Why Certified Personal Training as a Profession?
By David Gluhareff

Why would someone want to become a Certified Personal Trainer? What would make someone choose a profession helping lead others to a healthier lifestyle?

When I was sixteen years old my weight had ballooned to 305 pounds at a height of six feet two inches! All my self-confidence had gone out the window. After hard work and motivation my weight had dropped to 205 pounds. I began reading and studying anything related to fitness and health. What I wanted to understand was my body and why I let myself get that obese. What had I been thinking to let myself assume the 305-pound role? Why hadn’t I just prevented myself from reaching such an enormous weight? One of the major factors I have come up with is that I never had someone teach me how to positively manage my weight and my body. No one person came into my life and said Dave you need to do ABC. I was not a good manager of my body and no one ever took me under their wing and taught me all the right ropes. No one ever put the puzzle together for me to help me understand what steps to take to live a healthy lifestyle. A healthy lifestyle should include a positive mind, body, and spirit. What I had been missing was a good Certified Personal Trainer. Oh how my high school days would have been different with a more in-shape body. My performance in sports, academics, and with dating would have been better if I had known how to manage my exercise and nutrition better. I believe not having someone be my fitness manager and teach me how to be healthy was my reason for getting so big in the first place. I wanted to change that scenario for the next person. I wanted to teach people what I had learned from all different types of athletes, doctors, nutritionists, books, magazines, and videos. After I had lost my weight and had gotten into a great healthy lifestyle I wanted to share it with others who were going through what I had been through. That is when I became a Certified Personal Trainer. As a trainer for the past seven years I have helped hundreds of people put the pieces together to their own puzzle. A manager of a healthy lifestyle is what I have become. My clients range from doctors to teachers to bodybuilders to housewives to college athletes. They all have one thing in common–they are seeking someone to teach them how to manage their own healthy lifestyle. They all need someone like me to help them put their schedules for food, rest, family time, relaxation, and exercise in order. Their lifestyles need an overhaul and restructuring.

Good Personal Trainer Traits for Us Trainers

1. STRUCTURED–As a Certified Personal Trainer we need to be structured in our own healthy lifestyle so our clients will see an organized person leading them. This will increase the clients respect for us as their trainer and make our clients feel more comfortable. We need to help our clients restructure their days to include proper rest, exercise, nutrition, and supplementation. Those four newbies should be comfortably scheduled with work and playtime.
   
   
2. LISTENERS–As professional trainers we need to be able to lend an ear to our clients. This does not mean we become their counselor; we just become their person to vent to. Many of my clients, especially the evening clients, are professional people who have just had a very long day at work and need someone to vent a little frustration from their job with or share some positive news with.
   
   
3. MOTIVATORS–I lacked that one-person years ago that should have constantly motivated me to eat healthier, make time for workouts and get enough sleep at night. Now I try to motivate all my clients to keep their spirits high. Our clients need to know we are keeping them in-check and they are accountable to us with their healthy lifestyles obviously since they pay us well to do so. One of my clients I had seen in the city drive by a greasy fast-food restaurant and go to the healthy sandwich shop on break from work. After seeing this I called him and left him a congratulations on his voice-mail at home.
   
   
4. KNOWLEDEABLE–We are professionals, so we need to know what we are talking about. As trainers we need to never stop seeking education from others or educating ourselves. We have an obligation to every client to give them their full monies worth at every session.
   
   
5. INSTRUCTORS–We are instructors. Our clients need an instructor of lifestyle management. We should instruct our clients through each phase of their new health program. They should start by letting go of their old ways and let us take over and instruct them every step of the way. We are responsible, as their trainers, to help them better understand how to manage their healthy lifestyle.

If you are a Certified Personal Trainer, then make a difference in your client’s
lives. Make a positive impact on their mind, body, and spirit. Take charge of their healthy lifestyle and teach each of your clients how to manage themselves successfully.

About the author:
David Gluhareff, CFT, lost over one hundred pounds from 1995-96 and became a Certified Fitness Trainer with the International Sports Sciences Association. By the time he was twenty-five years old, David had built a fifty thousand dollar a year personal training business. To contact David Gluhareff, CFT (ISSA), go to www.trainwithdave.com.