10 Cracking Study Tips for Fitness Professionals

If you’re about to take the plunge and start your Fitness Instructor course or Personal Trainer course, then congratulations.  An exciting, challenging and varied career awaits.  Once qualified you’ll be ready to take the next step working with clients, growing your reputation and building a successful career. 

Here’s how to keep your study simple and achieve your fitness qualifications with ease.

1 – Take a Moment

Planned learning is productive learning.  So before you begin grab your note pad or tablet and set out what you want to achieve in the next few hours.  Whether it’s a skim through of your course module to get a feel for the topic as a whole, working through a section or completing part of your course assessment, with your intention firmly set from the outset you’ll be motoring through your study in no time.

2 – Stay Connected

Make use of your personal course tutor and keep in touch.  Remember they want you to succeed in your fitness industry training and will do everything they reasonably can to help you along the way.  They have accumulated years of expertise, so stay connected and if you need a helping hand, just ask.

3 – Fire up your Brain Power

Not one can learn well if they’re running on empty, so fire up your brain power with some brain food.  Great choices include; avocado, blueberries, eggs, oily fish, nuts and dark chocolate.

4 – Find a Mentor

Working with a mentor can give you a real edge.  Many will put you through your paces helping to bring your fitness industry education to life and give you access to their network of contacts.  Not sure how to find a mentor?  Contact Personal Trainers in your area, explain that you’re looking to become a Personal Trainer and ask if you can shadow them or they can spare you a little of their time.

5 – Go watch

Be a regular at your gym but pay close attention to what’s going on around you.  Think about how what you’re observing applies to your course learning.  At the same time get to know the gym team who have all been where you are today and ask them for ideas and demos, most staff will be only too willing to help.

6 – Get a Water Hit

We all know the signs of thirst, that dry mouth, perhaps a loss of concentration or a loss of energy.  So keep some water close by and sip regularly to maximise your returns from the time you’ve invested in your study.

7 – Adopt the Learn Practice Cycle

When it comes to something that’s completely practical the only real way to succeed is to give it a go.  Riding a bike is a great example.  At the end of the day you have to jump on and keep on trying and before long its mission complete!

Completing your fitness qualifications is similar and whether you’re studying to become a Personal Trainer or Fitness Instructor you’ll find your course is divided into both theory and practical work.  In the early stages of your course you’ll be looking closely at the theory and in the latter stages you’ll focus on the practical aspects of exercise instruction and working with clients.

A really effective way to cement your knowledge and learning throughout your course is to follow the learn practice cycle.  This reinforces your learning by working with different types of people and is fantastic preparation to be ready to start in your new fitness role later on.

So enlist some friends, arrange to meet up at the gym every week or so and wow them with all your newly acquired knowledge and expertise.

8 – Know your Learning Style

Did you know that people like to learn in different ways, referred to as learning styles?  What’s more choosing the right learning style for you can make a big difference on how quickly, easily and successfully you learn.

For example, some learners are visual or spatial and like lots of pictures and images.  Here, learning by sketching out images and diagrams is a fantastic way to absorb course material.  Other people like to take a physical or kinesthetic approach and would absorb the material well by heading to the gym and working through the various exercises and programmes contained in their course notes.  In other cases learners are linguistic also called verbal, and learn best from written formats, making notes and answering questions in writing.

Don’t worry if you naturally like to shut the door and work alone with no interruptions.  That’s the solitary style, also called intrapersonal in action!  And if you want to show your friends and family all your newly acquired learning and have lots of catch ups with your course tutor, that’s fine too and means you probably like to learn in social or interpersonal ways.

Everyone’s different and in some cases you may find that you lean towards a couple of learning styles.  By understanding and recognising how you like to learn you’ll be able to use methods that best suit you, helping to maximise your learning.

9 – Move On

If a topic or question has got you a bit foxed be flexible with your learning, put it to one side and move on to something else.  It’s completely normal at both the level 2 Fitness Instructor course and level 3 Personal Trainer course for some topics to simply slot into place and others to require  a little more time and thought.  So don’t get bogged down, put that section aside and contact your tutor for some friendly advice.

10 – Be Chatty

Cast your mind back to the subjects you studied at school, perhaps a language.  Now imagine that by the time you left school you could hold a fairly decent conversation in that particular language with ease.  Once you left school you found no need to use the language and little by little the fluency goes.  With our brains overloaded with busy schedules, work, family and social events it’s all too easy to forget new information and this is the stuff you want to have at your fingertips when it comes to supporting your real-life clients once qualified.

Used knowledge is retained knowledge so chat about your new learning whenever you can.  People will be genuinely interested and you’ll be retaining all the key information so it’s easy to draw on when it crops up with real clients later on.

The Academy of Fitness Professionals provide the gold standard in accredited personal training courses with state of the art training fully endorsed by REPs, Skills Active and the NCFE.  Their specialist knowledge features in the UK health and fitness media including the Mirror, BBC2 and Women’s Running.  This is the ultimate learning destination for those serious about their fitness industry education and long term career as a Personal Trainer.

T – 0845 270 1990

E – info@aofp.co.uk

W – www.academyoffitnessprofessionals.com