The personal training industry is a farce.
Yes, that’s okay for UP to admit because it’s one of the stand-out motivations for Nick Mitchell setting up the organisation in the first place; there’s too much BS out there.
It’s now way too easy for anyone who has had experience in ‘losing a bit of weight’ to then label themselves as a PT or a ‘fitness expert’. All of this nonsense has given the real experts a tarnished reputation and a widely held perception that a PT simply ‘counts for you’.
The point is that to become a professional personal trainer, is hard work. It’s not just the case of counting reps or helping someone get a good sweat on for an hour. So how does a personal trainer build their career and prove themselves in such a messed up industry?
To help anyone who is genuinely serious about building their PT career, we introduce you to Sean Murphy. Sean started off as the very first junior PT that Nick Mitchell hired at UP and now, he has mentored some of the world’s best personal trainers, achieved some of the most inspirational results for his clients, and has made a name for himself with substantial hard work and commitment. Sean is a mentor for Ultimate Performance, so here he is telling you why being a mentor can do you and your PT career the world of good.
Improve Knowledge And Understanding
There is a huge difference between knowing a bit about a particular subject and repeating terminology that you have read or were taught and really understanding a subject enough to be able to teach it.
To be able to pass on your knowledge and expertise to anybody else, I believe that you must first truly understand the subject yourself.
A mentor, like any teacher needs to be able to explain a subject clearly and succinctly to a pupil in a way that they understand. You will be asked questions and if the answers aren’t already there, you will need to improve your knowledge further so not only do you know the answer but you can make someone else understand it themselves. It’s all well and good knowing how to improve your own skills, but knowing how to improve someone else’s is a completely different ball game.
Pressure To Keep Learning
UP’s strict vetting, ongoing education, and accountability procedures means our Personal Trainers will never be anything but the best in the industry so the standard to even be considered for hiring is beyond high. Being a mentor not only means you are expected to achieve the best client transformation results, but you’re also expected to have an advanced level of knowledge in a variety of subjects.
A mentor cannot just ‘do’; you have to be able to rationalise and explain every single approach you take, from your clients training, to nutrition to psychology, the trainers you are mentoring need to know the ‘why’ behind everything you do. If you are unable to do this, understanding your methods and learning from your successes and failures will be impossible for those who are learning from you.
The added pressure to be at the pinnacle of UP forces a mentor to continually push themselves to learn more and improve. Failure in doing so results in you getting left behind.
It’s Not JUST Teaching
I have mentored a lot of trainers from all over the world over the last three years and I am proud to say I’ve been able to learn from every single one of them. Each trainer will have approached a problem in a way I hadn’t thought of, knew more knowledge than me in at least one area or have a different perspective on nutrition. You will never stop learning as a mentor.
As Bruce Lee would say ‘Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own.’
I believe that all trainers should always be learning and challenging their beliefs or philosophies. Too many trainers fall into different camps and believe that there is only one way to approach training, nutrition and psychology. A good trainer has the ability to adapt to their clients in order to get the best possible result out of them.
Exposure
Mentoring has provided me with the opportunity to oversee hundreds of clients and thousands of training programmes and diet plans, and for any passionate personal trainer, that’s a gold mine. I love detail so I track as much quantitive and qualitative data that I can so that as a team, we can adapt our approach to best suit each individual client.
This unique opportunity to test so many different methods with such a variety of cases has helped me learn what does and doesn’t work in each individual situation. Not only has this made me a better trainer; it has made me a better mentor.
Do you really have what it takes to be a personal trainer for Ultimate Performance? Apply Now.
