Improving the health and well-being of your clients is your main priority as a personal trainer. However, you also have to attend to the business side of things. Hence, you also must take care of sales, online marketing, offline marketing, customer service, bookkeeping, promotion and various other key tasks, all of which are necessary to run a streamlined business.
And dealing with all these responsibilities can at times lead to stress and overwhelm. While stress is completely normal, it can lead to some health issues down the road, if left unchecked.
Therefore, it’s important to put in place measures that will help to alleviate stress, before it spirals out of control and causes serious health issues. In this article, we share 10 stress management tips for personal trainers.
1. Focus on a Task at a Time
As mentioned above, you have numerous responsibilities to take care of as a personal trainer. And to accomplish all these tasks, you may sometimes be tempted to tackle several tasks at the same time. Eventually, you will end up feeling stressed, confused and overwhelmed. And once you are in this state, it will almost be impossible to get anything done.
Instead, it will be highly advisable to focus on one thing at a time. So, create a list of the things that you intend to accomplish in a day and then select one task to complete. For example, if you are planning to spend a particular time of the day doing marketing, you can choose to focus on only one platform such as email marketing.
By doing one task at a time, you will be able to focus all your attention on that particular task. And you will be more productive. Also, it will help to prevent confusing your brain, thus helping to keep stress levels low.
2. Reduce Your Workload
One of the reasons why you may be feeling constantly stressed and overwhelmed is trying to do everything by yourself. Besides training your clients, you also want to personally attend to marketing, sales, and customer service, among others. But, this is not sustainable.
Eventually, you may end up with emotional exhaustion, which can lead to feelings of anxiety, stress, irritation and anger. Hence, you will need to find ways of reducing your workload.
And one of the most effective ways of doing that is by delegating some of the tasks to your junior personal trainers. For instance, you can leave them to attend to marketing, sales and customer service, leaving you to focus solely on training.
In case you don’t have a team that you can delegate to at your fitness center, you can simply hire virtual assistants. Virtual assistants can handle almost the same work that an in-house team can do but at a lower cost. So, they will not only reduce your workload but will also save you time and effort.
3. Set Realistic Goals
As a fitness coach, you may have identified a particular number of clients that you would want to land within a particular duration. And if you fail to land this number of clients during this time, you may be left feeling frustrated, stressed and worried. To avoid this issue, you should consider setting realistic goals.
For example, if you are a new personal trainer, you may be planning to sign around 20 clients within your first month. But, this is almost impossible, regardless of how much time, money or effort you spend on marketing.
Instead, you can scale this number down to around two to three clients in the first month. By setting realistic goals, the chances of success will be higher, meaning you won’t end up with feelings of frustration and worry, which can lead to stress.
4. Plan Your Day in Advance
Every day, you have different workout sessions scheduled in your gym. For example, you may have a morning session, lunchtime session, afternoon session and evening session. And, managing all these sessions successfully may be something that’s constantly worrying and stressing you.
The good news is, that you can minimize this stress or even eliminate it from your life by planning for the sessions a day in advance. Are you also already selling workout plans online, by any chance? Might as well use those for your face to face sessions with clients!
To this end, you can create a routine every evening, which will guide the following day’s sessions. When creating such a routine, you can begin by listing the sessions you will have to teach, whether it’s an individual workout session or a group fitness class.
Once you’ve listed the sessions you will teach, you can then note the different types of workouts that you intend to take your clients through, during these sessions. Listing the different workouts that you will teach during these sessions will help you to make appropriate arrangements. For instance, you can watch videos that will give you insights on how to approach the different workouts, for maximum success.
Using this approach will help to give you clarity and confidence, meaning you won’t start your day with anxiety and stress – which is usually the case most times, whenever you being a day unprepared.
5. Set Aside Time for Yourself
As a personal trainer, you are constantly taking care of other people’s health and wellbeing. And once you get back home from work, you will have to spend time with your family, meaning you barely have time for yourself. At some point, you will end up feeling drained and exhausted or even end up with burnout.
To keep these issues to a minimum, you need to be creating time for yourself. During this time, you can go for a fishing or hiking trip, read a book, go for a massage, listen to music or just do what you like, to help you relax and recharge.
By the time you return to work, you will have a clear and clean mind as well as a fresh set of eyes. You will not only be fully relaxed but you also be re-energized. Consequently, your workout sessions will be more productive and effective.
Incorporating relaxation techniques like a warm muscle bath soak can help alleviate tension and promote recovery after an intense workout.
6. Practice Deep Breathing
Besides helping to keep you alive, breathing can also help to alleviate stress. For this technique to work, you will need to draw in deep, conscious breaths. And as you take in a deep breath, make sure you focus on the rhythm and temperature of your breath. And by doing so, you will enjoy a feeling of peace and calmness.
You may be probably asking yourself how deep breathing can help to alleviate stress. Well, whenever you take a deep breath, you will increase the oxygen supply to your brain, making your brain feel at ease and calm. So, every time you are feeling stressed, anxious, and overwhelmed, something as simple as taking a deep breath can help to calm your nerves.
7. Leverage Meditation
Meditation remains one of the most effective stress management methods for personal trainers. It helps to establish mental peace while helping to get rid of negative thoughts, which may have been holding your mind hostage.
Furthermore, meditation has been shown to reduce blood pressure. Therefore, it will not only help to alleviate stress but it will also help to fight the effects that stress may cause. So, you need to try as much as possible to incorporate meditation into your daily routine. Ideally, you should identify a quiet place where you will be doing your daily meditation, away from any distractions.
8. Attend to Your Hobbies
While the majority of your life may be revolving around personal training, you will need to have something outside the world of fitness. And this can come in the form of a hobby. A hobby will provide a positive distraction to your mind, helping to keep it fresh.
Some ideas of a hobby include playing an instrument, drawing, painting, writing a book, undertaking a home improvement project, traveling, and gardening, just to name a few. Having something outside your personal training career will help to give your mind the break it deserves while keeping stress to a minimum.
9. Get Adequate Sleep
Studies show that inadequate sleep can lead to stress irritability and stress, among other health issues. Therefore, as much as you would want to squeeze in as many sessions as possible in your day and maximize your earnings, it doesn’t mean that you should sacrifice sleep.
So, you need to make sure you are getting sufficient sleep. According to the CDC, adults should be sleeping a minimum of seven hours. In case your workout sessions end late and eat into your sleeping hours at night, you should set an hour or so during the day for a nap.
10. See a Counselor
Even after implementing the interventions that we’ve recommended here, you may still be finding it hard to cope with stress. And, it may end up interfering with your productivity at work and your relationship with your loved ones. If you are at this point, you should consider consulting a therapist or counselor.
Professional stress counselors and therapists have the experience, knowledge and techniques for stress management. Therefore, they will guide you accordingly and help you to deal with the stress that you may be facing, thus helping to save your fitness career and your relationships with your friends and family.
11. Wrapping It Up
Stress can affect any personal trainer, regardless of whether you are new in the industry or you are a seasoned fitness coach. And, high-stress levels can lead to health issues. Therefore, it’s important to find ways of managing your stress, before it reaches serious levels. We hope the tips we’ve shared in this article will help you to manage any stress that you may face during the course of your career.