Becoming a fitness coach and how you can improve your resume
Page Description: As the days go by, the need for fitness coaches is increasing, especially now that people are more aware of the health benefits of keeping fit and maintaining wellness. If you are looking forward to carving a niche for yourself as a fitness coach, this is for you. This article explains all you need to know about fitness coaching, how to become one, its requirements, and how to tailor your resume to land jobs as a fitness coach.
What is fitness coaching?
Fitness coaching is a process that involves training, instructing, guiding, and motivating a person or group of persons to achieve their fitness goals. The fitness goals could be losing weight, maintaining healthy body weight, building endurance, developing healthy eating habits, managing diseases, and building strength, amongst others.
Fitness refers to the state of sound health and overall well-being of the human body. A fit person is someone who leads a healthy lifestyle and is strong enough to carry out physical activities optimally. Unlike what most people think, fitness is not just about physical health, it also refers to having optimal emotional and mental health. Our physical, emotional, and mental health are connected in a way that when one is lagging, the other two suffer and the result is what we see through the deterioration of physical health.
Keeping fit is a perfect example of something easier said than done. It needs a person to know how the body works in general. The person should be knowledgeable on subjects related to our emotional, mental, and physical health. Fitness is broad and complex/; not everyone can understand or have the patience to understand what it entails and practice them. Hence, fitness specialists, coaches, or instructors are needed for guidance and direction.
A fitness coach understands the needs of his trainees and works together with them to ensure that they meet their fitness needs. A fitness coach also referred to as a fitness instructor is supposedly a fitness expert. Hence, the person should be knowledgeable, experienced, and able to recommend healthy activities that suit the different needs of the individual.
Responsibilities of a fitness coach
- Identify and assess clients’ fitness level: This involves getting to know and understand your client. Every client is not the same. You might meet people with similar cases, but their body types and needs might differ. And to ensure that you help them meet their fitness goals, you’ll need to evaluate them and their abilities to know what’s stopping them from being fit, and what they need to get fit and maintain fitness.
- Create tailored exercise programs and routines for clients: Exercise is an important aspect of fitness and wellness as it enhances the functioning of the vital organs of the body and contributes to the overall wellness of the body. Hence, having understood and evaluated the fitness level of a client, the fitness coach has to recommend and set up exercise programs and routines tailored to the client’s needs.
- Draw tailored diet plans for clients: A diet plan is as important as exercise in fitness. No matter the kind of exercise you do, without a diet plan to complement it you might not achieve much. A fitness coach has to develop a diet plan that complements the recommended exercise routine and the body needs of a person.
- Set up activities that enhance the overall wellness of the human body: There’s more to fitness than exercise and dieting. Fitness covers other habits like how to control and manage emotional needs, healthy sleeping habits, and activities that enhance cognitive abilities and boost mental health, amongst others. A fitness coach has to recommend and incorporate these activities into clients’ fitness journey and ensure that the clients follow it through to achieve the maximum result.
- Track fitness progress: The fitness journey is progressive. Hence, a fitness instructor must track and assess the level of fitness attained regularly. This will help the instructor to know how much the client has achieved and make adjustments to programs and routines to suit a client’s current fitness level.
- Ensure the safety of clients during training sessions: A fitness coach must ensure that the recommended diet and exercise, and the equipment used for training are safe for the client. This is to prevent accidents and mishaps that come with wrong diet recommendations.
- Offer support to clients especially those on a weight loss journey: The fitness journey is not an easy one. Sometimes, fitness changes aren’t significant, making a lot of people want to give up. As a fitness instructor or coach, you have to offer support and motivation to clients from time to time. A good way of encouraging them is by joining them in exercising.
How to become a fitness coach
The first step to becoming a fitness coach is to become knowledgeable in the fitness industry. This is because fitness coaching requires expertise. As a fitness coach or instructor, you have to understand human biology, psychology, nutrition, and every aspect that relates to fitness. Hence, you have to study and attend professional programs to enlighten you and keep you updated on knowledge relating to the field.
Being knowledgeable is not enough to earn you the title of a fitness instructor. You need experience. You have to practice what you’ve learned. A good way to start as a fitness coach is to intern or volunteer in gyms. It will give you first-hand experience with the basics of fitness coaching, and broaden your horizon on all that coaching entails.
Another way to practice fitness coaching is by trying out your knowledge of yourself. When you experiment with yourself, you learn new things about yourself and the profession that might not be taught in classes. And when people see the results of your work through you, it encourages them to try you out. You can also volunteer to coach a close friend or relative. This will give you extensive experience, and add to your portfolio.
Essential Skills of a fitness coach
- Effective communication: Communication is only effective when a listener understands the message passed across. A fitness coach should be able to explain things to his clients in simple language and ensure that the person understands what is being explained or said. Effective communication establishes a good rapport with clients, promotes a healthy and interesting training environment, and fosters productivity in fitness. A fitness coach should also be able to understand the client’s level of understanding and adjust his communication to suit the client.
- Leadership ability: Every coach is a leader, and that’s because coaches are in charge of instructing, guiding, and motivating their followers. A coach should be resourceful, organized, proactive, have a positive attitude, and have problem-solving skills, amongst others. Every leadership skill applies to the fitness industry. Hence, fitness coaches should work on themselves to develop them with time.
- Teamwork: A coach should be able to work with a group of people efficiently and effectively. Due to the nature of the work, people will always be in your space. So, you have to develop the attitude of working alongside people to achieve your goals.
- Flexibility and endurance: You cannot teach what you don’t have. Fitness coaches lead by example, meaning that they have long endurance and flexibility. Coaches do the most because they engage in the activities done by their clients. If a fitness coach has three clients with different exercise routines, the coach will have to engage in three different programs. It takes a flexible person and someone with a good endurance level to do that.
- People management: As a coach, you get to meet people with different characters, attitudes, and levels of understanding. People can be a handful, but it is paramount to be able to handle them well and with care and work effectively with them. To work with people effectively you have to develop emotional intelligence and learn to be patient.
Job requirement of fitness coach
Here’s a list of requirements needed to land a fitness coaching Job.
- Prior experience. 2 to 3 years of experience is mostly required. If you are looking to join the fitness industry, volunteering is a good way to fill the job experience gap.
- Proven cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) experience.
- Degree or accredited certification in kinesiology or sports science, or High School Diploma
- Versatility in fitness-related subjects
- Computer literacy
- Leadership experience
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
- People management skills
- Teamwork
Guide on how to write your resume as a fitness trainer
A resume is a document that highlights a person’s skills, educational background, certifications, work experience, and accomplishments. Most jobs require you to submit your resume as the first step of the application. The resume mirrors your abilities and qualification, giving the recruiter a clue to know if you are the talent they are looking for.
When applying for fitness jobs, you are competing with over 100 experienced people for the position, but that does not mean that you lack the chance to be selected. Not all jobs require advanced talent, some require rising talents. So, all you have to do is position yourselves to be exceptional through your resume.
Here’s how to write an outstanding resume for a fitness coach:
- Your name and contact information should come first on your resume. It should be in the order of full name, phone number, email address, and links to your social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter. Customize your social media links to have your names.
Example:
James Robinson
xxxx@gmail.com | +1 xxx xxx xxxx
www.linkedin.com/in/jamesrobinson
- Summary of the resume. This should be a brief and concise bio highlighting your role, strong skills, years of experience, and what you can offer. Use action words like efficient, proficient, diligent, and hardworking, amongst others when describing what you do. At most, three sentences are enough. The recruiter has dozens of other resumes to look at, so there’ll be no time for long reads.
Example:
A resourceful, certified, professional fitness instructor with 1-year experience, effective communication, interpersonal skills, efficient human management skills, and a track record of helping over 20 people achieve their fitness goals. Looking forward to helping intentional people take their fitness journey to the next level.
- Experience. After the summary, highlight your experience in the order of most recent to past experiences. Include your job role, company, start date and end date, and accomplishment. Use actionable and result-oriented words, and quantify your achievements using numbers and percentages to show authenticity.
Example:
Fitness instructor
DBV Fitness home
May 2021-June 2022
Developed a strategy that helped endomorph individuals lose fat within an average of six months.
Achieved a 90% client satisfaction rate.
- Certifications and Education background. You don’t have to include all your educational background and certifications. Only include those that are relevant to the job. List them from the order of most recent to past achievements.
Example:
Certified professional trainer
National Federation of Professional Trainers
March 2021-june2022
BS Applied physiology and kinesiology
University of Florida
June 2016-July 2020
- Highlight your skills. Use bullet points to highlight your soft skills (attributes) and hard skills (abilities)
Examples:
- Organization
- Resourcefulness
- Fitness tracking
- Strategy development, etc.
- Mention your awards in the order of recent to past awards if you have any.
Conclusion
You can clinch jobs as a fitness coach irrespective of your years of experience. All you need is to brush up on your skills, gain experience, and position yourselves using your resume. Now that you’ve learned to write a professional resume as a fitness coach, write a new resume or effect the necessary adjustments to your resume and start applying for jobs.
References
What Is a Fitness Coach and How to Become One
WHAT DOES A HEALTH AND FITNESS COACH DO?
Fitness Trainer job description