Daniel J. Green

There are a lot of benefits associated with being an independent contractor, chief among them the freedom to choose when and where you work, but this freedom is not without its own set of costs, particularly when it comes to planning for your financial future. If you are an independent contractor—or planning to become one—here are some essential steps you can take to set yourself up for a secure financial future and eventual retirement.

Daily cold water immersion (CWI) is a growing trend, with videos of people jumping into anything from an ice bath to the Puget Sound going viral on TikTok and other social media. Learn why people are putting themselves through this type of thing in increasing numbers, what the research says about the benefits, and how you or your clients can get started using CWI.

Incorporating shorter workouts can bring about greater consistency, improved adherence and better results, and may be more appealing to busy clients—and who isn’t busy these days? Learn innovative approaches for offering your clients fast and effective workouts, and check out four samples workouts from ACE experts that your clients are sure to love.

The emergence of drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro has dramatically changed how many people are pursuing—and achieving—weight loss. This has left many health and exercise professionals wondering how they can support clients who take these drugs while staying within their scope of practice, and what the widespread use of these drugs might mean to the health and fitness industry. Learn why these changes may actually create new opportunities for you to expand your reach as a professional.

Effective New Year’s resolutions are connected to your values and align with your lifestyle. Use SMART goal setting and process goals to craft resolutions that work.

Whether you are a potential client or a trainer trying to sell your services, it’s important to understand the evidence that supports the effectiveness of personal training. Also, learn some additional benefits of working with a professional trainer.

Client acquisition and retention are the lifeblood of a long and rewarding career as a personal trainer. Learn effective strategies for finding new clients and keeping the ones you have.

Advancing technology has reduced human labor and improved efficiency, but some argue that we’ve gone so far and become so sedentary that we actually need to find ways to reengineer our lives to add some of that lost movement back into our days. This article unpacks the benefits of short bouts of physical activity and provides strategies you can share with clients to help them break up their sedentary days with some much-needed movement.

As a health and exercise professional, you continuously look to enhance your skills and career prospects, but have you considered obtaining a second certification? This article explores how adding a group fitness instructor certification can strengthen your ability to offer tailored cues and modify exercises, build fitness communities, increase your income, and infuse fun into your classes and workouts, all of which can make your personal training sessions more effective.

These five relationship-building strategies will help newcomers to the health and fitness industry attract and retain clients. Strategies include building empathy, connecting clients’ goals to their values and using the ACE Mover Method™.

The past few years have been a time of constant change for the health and fitness industry, leaving many to wonder: What does the future hold for health coaching? This article examines where health coaching may be headed and how the adoption of more behavior-change principles may alter the day-to-day work of not only health coaches, but exercise professionals as well.

Can fear of a dramatically reduced quality of life, or even death, be enough to trigger meaningful behavior change? Not necessarily. The initial burst of motivation—“I’m going to change my life starting today”—will only carry a person so far, and unfortunately, probably not very far at all. Learn the most effective tactics for helping your clients make the changes necessary to improve their health over the long-term.

Your success relies, in part, on your ability to expand your reach and acquire new clients. One way to do that is through volunteering and serving those communities that the health and fitness industry may not otherwise be reaching. Here, five industry experts share their experiences as volunteers and as leaders of organizations that provide health and fitness services to underserved communities and offer 10 steps you can take today to begin giving back through community volunteering.

The fitness and health coaching industries are constantly evolving, so it is essential to be able to foresee future opportunities and then position yourself to take advantage of them. We asked five industry experts to answer questions about where they think things are headed, offer tips on how to stay ahead of the curve and what you need to do to make sure your career thrives.

Developing positive self-care habits can help people better manage their stress and improve their overall well-being. Here, we’ll explore the importance of mindfulness, sleep and social connectedness.

Yoga poses offer a wide range of benefits—even when you don’t perform them as part of a traditional yoga class. This article examines why yoga can complement just about any muscular-training program you design for your clients, and provides guidance on how to integrate yoga, breathwork and mindfulness into your classes and training sessions.

A key to creating a successful group fitness experience is building a sound class plan that features smooth transitions and movements that feel natural and purposeful to both you and your participants. In this article, you’ll learn strategies for properly sequencing movements in a way that will serve you well no matter what types of classes you teach.

Learn how you can use ChatGPT and similar AI resources to save yourself time in providing high-quality content and services to your health and fitness clients.

Trauma-informed coaching or exercise leadership involves allowing clients or class participants to reconnect with their bodies through movement and feel safe doing so, while also creating environments and programs that feel supportive and approachable. This article examines the scope and application of trauma-informed coaching and explains why activities such as yoga and resistance training can help facilitate healing for those who have been impacted by trauma.

ACE recently participated in the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education (NCORE). Let’s share lessons we learned as we stepped to the forefront of the equity, diversity and inclusion conversation in the fitness industry over the past few years.

When it comes to losing weight, some clients may think that hitting their goal weight will be a cure for all the things in their lives that make them unhappy or that they wish they could change. Of course, weight loss is not a panacea. Learn what you, as a health coach or exercise professional, can do to prevent this scenario from happening, and, if it does occur, how you can navigate this difficult moment in your relationship with the client and in the client’s wellness journey.

Are you among the millions of people who report feeling burned out and overwhelmed? As a member of a helping profession, you may be particularly vulnerable to experiencing the effects of burnout, which can make it hugely challenging to perform well in your job. Learn how to spot the signs of burnout and the steps you can take to go from merely surviving to thriving.

Learn how you can use ChatGPT and similar AI resources to save yourself time in providing high-quality content and services to your health and fitness clients.

One of the essential elements of treatment for Parkinson’s Disease is exercise and, while a well-rounded exercise program is vital, one form of physical activity that may surprise you has emerged to offer significant benefits: boxing. 

April is National Minority Health Month, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) uses to highlight the importance of reducing health disparities and improving the health of racial and ethnic minority and American Indian/Alaska Native communities. This year, the theme is “Better Health Through Better Understanding.”

Age may just be a number, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have a whole lot of ideas and beliefs tied to what those numbers might mean, especially for those who have reached middle age and beyond. This is the danger of ageism and, like many areas of bias, it is worth examining to determine what it looks like and how we can be on guard against it.

Popular “fitness influencer” Brittany Dawn has settled her case with the state of Texas, having been ordered to pay $400,000 in penalties and restitution for using deceptive business practices.

When it comes to losing weight, some clients may think that hitting their goal weight will be a cure for all the things in their lives that make them unhappy or that they wish they could change. Of course, weight loss is not a panacea. Learn what you, as a health coach or exercise professional, can do to prevent this scenario from happening, and, if it does occur, how you can navigate this difficult moment in your relationship with the client and in the client’s wellness journey.

ACE recently hosted a conversation in observation of both Black History Month and Heart Month that focused on strategies to prevent cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the Black community. Read more about the important, dynamic conversation here.

NormaTec is a device designed to mimic the body’s natural muscle pump by pushing blood toward the heart and thereby speed recovery following exercise. In this latest ACE-supported study, researchers compare the effectiveness of using NormaTec to both passive and active recovery techniques.

Adaptive resistance exercise equipment uses artificial intelligence to create workouts that are safe, controlled and use quantifiable resistance, but how do these workouts compare to free weights or traditional resistance-training machines? Researchers in the High Altitude Exercise Physiology Program at Western Colorado University set out to find out the answer.

Does a reduced-exertion high-intensity interval training (REHIT) bout result in a significant caloric burn (known as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC) after the workout is over? Learn why the results of this study confirm that the benefits of REHIT extend beyond the workout itself and are comparable to traditional moderate-intensity workouts that last much longer.

Nearly everyone experiences memory or thinking problems as they age, but a person who has been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment experiences these challenges earlier or more rapidly or severely than is expected based on their age. Learn about ongoing research into the effects of physical activity on cognitive impairment that offers a glimmer of hope.

Everyone has a different response to food, stress, inadequate sleep and even medications—so why would we expect everyone to respond to exercise in the same way? Read on to learn what the research has to say about “non-responders” and how you can help your clients maintain their commitment to be physically active by measuring their progress in meaningful ways.

The past few years have been a time of constant change for the health and fitness industry, leaving many to wonder: What does the future hold for health coaching? This article examines where health coaching may be headed and how the adoption of more behavior-change principles may alter the day-to-day work of not only health coaches, but exercise professionals as well.

Nutrition is an important topic for health coaches and exercise professionals to understand, as changes in the industry and in technology have greatly broadened the types of services you can offer to your clients and participants while staying within your defined scope of practice. Learn how providing these expanded services can enhance your practice, allow you to make more money and grow your business.

Five of ACE’s leading nutrition experts each reveal a study they think all ACE Certified Professionals should know about, explain why they find it so intriguing and explore how it might change the day-to-day practice of health coaches and exercise professionals.

More than 70% of Americans are now living in larger bodies, and these individuals often have different psychological and physical needs than their smaller-bodied counterparts. Learning the skills needed to serve this population is not only an opportunity to expand your business and help more people achieve their health and wellness goals, but it also gives you the chance to enhance the equity, diversity and inclusion in your business and beyond.

Can fear of a dramatically reduced quality of life, or even death, be enough to trigger meaningful behavior change? Not necessarily. The initial burst of motivation—“I’m going to change my life starting today”—will only carry a person so far, and unfortunately, probably not very far at all. Learn the most effective tactics for helping your clients make the changes necessary to improve their health over the long-term.

Although the threat of COVID-19 may feel as though it’s waning, evidence suggests the incidence of long COVID is rising. Marked by a range of ongoing health problems that may flare up after an initial infection, long COVID can make exercising painful—and it may even make symptoms worse. In this article, we examine what is currently known about long COVID and offer tips on how to help your clients who may be trying to return to exercise after having long COVID.