Has your exercise routine gone out the window? Looking for that extra hit of motivation?
We spoke to experienced personal trainer, Steve Burden, about how he motivates his clients and why he enjoys helping people achieve their fitness goals.
1. What do you love about what you do as a personal trainer?
Where do I start!? I love the feeling I get whenever a client ‘gets it’ – when it clicks for them and they finally work out what’s needed to make it work – when the results start and that look on their face when you measure that for them… helping them quantify and qualify the results, and their application to the lifestyle they can then pursue.
I love the lifestyle too – not the typical ‘being my own boss’ comment here – as I am completely aware that I swapped one boss for hundreds when I took this on full time, but my clients are bosses I can not only collaborate with, coach, educate and drive, but also befriend! I consider myself extremely lucky to be doing a job that I can apply that old chestnut to… “do something that you love and you’ll never work a day in your life!” – well that’s me – 80+ hours a week, but I LOVE it.
2. How do you keep clients motivated about exercise?
By showing them how to find their own intrinsic drive. By NOT being the fake, artificially encouraging, always bubbly / pretend happy fitness freak trainer I meet so often – but by being the educated, rationale driven, deliberate and sequence focussed, ethical mentor they need to LEARN how to move like they should, to achieve the results they want! I try to make my clients INTERESTED in exercise – not just to do it because they feel like they have to / should / need to / or feel pressured by others, but because how they were built to move and function is pretty bloody cool – and brings pretty bloody cool things into their lives when they choose to simply MOVE more often!
I also use a fantastic tool to precisely and consistently measure the body composition changes we achieve (with both my own Personal Training clients and with many others who come purely for the scanning service). The comprehensive analysis we can provide is an incredibly motivating part of our service – and it does so in an educational and interesting way, that is also far less negatively emotive and confronting than the more subjective and invasive techniques traditionally used to ESTIMATE body composition.
3. Why is diet so important for helping your clients meet their fitness goals?
Can I sound cliché and say, simply… ‘IN versus OUT’? Nah I guess not – I believe it’s far more accurate to extend it to ‘what and when IN, versus how and when OUT’… and the ‘what and when’ – nutrient type and timing, is ABSOLUTELY paramount for their success. I hate the garbage so common in our industry, about trying to theorise whether it’s 80/20 Nutrition/Exercise, or 50/50 or 60/40 or whatever – it’s far more complex than that… Eat what YOU need to fuel what YOU do, do what YOU can with the fuel that YOU have, then sleep how YOU need to grow as YOU should – all to achieve YOUR goals! We are all different – as are our goals and aspirations. Individuals need individual approaches – and often individual approaches need to be structured by experts like Dieticians and Personal Trainers, to get it right.
4. Why do you choose to refer your clients to Nutrition Plus?
I’ve know Melanie for a long time, and when I need the guidance beyond my limited expertise regarding the nutritional components of my clients journey – I refer to Melanie and implicitly trust her and the team she assembles, to deliver intelligence and structure to my client’s ‘fuel stops’. I’m no expert – so I refer to those that are 🙂
Melanie was actually the first person to introduce me to the BioSpace InBody Body Composition Analysers (the most advanced of which I now use in my own practice), many years ago when I attended one of her courses ‘The Science of Weight Management’. Mel was an early adopter of this fantastic technology and still uses InBody scanners in her own practice to this day – it’s great to know that clients I refer to her will be managed with a similar scientific approach to that I prescribe to myself.