What are some of the newer trends you’re seeing in health and mindset coaching?
BG: For nearly four decades, fitness has been about exercise, programming, physical assessment and nutrition. These factors are naturally necessary in the fitness matrix, but a trend we cannot deny is that as our education has increased on those four base components, the worldwide epidemic of obesity and inactivity has also increased. Exercise and nutrition are not the answer. Understanding what drives human behavior is.
How can fitness professionals take advantage of this trend and help it grow their business or career?
BG: The easiest and most obvious answer is to simply look at the “life coaching” industry. The U.S. Census Bureau has shown that life coaching is the second fastest growing industry in the world. If you examine life coaching at large, you’ll see an incredible overlap in terms of what people seek from a fitness professional and a life coach (specifically, self-esteem, self-worth and life transformation). What fitness professionals must understand is that people are coming to them for a solution, but then walking out the door to pay a different professional for a corresponding solution. Get educated. Get certified. Build an augmented part of your business that offers “coaching and mentoring” as part of the fitness journey. The marketplace is huge and the opportunity is immense.
What type of fitness professional do you think would most be interested in pursuing further education in health/mindset coaching?
BG: Fitness professionals who see each client as a systemic organism. Fitness itself is part of a greater solution to most people’s needs. Fitness professionals who see that vision clearly and want to become part of the revolution in this industry would be the ones most successful in making this education part of their professional credentialing.
What questions might you suggest a fitness professional ask themselves when deciding whether this trend is right for them?
BG: What percent of your clients seem to face obstacles no matter how fantastic your training and nutrition advice is? How many clients do you feel challenged by because no matter what you tell or give them, they never seem to take consistent action? Quite simply, we must begin to open our eyes to the fact that self-sabotage and non-sustaining habits are the root cause of why so many clients fail to achieve or maintain their fitness goals. Education related specifically to that should be considered essential.
Are there any resources you might recommend that will help give more insight on this trend?
BG: The Mindset Performance Institute (MPI) has recently been purchased by PTA Global and continues to offer cutting-edge education to fitness professionals around the world on all aspects related to mindset, human behavior and the practical implementation of mindset-related coaching into an existing fitness business. Other areas of study and research would include understanding the unconscious mind and how it impacts actions and habits; neuroscience factors related to learning and how that effects the ability to understand our own motivation patterns; and the role ego plays in decision making and how patterns can be interrupted rather than intervened upon.
An 18-year veteran of the sports training industry, Brian Grasso founded one of the largest youth development educational organizations in the world, served as its CEO for nearly eight years and co-created one of the fastest growing fitness franchises in the United States along with it. Grasso is an international lecturer, high-level coach, prolific writer and author of “The Audacity of Success” and “Mindset Matters Most.”.
