Future Career Opportunities Await—Are You Ready?

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Future Career Opportunities Await—Are You Ready?

The fitness and health coaching industries are constantly evolving, so it is essential to be able to foresee future opportunities and then position yourself to take advantage of them. We asked five industry experts to answer questions about where they think things are headed, offer tips on how to stay ahead of the curve and what you need to do to make sure your career thrives.

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From the Mat to the Weight Room: Integrating Yoga and Muscular Training

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From the Mat to the Weight Room: Integrating Yoga and Muscular Training

Yoga poses offer a wide range of benefits—even when you don’t perform them as part of a traditional yoga class. This article examines why yoga can complement just about any muscular-training program you design for your clients, and provides guidance on how to integrate yoga, breathwork and mindfulness into your classes and training sessions.

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Movement Sequencing: Strategies to Build a Smooth and Effective Group Fitness Experience

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Movement Sequencing: Strategies to Build a Smooth and Effective Group Fitness Experience

A key to creating a successful group fitness experience is building a sound class plan that features smooth transitions and movements that feel natural and purposeful to both you and your participants. In this article, you’ll learn strategies for properly sequencing movements in a way that will serve you well no matter what types of classes you teach.

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A Trauma-informed Approach to Exercise Leadership

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A Trauma-informed Approach to Exercise Leadership

Trauma-informed coaching or exercise leadership involves allowing clients or class participants to reconnect with their bodies through movement and feel safe doing so, while also creating environments and programs that feel supportive and approachable. This article examines the scope and application of trauma-informed coaching and explains why activities such as yoga and resistance training can help facilitate healing for those who have been impacted by trauma.

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What Happens When Weight Loss Doesn’t Magically Change a Client’s Life (Like They Expected It To)

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What Happens When Weight Loss Doesn’t Magically Change a Client’s Life (Like They Expected It To)

When it comes to losing weight, some clients may think that hitting their goal weight will be a cure for all the things in their lives that make them unhappy or that they wish they could change. Of course, weight loss is not a panacea. Learn what you, as a health coach or exercise professional, can do to prevent this scenario from happening, and, if it does occur, how you can navigate this difficult moment in your relationship with the client and in the client’s wellness journey.

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Surviving or Thriving? How to Recognize and Address Professional Burnout

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Surviving or Thriving? How to Recognize and Address Professional Burnout

Are you among the millions of people who report feeling burned out and overwhelmed? As a member of a helping profession, you may be particularly vulnerable to experiencing the effects of burnout, which can make it hugely challenging to perform well in your job. Learn how to spot the signs of burnout and the steps you can take to go from merely surviving to thriving.

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Using Cultural Competence to Improve Minority Health

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Using Cultural Competence to Improve Minority Health

April is National Minority Health Month, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) uses to highlight the importance of reducing health disparities and improving the health of racial and ethnic minority and American Indian/Alaska Native communities. This year, the theme is “Better Health Through Better Understanding.”

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What Happens When Weight Loss Doesn’t Magically Change a Client’s Life (Like They Expected It To)

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What Happens When Weight Loss Doesn’t Magically Change a Client’s Life (Like They Expected It To)

When it comes to losing weight, some clients may think that hitting their goal weight will be a cure for all the things in their lives that make them unhappy or that they wish they could change. Of course, weight loss is not a panacea. Learn what you, as a health coach or exercise professional, can do to prevent this scenario from happening, and, if it does occur, how you can navigate this difficult moment in your relationship with the client and in the client’s wellness journey.

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RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT: How Adaptive Training Compares to Traditional Resistance Training

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RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT: How Adaptive Training Compares to Traditional Resistance Training

Adaptive resistance exercise equipment uses artificial intelligence to create workouts that are safe, controlled and use quantifiable resistance, but how do these workouts compare to free weights or traditional resistance-training machines? Researchers in the High Altitude Exercise Physiology Program at Western Colorado University set out to find out the answer.

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RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT: Quantifying EPOC After REHIT

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RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT: Quantifying EPOC After REHIT

Does a reduced-exertion high-intensity interval training (REHIT) bout result in a significant caloric burn (known as excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, or EPOC) after the workout is over? Learn why the results of this study confirm that the benefits of REHIT extend beyond the workout itself and are comparable to traditional moderate-intensity workouts that last much longer.

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The Role of Physical Activity in the Fight Against Cognitive Impairment

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The Role of Physical Activity in the Fight Against Cognitive Impairment

Nearly everyone experiences memory or thinking problems as they age, but a person who has been diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment experiences these challenges earlier or more rapidly or severely than is expected based on their age. Learn about ongoing research into the effects of physical activity on cognitive impairment that offers a glimmer of hope.

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The Future of Health Coaching Is...

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The Future of Health Coaching Is...

The past few years have been a time of constant change for the health and fitness industry, leaving many to wonder: What does the future hold for health coaching? This article examines where health coaching may be headed and how the adoption of more behavior-change principles may alter the day-to-day work of not only health coaches, but exercise professionals as well.

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Exploring Opportunities Within the Nutrition Scope of Practice

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Exploring Opportunities Within the Nutrition Scope of Practice

Nutrition is an important topic for health coaches and exercise professionals to understand, as changes in the industry and in technology have greatly broadened the types of services you can offer to your clients and participants while staying within your defined scope of practice. Learn how providing these expanded services can enhance your practice, allow you to make more money and grow your business.

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How to Create a More Size-inclusive Environment for Your Clients

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How to Create a More Size-inclusive Environment for Your Clients

More than 70% of Americans are now living in larger bodies, and these individuals often have different psychological and physical needs than their smaller-bodied counterparts. Learning the skills needed to serve this population is not only an opportunity to expand your business and help more people achieve their health and wellness goals, but it also gives you the chance to enhance the equity, diversity and inclusion in your business and beyond.

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Is Fear an Effective Tool in Behavior Change?

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Is Fear an Effective Tool in Behavior Change?

Can fear of a dramatically reduced quality of life, or even death, be enough to trigger meaningful behavior change? Not necessarily. The initial burst of motivation—“I’m going to change my life starting today”—will only carry a person so far, and unfortunately, probably not very far at all. Learn the most effective tactics for helping your clients make the changes necessary to improve their health over the long-term.

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Understanding Long COVID: What to Do When Exercise May Do More Harm Than Good

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Understanding Long COVID: What to Do When Exercise May Do More Harm Than Good

Although the threat of COVID-19 may feel as though it’s waning, evidence suggests the incidence of long COVID is rising. Marked by a range of ongoing health problems that may flare up after an initial infection, long COVID can make exercising painful—and it may even make symptoms worse. In this article, we examine what is currently known about long COVID and offer tips on how to help your clients who may be trying to return to exercise after having long COVID.

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Shifting Priorities: A More Holistic View of Wellness

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Shifting Priorities: A More Holistic View of Wellness

As a health and exercise professional, you are committed to living an active, healthy lifestyle, which can make it difficult to relate to clients who struggle to do the same. New research shows that, since the pandemic, more people are prioritizing their health and taking a more holistic view of wellness. Learn what people now say is motivating them to make healthy changes—and how you can help them stay motivated to achieve their goals.

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Discipline = Freedom: How Systemization Can Support Behavior Change

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Discipline = Freedom: How Systemization Can Support Behavior Change

Systemizing your life means creating a repeatable process that helps eliminate the need for willpower or decision making. Learn how to help your clients develop self-discipline to set themselves up for success and minimize stress and in-the-moment decision making to optimize behavioral outcomes, whether that’s through better nutrition, more exercise or other lifestyle changes they may be pursuing.

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Lessons Learned From COVID: Four Steps to Managing Fluctuations in Income

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Lessons Learned From COVID: Four Steps to Managing Fluctuations in Income

One of the key lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic is that, as a health and exercise professional, you need to be able to quickly pivot to continue to support and find new ways of serving your clients or participants so that you can maintain a steady income during even the most trying of times. This step-by-step approach to minimizing and managing fluctuations in income can help you better weather life’s inevitable economic ups and downs.

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Overwhelmed? 6 Tips for Achieving Work/Life Balance

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Overwhelmed? 6 Tips for Achieving Work/Life Balance

As a health and exercise professional, you have likely had to reinvent yourself and find ways to serve your clients or participants while working from home or in new environments. Like many others, you may be feeling overwhelmed, so we sought the advice of those who have been working within the industry for some time and represent a range of lifestyles and responsibilities. Here, they offer their best tips for achieving work/life balance, whatever that might mean to you.

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Surviving or Thriving? How to Recognize and Address Professional Burnout

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Surviving or Thriving? How to Recognize and Address Professional Burnout

Are you among the millions of people who report feeling burned out and overwhelmed? As a member of a helping profession, you may be particularly vulnerable to experiencing the effects of burnout, which can make it hugely challenging to perform well in your job. Learn how to spot the signs of burnout and the steps you can take to go from merely surviving to thriving.

Read More

Exploring Opportunities Within the Nutrition Scope of Practice

| by
Exploring Opportunities Within the Nutrition Scope of Practice

Nutrition is an important topic for health coaches and exercise professionals to understand, as changes in the industry and in technology have greatly broadened the types of services you can offer to your clients and participants while staying within your defined scope of practice. Learn how providing these expanded services can enhance your practice, allow you to make more money and grow your business.

Read More

Lessons Learned From COVID: Four Steps to Managing Fluctuations in Income

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Lessons Learned From COVID: Four Steps to Managing Fluctuations in Income

One of the key lessons of the COVID-19 pandemic is that, as a health and exercise professional, you need to be able to quickly pivot to continue to support and find new ways of serving your clients or participants so that you can maintain a steady income during even the most trying of times. This step-by-step approach to minimizing and managing fluctuations in income can help you better weather life’s inevitable economic ups and downs.

Read More

Discipline = Freedom: How Systemization Can Support Behavior Change

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Discipline = Freedom: How Systemization Can Support Behavior Change

Systemizing your life means creating a repeatable process that helps eliminate the need for willpower or decision making. Learn how to help your clients develop self-discipline to set themselves up for success and minimize stress and in-the-moment decision making to optimize behavioral outcomes, whether that’s through better nutrition, more exercise or other lifestyle changes they may be pursuing.

Read More

Is a Slower Metabolism Really to Blame for Middle-aged Weight Gain?

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Is a Slower Metabolism Really to Blame for Middle-aged Weight Gain?

The findings of a new study on daily expenditure across the lifespan run counter to a lot of the beliefs many of us have about the way metabolism changes as we age. As the researchers discovered, the physiological changes that take place as we pass from one decade into the next likely have more to do with lifestyle factors and body-composition changes than they do with a naturally slowing metabolism.

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