience for people wanting to gain hands-on knowledge in a specific area of the health and fitness industry. Designing and running your own internship program can be a rewarding experience for both you and your students. It can also become an additional revenue stream for your business and increase awareness of your name as a leader in the personal training industry.

How do you compensate or reward trainers for a job well done?

At our studio we do not have a set bonus structure. I don’t believe in one because I want my employees to work hard to be proud of themselves and feel fulfilled, not simply to earn additional money. We sometimes provide bonuses, but they are not solely based on gross receipts. They are also based on trainers taking initiative, being innovative and going beyond the job description.

Spanning The Generations

Have you ever wondered why younger trainers are labeled as
having little loyalty to, or ownership of, the fitness business the way you did when you were their age? Or perhaps you are one of those younger trainers and you cannot figure out why your older colleagues frown when you tell them to “cheer up” and not take their jobs too seriously. Why does a group exercise instructor who has been teaching since the 1980s clash with the new director who feels strongly about moving away from the “old-school” styles of teaching?

Build Your Team

It is said that if you want to be successful, you must surround yourself with great people. One of the most challenging aspects of running your own business is finding great people and then keeping them.

Identifying and Managing Risk Among Trainers

 9  Business Basics:
Pricing Your Services
13  Technology:
From Mobile to Mobility
17  Training for Growth:
The Struggle for Significance
21  Best Practices:
Build Your Team

By nature, personal trainers are passionate, driven, organized and excellent at communicating, or so we would like to believe. In reality, within any team there are radical differences in terms of trainer competencies.

Pruning a Prima Donna Participant

If you teach group exercise long enough, you’re bound to encounter the group exercise diva. This self-proclaimed privileged member wreaks havoc in your classes and throughout the club. She is the person who feels that rules apply only to others—not to her. She (or he!) displays disrespect for the group exercise experience, the instructor and the other participants. The diva’s behavior tends to create a negative experience for the majority of attendees. Unfortunately, the instigator often goes unchecked.

Making Connections

Tamar Cline, assistant director of fitness at Colorado State University (CSU) in Fort Collins, has spent the past 7 years training new fitness instructors just to see them graduate and move away. Cline and CSU staff help students get a head start on their certification exams while earning spots at the Student Recreation Center as group fitness instructors.

Cohesive Training Courts New Instructors

As the fitness industry grows and ages, many people have noticed a gap between “veteran” instructors, who have been teaching for 10 years and longer, and “newbies,” group fitness professionals who are just getting started. This has led many to voice concerns over the future of group exercise. To address this issue, IDEA Fitness Journal began running a new column in January, highl…

Contributing Early

As the fitness industry grows and ages, many people have noticed a gap between “veteran” instructors, who have been teaching for 10 years and longer, and “newbies,” group fitness professionals who are just getting started. This has led many to voice concerns over the future of group exercise. To address this issue, IDEA Fitness Journal is running a new column that will highlight un…

Screening With Meaning

Group fitness instructors are key players in building a successful fitness center. They touch more members in 60 minutes or less than any of your other staff. This quality time can set a strong foundation for program growth, increased revenue, new-member attraction and, most important, member retention. When you consider an instructor’s impact on member experience, the need for a comprehensive …

Evaluating Trainers

At Northwest Personal Training, we believe that constant personal growth is critical in order to continue to stimulate our team and keep them developing, both as trainers and as people. We feel that the moment they stop learning and growing is the moment they begin looking elsewher…

Effective Ghost Managing

If you are like a lot of program directors, you manage people you rarely see—or who rarely see you. This makes you a “ghost manager.” The biggest challenge in being a ghost manager lies in connecting with and motivating your staff. Ghost managers can be responsible for 30 or more instructors who work about 1–3 hours per week, and for 50-plus time slots on the schedule. Most instructors teach pa…

The Uniform Question

Both the IDEA Personal Trainer Code of Ethics and the IDEA Group Fitness Instructor Code of Ethics urge fitness professionals to “uphold a professional image through conduct and appearance.” However, what type of clothing helps fitness professionals project the right image? Some owners and managers believe that providing uniforms is key…

When Your Friend Becomes Your Supervisor

The workplace is often where we end up
meeting our greatest friends. In fact, some
people spend more hours per day interacting
with co-worker friends than with
their own families. Tight bonds can form
between peers, but what happens when the
fitness friend you have been working with
for years gets a promotion and is now,
gulp, your supervisor! What if you also interviewed
for tha…

Dealing With Divas

Regardless of their locale, schedule or
member profile, group exercise programs
share one thing in common: the diva factor.
The “diva” instructor is one of the
most difficult to manage. She presents
herself as “untouchable” and doesn’t see
the big picture. She refuses to uphold the
mission of the program or club and is far
from being a supportive team player. She
sees just one pi…

Don’t Forget the Job Description

If you’ve ever asked an employee to do something pertinent to her job only to have her counter, “That’s not in my job description,” you know how important it is to outline the position in advance. According to the United States Small Business Administration, job descriptions provide the foundation for job training and future evaluations and should include the following b…

Don’t Cancel That Class!

Recently I was faced with the biggest challenge of my professional management career. I had just posted an exciting, eclectic group exercise schedule boasting 75 classes a week. Many were specialty offerings, such as yoga, aqua arthritis, cycling and senior fitness. Then calls began to pour in from instructors telling me they’d be unavailable. Six of them were going to be away in th…

Accounting and Hiring Practices

The Start-Up
By Justin Price, MA

Accounting and Hiring Practices
How to set up your books, choose an ownership structure and select staff for your new facility. a daily, weekly or monthly basis. You can create summaries by setting up ledgers (records in which accounts are recorded) and posting information to them. A completed ledger is really nothing more than a summary of revenues, expenditures …