Although picking up a career as personal trainers can be pretty exciting, it also has its downsides. There are so many things nobody tells you about personal training, and one of them is how to avoid burn out personal trainer.
This highly intensive job requires you to remain active and on your feet for most of the day. Also, it doesn’t help that you have to work with different people at different times, sacrificing your private hours to move your business further.
In summary, the fitness world, and personal training, in particular, can be unforgiving, leading to trainer burnout. The other bad news is that personal trainer burnout doesn’t care if you are a newbie or a vet in your personal training career.
The logical step is for fitness professionals to discover how to beat fatigue and burnout in the fitness industry. And that’s exactly what this article is about. Here are the top tips for avoiding burnout in your fitness business
1. Make Sleep a Priority
It can be pretty difficult to get enough sleep when you work for most hours of the day. But still, sleep is essential to maintaining your strength and concentration levels and preventing burnout. This is especially true if you have training sessions in the early mornings.
So, to ensure that you get enough sleep to keep you well, follow these tips:
- Create a regular sleeping plan and make sure you sleep at similar times every day.
- Avoid caffeinated drinks six hours before bed to improve your sleep quality.
- Stay off your phone while in bed
- Avoid extreme physical exhaustion if you want better sleep
- Build a bedtime routine that helps you mentally ready for sleep. This can include reading books, baths, or short exercises.
2. Set Strict Working Hours
This is an important way to avoid burnout as a fitness professional. When you fail to do this, you may see yourself answering calls, checking emails, and attending to your business even at hours you shouldn’t.
Most fitness professionals want to become a successful personal trainer, and a big part of that is having your own clients. But unless you adhere to stick personal rules, you’ll find yourself trying to attend to training clients when you should be caring for yourself.
This will always be a problem if you have too many clients. Yes, many clients may be just what you need to pay the bills, but it can have negative effects on your career and health.
Set a time when you’ll pause all work-related activities and attend to yourself. This idea will help sustain your energy and keep you refreshed for the next day.
3. Avoid Doing Split Shifts
Many fitness coaches in big box gyms take care of clients in the mornings before work. Then they go home, nap, and return to the gym in the evenings to train other clients. These split shifts can quickly exhaust you, even if you nap as frequently as you can.
There is just a limit to how much work your body can take, regardless of how high your stress tolerance is. That’s why it’s better to pick (if you can) shifts in the gym. Will you work in the morning and focus on other things in the evenings?
Or do you prefer being on the gym floor in the evenings?
Because of this, it is recommended that you choose between being an evening coach, or a morning coach. Well, you may worry about getting enough clients in one shift. You can do that by exploiting your clients’ flexible schedules by encouraging them to train during off-hours.
4. Design Individual Workout Programs for Clients
Building feasible options for your more experienced clients is an excellent way of reducing gym time and avoiding burnout as a trainer. Here, you would have to create workout options for your customers based on their needs and requirements.
You can create intense calorie-burning routines, exciting workouts to push lazy clients, and even challenging workouts to keep clients motivated.
Once that’s done, you can be a little less involved in their actual training as you focus on conserving your energy and supervising instead of being actively involved.
It is pretty effective for avoiding burnout because you’ll need a few hours to design routines for your clients. Now, you can save the time and energy you have to put into one-on-one coaching sessions.
Think of it as a part of your business planning system. The more time and energy you can save in these one-on-one sessions, the more you’ll have for other activities.
5. Work on Your Diet
Your diet has a lot of stake in your performance as a workout pro. You already know, thanks to your personal trainer certification, that hitting your daily macros and macros is key to optimal performance.
That’s why fitness professionals need to pay as much attention to their diet as their clients. We won’t go into detail with specific diet plans because you probably talk to clients about it all the time.
But it’s important to remember that what you put in your body determines what you get out of it.
6. Consider Supplements
Supplements are a great way to add an extra edge to what you already consume in your diet. That’s why you should consider adding them to your personal trainer starter kit.
The use of supplements is an excellent way to hike your energy levels. However, it would be best if you didn’t use them as though they were miracle pills with instant cures for your problem. Also, remember that these supplements do not exactly fix sleep problems and dietary discrepancies.
Generally, they are great additions that supply you with enough essential nutrients to help keep your diet balanced. Nonetheless, you may need advice from a professional if you’re not well informed about their use.
7. Focus on your exercise routine
It’s easy to ignore your fitness routine as a professional, but that’s where the burnout starts to creep in. Many personal trainers spend all day coaching clients, and when you do that, it’s pretty easy to forget to exercise regularly.
You may even experience workout burnout, where you’re working out with clients all the time, so you don’t focus on your own training. But you already know that a balanced exercise routine is not only great for your physique, but it’s also excellent for your health.
High-stress jobs like what personal trainers do require a healthy body, and maintaining your workout routine is a fantastic way to achieve that.
Final Thoughts
As a personal trainer, you will feel a lot of pressure to satisfy your growing number of clients. However, you may break down occasionally if you do not pay attention to taking care of yourself.
It’s advisable to get enough sleep every day, create schedules and stick to them, and avoid split shifts to avoid these burnouts as a fitness professional. In addition, working on your diet, using some energy supplements, and designing individual workout plans will also see you maintain your energy.
