Is Teaching at a Fitness Franchise Right for You? 

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Is Teaching at a Fitness Franchise Right for You? 

With fitness franchises booming, you may be wondering what they have to offer health and exercise professionals? This article mines the expertise of instructors who teach for popular franchises to uncover major differences associated with working for a fitness franchise versus teaching traditional, freestyle classes. Weighing the pros and cons of both options can help you decide which approach (if not both) is best for you.

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Behavior-change Lessons From Trainers Who Know What It’s Like to Struggle With Weight Loss

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Behavior-change Lessons From Trainers Who Know What It’s Like to Struggle With Weight Loss

This article is for anyone who trains or teaches clients struggling with behavior change around weight loss. Here, three personal trainers who’ve faced their own challenges with weight loss and/or dieting share from-the-trenches advice for motivating and supporting clients affected by overweight and obesity toward more healthful behavior change.

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You Put That on Social Media? How Posting About Your Own Vulnerabilities Can Promote Health and Fitness 

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You Put That on Social Media? How Posting About Your Own Vulnerabilities Can Promote Health and Fitness 

Some health and exercise professionals assert that genuinely opening up on Facebook and Instagram about their private lives, including various vulnerabilities, has a profound and positive impact on how people perceive and respond to them as businesspeople. Is the blurred line between private and public on social media an asset to fitness promotion? And how much is too much when it comes to sharing personal narratives? 

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Hustle, Hustle, Hustle: How to Avoid Feeling Overwhelmed as a Fitness Entrepreneur 

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Hustle, Hustle, Hustle: How to Avoid Feeling Overwhelmed as a Fitness Entrepreneur 

Being self-employed as a fitness entrepreneur provides plenty of freedom to shape your career, but with that freedom comes the constant need to keep hustling for more clients or sales. This article lays out smart entrepreneurial strategies and professional self-care considerations to help fitness entrepreneurs escape the trap of trying to do it all at once.

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The Why and How of Promoting Your Fitness Credentials on Social Media

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The Why and How of Promoting Your Fitness Credentials on Social Media

As you are likely aware, not everyone doling out health/fitness advice and ideas on Instagram, YouTube and other platforms is qualified to do so. While we can’t do anything about how others represent themselves on social media, we can use our own social accounts for good. Here are some ideas to help you educate social media users about fitness credentials. 

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Destination Fitness: How Vacationing With Clients Can Boost Business 

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Destination Fitness: How Vacationing With Clients Can Boost Business 

As you look ahead to the coming year and start planning how to expand your business, you may want to consider creating destination fitness opportunities for your clients. Fitness-related getaways can increase income, build and strengthen community among your client/members, and freshen up a fitness routine with something new and exciting. Here, three fitness pros share how they’ve leveraged their teaching skills to offer clients active vacations at desirable destinations. 

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The Why and How of Promoting Your Fitness Credentials on Social Media

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The Why and How of Promoting Your Fitness Credentials on Social Media

As you are likely aware, not everyone doling out health/fitness advice and ideas on Instagram, YouTube and other platforms is qualified to do so. While we can’t do anything about how others represent themselves on social media, we can use our own social accounts for good. Here are some ideas to help you educate social media users about fitness credentials. 

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Is There a Ceiling to Success for Group Fitness Instructors?

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Is There a Ceiling to Success for Group Fitness Instructors?

As a group fitness instructor, the more experience and skills you gain, the more you might hope to take your talents to the next level. Some choose to become a manager, presenter and/or studio owner, but what if those aren’t your aspirations? Here are some ideas on how to advance in group fitness without bumping up against a possible ceiling to your success.

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Behavior-change Lessons From Trainers Who Know What It’s Like to Struggle With Weight Loss

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Behavior-change Lessons From Trainers Who Know What It’s Like to Struggle With Weight Loss

This article is for anyone who trains or teaches clients struggling with behavior change around weight loss. Here, three personal trainers who’ve faced their own challenges with weight loss and/or dieting share from-the-trenches advice for motivating and supporting clients affected by overweight and obesity toward more healthful behavior change.

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The Buzz About Anti-rotation Core Training

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The Buzz About Anti-rotation Core Training

Have you heard of anti-rotation core training? It’s become a bit of a buzzword in the industry lately, although the technique is not new. In fact, you might already be employing this method with clients, but haven’t called it that by name. New or not, anti-rotation exercises can be useful for incorporating variety and, most importantly, helping clients master core stability. Read on to learn about the benefits of anti-rotation training and give these sample exercises a try.

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Destination Fitness: How Vacationing With Clients Can Boost Business 

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Destination Fitness: How Vacationing With Clients Can Boost Business 

As you look ahead to the coming year and start planning how to expand your business, you may want to consider creating destination fitness opportunities for your clients. Fitness-related getaways can increase income, build and strengthen community among your client/members, and freshen up a fitness routine with something new and exciting. Here, three fitness pros share how they’ve leveraged their teaching skills to offer clients active vacations at desirable destinations. 

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Skills Personal Trainers Need to Successfully Teach Groups 

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Skills Personal Trainers Need to Successfully Teach Groups 

The practice of personal trainers leading group workouts continues to be a strong trend this year, but as any fitness instructor will tell you, group instruction requires precise skill sets. Trainers need a well-ordered plan to make the leap from working with one client at a time to leading groups, small or large. Here’s how to properly refine your personal-training knowledge and skills for a group setting.

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The Buzz About Anti-rotation Core Training

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The Buzz About Anti-rotation Core Training

Have you heard of anti-rotation core training? It’s become a bit of a buzzword in the industry lately, although the technique is not new. In fact, you might already be employing this method with clients, but haven’t called it that by name. New or not, anti-rotation exercises can be useful for incorporating variety and, most importantly, helping clients master core stability. Read on to learn about the benefits of anti-rotation training and give these sample exercises a try.

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Branch Out With Cardio Equipment

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Branch Out With Cardio Equipment

Are you ready to get out of your comfort zone and start incorporating some new equipment into your clients’ workouts? This article, part two of a two-part series, will help you branch out with cardio equipment. Learn important technique tips as well as specific warm-ups and workouts you can use with clients using three popular, but often-underused items: a rowing machine, an indoor cycling bike and a curved manual treadmill.

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Challenge Both Body and Brain With Task-Oriented Exercises

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Challenge Both Body and Brain With Task-Oriented Exercises

Playful, purpose-driven exercises can push clients to work especially hard, but with an air of mental levity because they’re so focused on completing the task at hand. In this article, you’ll learn why task-driven exercises work so well and important ground rules to keep in mind, and access a round-up of trainer-tested drills you can use in your own training sessions or fitness classes.

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Branch Out With Strength Equipment

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Branch Out With Strength Equipment

It’s time to get out of your comfort zone and start incorporating some new equipment into your clients’ workouts. This article, part one of a two-part series, will help you branch out with strength and conditioning equipment. Learn important technique tips and a short routine you can do on your own or with clients using three popular, but often-underused items: Hyperwear SandBells, battle ropes and Lebert EQualizers.   

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Challenge Both Body and Brain With Task-Oriented Exercises

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Challenge Both Body and Brain With Task-Oriented Exercises

Playful, purpose-driven exercises can push clients to work especially hard, but with an air of mental levity because they’re so focused on completing the task at hand. In this article, you’ll learn why task-driven exercises work so well and important ground rules to keep in mind, and access a round-up of trainer-tested drills you can use in your own training sessions or fitness classes.

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Exercise Recovery on the Rise: Is It Part of Your Programming?  

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Exercise Recovery on the Rise: Is It Part of Your Programming?  

“Recovery” is one of the fitness industry’s latest buzzwords, and there’s a growing trend toward taking actionable steps versus simply taking time off. In this article, learn how experts in the industry integrate exercise recovery strategies, including foam rolling, stretching, light activity, sleep and more, into their clients’ workout programs to achieve better results in overall performance and health.

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Plyo Progressions for Personal Training

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Plyo Progressions for Personal Training

Plyometric exercise is a great way to add variety and intensity to a workout, but it’s not something every client should just, well, jump into. In fact, while many clients and some health and exercise pros might think of plyometrics as any exercise that involves jumping, it’s more than that. This article explains what plyometrics actually are and how to know when your client is ready to progress to more challenging exercises, and presents three exercises to try, each with multiple progressions

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High-intensity Interval Ideas for Your Classes and Clients

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High-intensity Interval Ideas for Your Classes and Clients

There is no question that high-intensity interval training (HIIT) workouts are both popular and effective, which is why it is so important that you know how to deliver the best and safest programs to your clients. This 20-minute HIIT workout, excerpted from The HIIT Advantage by Irene Lewis-McCormick, can be used with your personal-training clients, incorporated into your group fitness classes or even included in your own workouts.

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Successful Subbing in Group Fitness

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Successful Subbing in Group Fitness

Whether you love subbing or hate it, it is a necessary part of any group exercise program. Of course, the last thing anyone wants is for a sub to feel as if he or she is being “thrown to the wolves” in an unfamiliar, unreceptive environment. The smoother the subbing process, the better the outcome for everyone—sub, regular instructor and participants. Here’s how to make it work.

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4 Ways to Make a Good First Impression as a Group Fitness Instructor

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4 Ways to Make a Good First Impression as a Group Fitness Instructor

As a group fitness instructor, you only have a few crucial minutes at most to create a great first impression. But, if you can win participants over early, they’ll be more likely to trust you and keep returning to your class. Here are four simple ways (and one bonus tip) to make a stellar first impression at the start of every class you teach.

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Social Media: A Simplified, Less-is-more Approach

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Social Media: A Simplified, Less-is-more Approach

If you’d rather be training clients, but feel an unpleasant pressure to do everything there is to do on social media, you put yourself in jeopardy of getting little accomplished. A better approach: making highly strategized choices about how and where you use social media for business. Here’s how to make the best use of your time without becoming overwhelmed by the constantly emerging choices and new directions.

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Moderate-intensity Exercise: Where it Fits in Today’s Fitness Industry

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Moderate-intensity Exercise: Where it Fits in Today’s Fitness Industry

High-intensity interval training is both popular and effective, but has the fitness industry lost sight of the joy and benefits of moderate-intensity (and even light-intensity) exercise? This article explores how and why our industry might have tipped the balance to favor a high volume of high-intensity exercise at the detriment of also doing light and moderate exercise. But here’s some good news: There’s a place for all of it.

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