Top Habits of Successful Fitness Professionals

As with any area of your life, success in your career is affected by your habits. A habit is more powerful than you might realize. It is something you do so often and regularly that it alters the brain and becomes automatic and difficult to change. This can be good or bad, depending on the habit. 

A bad habit, like wasting time by mindlessly scrolling through social media, can be detrimental to your career goals. A good habit, like spending an hour each day engaging with your followers on your professional social media sites, can benefit your career. 

As you build a fitness business, it’s worth developing some positive habits that will help you be more successful. To create a habit, you need to add it to your routine, focus on how it benefits you, and stick with it. But first, you need to recognize which habits you want to cultivate. Here are some of the habits that make other fitness professionals good at what they do. 

Are you new to personal training? Check out these tips from seasoned pros. 

1. Successful Personal Trainers Set and Work Toward Goals

Goal setting isn’t just for New Year’s. People who are successful in any industry or aspect of their life do it all the time. They make it a daily habit to work on current goals. Just as you help your clients set and achieve goals, you should be working on professional goals. 

When you set and regularly work toward goals, you go from just staying busy in your work to actually getting better at it. Make goal-setting and achievement a regular habit. 

Set big goals and break them down into smaller targets that you can achieve with daily or weekly actions. You might set a goal for getting a new certification, earning more income, or adding new clients, for example. Make a plan that consists of smaller, short-term goals that help you get to the big ones. 

2. They Have Their Own Fitness and Nutrition Habits

The best trainers set an example for their clients. No one wants to listen to a fitness professional who doesn’t adhere to their own guidelines or advice. Be a leader and an example by building your own healthy habits. 

This includes both fitness and diet. If you have been into fitness for a while but have let your nutrition lag, add some healthier food habits and break old ones that aren’t so good for you. If you have let your own fitness slide while helping others, reprioritize it.

Stop skipping your own workouts. Make them as much a habit as the sessions you provide for clients. Don’t cheat on meals or shortcut good nutrition. Healthy eating should be a consistent habit to maintain your own wellness and to help guide your clients.

3. They Prioritize Communication

Communication is one of the most important skills for a successful personal trainer. It is the lynchpin of what you do. It includes educating your clients about fitness and nutrition and breaking down and explaining exercises and good form. If you cannot be clear and communicative, your clients will not benefit from your knowledge and expertise. 

Good communication also includes staying in touch with clients on scheduling, updates, assessments, and motivation through in-person sessions and virtually. 

The best fitness instructors make communication a habit. They stay engaged with clients and with their entire fitness community online, in gyms, and on social media. This is vital for gaining and keeping happy clients. 

4. Professionalism is a Non-Negotiable Habit

It’s easy to let professionalism slide in the fitness industry. You don’t meet clients in a suit or behind a desk. You work out together, get sweaty together, and sometimes have to get personal about goals, motivations, and roadblocks. 

The best trainers make a strict habit of being professional with their clients and don’t cross boundaries. They can be friendly and encouraging without crossing the line. They respect each client’s time by making appointments. They respect their privacy by keeping confidential information safe. 

Other aspects of professionalism include prioritizing safety for clients, adhering to best practices, avoiding biases with clients, staying focused on your client during sessions, referring clients to other trainers when necessary, and always using training methods based in science and research. 

5. Successful Pros Stay Active in the Fitness Community

Fitness is a business. Like any business, success requires networking, staying current, and maintaining connections with peers in the industry. Communicating with other professionals helps you learn and grow as a trainer. You can learn from their experiences and stop reinventing the wheel on your own. 

There are many ways to do this. At the most basic level, being part of the fitness community means chatting and networking with other trainers in your own gym. It means learning from a mentor and offering the benefit of your experience to others. 

You can also stay connected through professional events and classes and by maintaining an engaged presence on relevant social media pages. Create community with your own clients by communicating with them regularly. 

6. The Best Fitness Professionals Keep Learning

Exercise and nutrition science are always changing. The most successful pros in this industry recognize that they are never done learning. Make ongoing education a habit in your life and your career so you can offer the best, most up-to-date advice and guidance to help clients reach their goals. 

Getting your initial certification is just the first step if you’re serious about being a professional in the fitness industry. You need to keep it current with continuing education credits, but the best trainers go beyond the minimum requirements. They make a habit of reading the latest news in exercise and nutrition science and take classes whether they are required or not. 

This habit goes beyond fitness and nutrition. If you’re serious about success in the industry, you should also strive to keep learning about business. Trainers are small business owners. The most successful ones recognize that they need business skills as well as fitness knowledge. 

7. They Practice Work-Life Balance

Striving for success in your professional life is a great goal. On the other hand, working too much can become a bad habit. The best trainers include other habits in their lives that help them achieve better balance. You can’t be your best professional self if you are overworked and burned out. 

Your personal fitness and nutrition habits are an essential part of this balance. Don’t neglect your own healthy habits in favor of your clients’ goals and successes. Make time for your family, for time with friends, for self-care, and for non-fitness hobbies you enjoy. 

Check out these tips for avoiding burnout as a personal trainer. 

What You Can Learn From the Top Habits of Successful Fitness Professionals

As a trainer or fitness instructor, you’ll develop your own habits and your own style of working with clients. But, you can still learn from the successful professionals around you. Learning from others with more experience is part of being a professional in any industry. 

While everyone works a little differently, these habits and skills are common among the best in the business. If you strive to be a successful professional, prioritize these habits. 

Use these habits as the foundation for building your own practice and successful business. Let your area of specialty, fitness niche, personality, and personal communication style guide how you work with clients and your own version of career success. 

Are You Committed to Fitness? Get Certified!

If you have a passion for exercise and health and love working with others, you have what it takes to become a top fitness professional. Learn more and get certified with ISSA! Our Certified Personal Trainer – Self-Guided Study Program is self-paced and gives you the credential you need to get started.