The Higher Realm for Personal Trainers

If you want to be a personal trainer, or you’ve actually turned that want into a reality (meaning you ARE a personal trainer) I want you to ask yourself “why.”

I know the knee-jerk response that’s certain to show up first.

“Because I have a passion for fitness, and I love helping people.”

If you stop there, you will, like most personal trainers, come face-to-face with limitation. 

You won’t feel yourself hitting the proverbial ceiling but being stuck in that mantra (passion for fitness, helping people) is a subtle trap where the sense of restriction is far removed from awareness.  Being limited by the cyclical thought process that drives the mechanical mind of most trainers-in-business does you a massive disservice if we’re considering your true potential.

Hmm.  Let's do that.  Let's consider your true potential.

Read on for 7 Perspectives That Position You At The New Pinnacle

I’m anticipating that the article you're reading right now will be unlike any fitness or fitness career article you’ve ever read.  

I’m familiar with the mainstream personal training publications and websites and I’m intimate with the articles that serve as their fabric.  I’ve published over 3000 of such articles distributed in every forum from monthly columns and articles in Personal Fitness Professional to the NSCA course textbooks. 

I know what is ordinary in our field.

Don’t misunderstand me. 

This is a noble field. 

Ordinary is not a criticism.  It is simply a label I’m providing to separate it from that which taps into far higher ideals and far more fortuitous outcomes.  I intend to address the extraordinary.

This article will express something uncharacteristic, at best a different view, perhaps an elevated one.  Not every personal trainer will continue on or resonate with my perspectives as they unfold, but the few who do will prove to be those with the greatest potential to lead and prosper, and it is precisely that handful I seek to link arms with.

I couldn’t have written this article a year ago.  I had to experience the Season of COVID.  I had to witness not only an industry shift, that will ultimately amount to a cleansing and reshaping of our field but one that is also driving a complete upheaval in societal want.

This is more than a change.   It is a metamorphosis of the civilized world, and depending upon where you choose to adjust your sights, it will either be a tragic period of loss or an immensely lucrative harvest in which the gates open to a world of absolute abundance.

All of this is directly related to your chosen career.

Here’s where you have an opportunity to make the next career choice, and it’s a big one. 

If you are happy being a trainer as we’ve come to know the avatar, taking people through workouts, finding a sense of creativity and advancement in understanding functional regimens, postural corrections, and performance enhancement, you can stop here.  You don’t want to expose yourself to a different realm of possibility where that which you choose to pursue might suddenly reveal itself to be confining and restrictive.

If you have, within you, a sense of wonder, and if your “why” goes beyond passion and a desire for helping others into a place of “hunger,” a place where you “need” to gain the power to go beyond “helping people,” into a space where you elevate and heal those in need, physically, emotionally, and masterfully, then your time is now.  Read on (and before you do, Register for "The Higher Realm Gateway to Prosperity Webinar" January 7 for FREE).

"NEED" MEETS A PEDESTAL OF POWER

Let’s understand the words “in need” so you don’t mistake this for a diatribe on helping victims, patients, or those with severe limitations.  This is not about redirecting to help those our society considers “needy,” but it’s rather intended to invite you to recognize the “need” among those who haven’t readily raised their hands for help. 

The opportunity lies in helping the entrepreneur, the CEO, the office worker, the new Mom, the family matriarch, the health practitioner, the athlete, the retiree, the Dad-bod, the employee, the pilot, the nurse, and the teacher.  It simply asks you to help them in a different way, at a different level, and at a higher stake than any of your present peers might offer to. 

I’ll go a step further.  It asks you to help people with unrecognized or unacknowledged need beyond the “help” that might be provided by any medical professional or hospital group might.

As our population is consumed by polarizing views and divisive forces bundling the uncertainties of nature with the ugly underbelly of political mayhem, we can position ourselves on a pedestal of power, a pedestal unaffected by societal sway.  I’m inviting you to operate in a place of light, a place where True North becomes clear, a place where your impact is pure good and your reward Divine.

I’m sure I’ve lost many readers by now.  That’s OK.  Let’s consider everything prior to this paragraph the filter. 

If you’re still here, you’re at least getting a sense there’s a better life for you, and your inner guide that led you toward a career in fitness landed you at the steps of something far greater than you might have bargained for.

Before I go on, I want to insert a comment that was sent to me via email.  I appreciate it.  I know the author of it and know his intentions are good.  I even agree with his point of view.  I just want you, the reader to know, it, and other comments like that from folks who read this article as a preview, didn’t dissuade me.  I didn’t change a thing, I simply inserted this and the next paragraph.  Here’s what he wrote:

Phil, you’re an extraordinary writer and your writing has inspired me to become a copywriter and a marketer selling fitness and transformation, but you’re violating a cardinal rule of our trade.  You’re speaking to a higher intellect when you know trainers respond to an 8^th grade level of writing.  Nobody will read your article long enough to even learn about your course, and I say that as a friend with a great admiration for all that you do.

Interesting.  Let’s see, over time, if his instincts were correct, or perhaps there is a subset of personal fitness trainers who have a spirit, heart, and want for something greater.  Let’s see if a Healer Nation may rise from a chaotic field of potential fitness heroes, a few ready to shine a new light.

Now I’m going to share some perspectives, seven of them to be precise, that if I were speaking to an audience of immediate peers, I’d refer to as facts.

Because this will be read by a varied audience, I invite you to assess whether or not you agree with my assertions.  In all, they demonstrate how vital it is for anyone seeking to be “an industry leader” or a part of the upper echelon of earners to differentiate in a way you won’t find looking over your shoulder.  The opportunity lies in front of you.

Here are my key assertions that provide opportunity for A New Paradigm to shift a small but stunning chunk of our industry in your favor:

1. Personal Trainers Have Become a Homogenized Commodity

Today, with over 3.5 million men and women calling themselves personal trainers, the “trainer,” as initially positioned by mainstream health clubs, is “an extra offering,” a sort of an upsell (buy a membership and we'll throw in a trainer). 

Unlike a physician, who would be considered “a unique need based on circumstance or challenge,” people can opt to recruit a trainer as a guide, a motivator, an instructor, or a director.  While there are, of course, the Outliers, the field as a whole is comprised of trainers, who are viewed as expendable individuals with some expertise in the field of exercise.  There are few if any true standards so while the spectrum of personal training knowledge, ability, and expertise runs a broad scale of variability, the public isn’t aware of the differentiators. 

COVID has brought movement toward “virtual training” or “online exercise” and while this may have at first been novel, it has further devalued the commodity itself.  Where top trainers may have learned to command fees upwards of $150 per hour, with the massive influx of online training options, $12 a month is enough to get the consumer a “trainer” on their home computer screen.

We’re looking at a competitive landscape, where most trainers compete for the same 18% of our population using social media to flood the marketplace with homogenous offers.  It flattens earning potential and reduces the ability of an individual trainer to capture a market share without a new approach toward marketing.

2. Conventional “Outside the Box Thinking” is Inside a Bigger Box.

Even with a handful of “not-for-profit agencies,” the certification and industry education forces are capitalistic entities (and rightly so) and you, the personal trainer, are their customer.  This is sound, fair, and reasonable but realize that as “new offerings” are released as Specialty Programs or additional certs, the courses are designed to have appeal to the trainer.  I encourage continuing education and specialty training but let’s not mistake this education for positioning.  It isn’t. 

You’ll know more, you might know more about treating or affecting a given population, but you’re still “in the box” unless you’ve ventured outside of our field to explore business models that free you of “one-client one-time-block one-fee.”

3. Trainers Think “Linear”  and That Creates Tunnel Vision.

The opportunity reveals itself when we realign our internal GPS to what now lies in the periphery. 

Sure, they have sparks of creativity, but in this field, even the creative spirit of personal trainers is fed and nurtured by linear education. 

Get certified – Get clients – Get more clients. 

That’s the typical path of evolution.  “Branching out” asks the trainer to find specialty in Functional Aging, Weight Management, or Corrective Exercise.  All of this is commendable and valuable.  It just doesn’t allow for a glimpse of where the most profound opportunities lie. 

Education certainly offers greater potential, but the post-COVID marketplace will prove massively responsive to a message of restoration.  Not only physical restoration but cellular restoration.  It's as if there's a hidden keyhole to new opportunity and only the pioneer few will be directed toward it.

If you read this to the end and take action to find the key, insert it in the proverbial lock, and open the door of opportunity, consider yourself one of the privileged few.

4. Manifesting is a Vital Skill for the Next Core of Leaders

In my course, The Road Underlying Excellence (acronym: T.R.U.E.), a course I’m inviting you to seriously consider as it will prove to be a 10-week experience unlike any other, an experience that will completely alter your career path in a bountiful and thrilling way you likely never thought possible, Week #9 focuses on “manifesting.”

Manifestation has become a bit of a trendy word finding its way into meditative practices, new age gatherings, and a number of books and programs that make it seem like if you wish hard enough, you receive the gift of Aladdin’s Lamp.  The reality is, as a practical science it's age-old, with roots in ancient Egyptian Empires, and if we’re willing to back further, it’s biblical. 

Creation from idea to reality is the subject or classical works such as As A Man Thinketh and Think and Grow Rich.  It’s the invisible but natural power that allowed Walt Disney to turn a fantasy involving a cartoon mouse into the greatest entertainment conglomerate in the world.

In the T.R.U.E. course, I share Dr. Adizes’s Lifecyle of Business, which crystallizes the path from a business’s conception into it’s “prime.”  Manifestation is the process of moving from thought to prime, from conceptual to tangible, from a desire to a moment in time where all five senses agree, it’s real.

When we stay in the box outlined by a long-established industry, we tend to manifest what the creators of that box dictate it should contain.  I’m teaching health practitioners to not only shoot through the walls of the box, but manifest a business model where the trainer commands a marketplace, establishes three or four strong streams of revenue, and grows with limitless potential, leaving behind a trail of thrilled customers and clients, ultimately creating a collective of evangelistic “fans” singing the praises of your work.

If there were a 10-week course that can teach you to manifest your own version of this stellar fail-proof model . . . would you want in?  If you answered yes, you’ll love where this is going.

5. It’s the Ideal Time to Organize the Near-Future

The nation and the world have gone through disruption on a scale unlike anything I’ve seen in my lifetime.  Philosophers of old up through psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung knew that from chaos comes order.  Astronomers can look at the chaotic array of lights in the sky and see patterns and prophesy.  In Eastern traditions yin and yang may represent opposite parts of the whole, each of which contains the seed of the other. 

Our health care industry, as well us the relationships between insurers, drug companies, practitioners, and the public had been moving farther into a state of utter chaos for decades.  The men and women who inhabit our neighborhoods confused drugs with cure as they attempted to balance self-care and self-medicating.  People consumed with eating “healthy foods” became victims of food marketing and chemical companies married into agriculture to create Frankenfoods.  This, my friend, is chaos.  In there lies order, or perhaps, the seeds of order.  As COVID brought a population’s individual and collective vulnerabilities to the forefront, the seed of order became clear.

If there were a force, a team of committed individuals, who, without need for election, without ego-driven agendas, revealed a power to help people heal, a power to restore independent order to chaotic bodies and souls, couldn’t that be viewed as an inevitable uprising destined to emerge from the chaos.

We are that force.  If you choose to be a part of it.

If you have interest, contact me at [email protected] and I’ll send you details about the 10-Week Course that will change everything for the better, in your life as well as in the lives of everyone you touch.

It sounds as if this article has hit its conclusion . . . but things are not always as they appear.  I want to share two more perspectives that might be considered “extras,” although they’re every bit as relevant as the previous five and their exploration will be lengthy.  I’ll pick up the numbering right where we left off. Here’s number six.

6. The Infinite Order Within Perceived Chaos isn’t only Up, it’s “In.”

When we learn to see “inward” we produce far greater “outcomes”

We are organisms.  Homo Sapiens.  People.  And when we view or touch ourselves in the material world, we appear to be made up of flesh, muscle, and bone.  We know better. 

We don’t have to be studied as surgeons to know that although we can’t readily see “inside,” we each harbor our own kidneys, adrenal glands, digestive tracts, nervous systems, and lymphatic vessels.  We understand that the “truth” of our “make up” runs deeper than the naked eye can see. 

If we go a step further, we recognize that every tissue, organ, gland, and vessel is comprised of cells. 

Let’s stop there for a moment.

If every one of us is made up of trillions of cells, and each cell is a unique organism, it stands to reason that the health of our bodies is directly a reflection of the health of our cells.  That’s wild, yet we’re accepting of it because we’ve all taken high school biology and learned it as fact.

We wouldn’t ever question this “cell theory” because, even within our certification study we learn that muscles are made up of muscle cells, and if by chance we had some biopsied muscle tissue and a 40x microscope we can see the cell itself, even going as far as to identify the nucleus.

So far this is all within our sphere of comprehension, and when we learned about muscle cells, we learned about mitochondria, the energy  centers of the cell; the energy centers of these tiny little organisms that make up the tissue of each animate human organism and require a 40x enlargement to be seen with the eye. 

Now, consider this.

Each muscle cell has upwards of 1000 mitochondria. 

We can intellectually understand the Krebs Cycle and oxidative phosphorylation as the process of energy production, but when we think about these power centers being so tiny that we can fit over 1000 of these organelles within a single cell it begins to teeter on mind-blowing.

Suppose I were to tell you that the mitochondrial body itself contains organelles, and deep within we find strands of DNA, and within those DNA strands we find chromosomes, and every chromosome is made up of proteins, each protein chain made up of amino acids . . . you begin to get a sense that delving into the cell is every bit as awe-inspiring as traveling up through the cosmos.

Here’s where it gets exciting.  In the T.R.U.E. course I’ll help you understand things your certification prep classes never touched upon.  When we can tap into cellular integrity, when we come to understand the power we have to stimulate mitochondrial autophagy, repair, and optimization, we gain an entirely new perspective over the impact we can have upon human health.

When we understand our ability to impact brain rewiring (neuroplasticity), gut repopulation (restoration of the microbiome), REDOX (oxidation-reduction), and stem cell stimulation (regenesis), our awe is surpassed only by a new recognition of how we can restore “order” to bodies in chaos.

This is an entirely new paradigm.  It isn’t fitness, but it isn’t medicine.  It’s the space in between, and nobody is better positioned than the progressive personal trainer with a hunger for knowledge and a desire to achieve a higher level of fulfillment, to step into this space and prosper.  If you want to join us there, it begins with a step.  Let me know of your interest.  I’ll take it from there.

Here’s the final perspective I’ll share in this article.

7. If We Stand in Truth, we can be Warriors, Healers, and Incredible Teachers

We come to this world with incredible gifts, one of them being the miracle of homeostasis.  As infants, we cry when we’re hungry, drink when we’re thirsty, and adjust our rates or respiration and circulation as demanded by environment, driven by a young but flawless hypothalamus, a conductor of “balance” that resides in the brain.  With homeostasis comes the ability to repair cells, generate tissue, optimize hormonal production, and meet the demands of any stressors that moved us out of balance for short duration.

Two systems that are servants of the hypothalamus and vital participants in the recurring return to homeostasis are the Immune System, and “the other half” of the autonomic nervous system (the first half being the Sympathetic Nervous System) the Parasympathetic Recovery system.  These beautifully ordered systems co-operate to keep us safe from micro-invaders and pathogens and to restore us to balance so we can repair and regenerate.

These two systems are stronger than any drugs, chemicals, or human creations in optimizing health.  That’s a truth.  An absolute. Until . . .

Through disorder, chaos, excessive stress load, and poor human choices, bodies and systems deteriorate.  Cellular programs maladapt.  Hormonal signals become irregular and flawed.  This is the process of dis-ease.  This is negative movement along the disease continuum.  It amplifies oxidation and inflammation, two underlying sources of the degeneration we associate with aging.

THE TRUTH IS . . . whether this dis-ease process manifests as symptoms of diabetes, hypothyroidism, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, or inflammatory disease, these chronic lifestyle maladaptations are reversible.  There is immense power in truth.

Who would want to veer people away from truth?  Sellers of “health solutions” which people may become convinced they’re reliant upon.  Perpetuators of misinformation who profit by the spread of half-truths or disinformation. 

Who might unintentionally veer people away from truth?  Medical professionals who are educated by entities in the previous category.

When we stand in our truth we have power.

I want to be candid.  If you’ve been a personal trainer for a year, 15 years, or 30 years, you likely haven’t been exposed to the detail I’ll share in this eye-opening career-shifting course, The Road Underlying Excellence, and if you’re going to prosper as a pioneer and leader in this New Paradigm, breaking new ground with a thrilling new business model that shatters every limitation in our field, there’s a lot to learn.  If you abhor learning or fear the acknowledgement that your present knowledge is only a partial understanding of the power we have over the human machine this isn’t for you.  If, on the other hand, you’re willing to push your ego to the side, open your mind, and embark on an adventure that will land you in the Blue Ocean between fitness and medicine, a space where opportunity meets reward, reach out.  I’m ready for you.  [email protected]

Now we’re done.  With the article.  We’ve barely tapped into what lies ahead!

Phil

The Road Forward

My T.R.U.E. program (an acronym for The Road Underlying Excellence) was designed around this foundation. 

By walking you through 10 Milestones (one per week), it prepares personal trainers to readjust in a way that’s explosively profitable, immensely promising, and ideally suited to tap into “a new blue ocean” in “The New Spring.”

I’m willing to invite trainers with heart, ambition, and passion to join this group of extraordinary men and women.  Send me an email saying, “I’m interested in T.R.U.E.” and I’ll send you to access to one of the preliminary webinar meetings so you can get a sense of the program’s content, power, and commitment to excellence.

Don’t wait for “The New Normal.”  Be the force that nourishes, empowers, and captivates others in the soon-to-come New Spring

If you want to find the pinnacle of your fitness career, contact Phil and consider being a part of the T.R.U.E. Program for Personal Trainers Seeking Excellence.

email: [email protected]

MORE: If you haven't read it yet, read "The Truth Between the Lies (and the 5 Must's)"

The Higher Realm Webinar Recording

Phil shares his perspectives on the transition, for Personal Trainers, from 2020 to 2021.