Personal Training without sound nutrition practices is like peanut butter without jelly, Simon without Garfunkel or bacon without eggs; they simply go together.
Offering personal training in your facility is essential for both your club’s health as well as your members’; there is no disputing this. Why then, do we often focus on just personal training and forget the nutritional component? I could argue, nutrition is 80 percent of the battle and without it your members may never achieve their goals.
As a personal trainer myself, I was asked about nutritional advice by most every client. According to most if not all PT Certification agencies, nutrition is a line that should not be crossed, yet is gray. The reality is, “a personal trainer should become knowledgeable about nutrition to the point they can relay credible nutrition information in terms that can be understood by their client, but to understand when to recommend them to a registered dietician, sports nutritionist or physician,” to paraphrase the American Council of Exercise.
My experience has been, since most personal trainers gather their information from a variety of sources as well as life experiences; the message repeated from PT to PT can be inconsistent at best. Ultimately, this can lead to confusion and failure. It’s no wonder why people are constantly challenged with their diets not ever realizing their goals.
The Nutrition Solution
The solution can be as simple as turning your juice bar into a nutritional general store of good choices; i.e. healthy grab and go snacks, natural meal replacements and of course, “Recovery Shakes.”
But don’t stop there, now you need to educate them. It has been my observation that if we can educate people to begin eating sensibly and at the right times and in the right amounts, they are bound to break their plateaus and obtain their performance goals faster than they ever imagined. Get your member to understand this, and you will have that member for life.
One of the biggest misconceptions that I constantly run into is that people believe they need to starve themselves immediately following their workout. Convincing them to throw calories back their throats at this time is difficult, but it can be done through education. What your member needs to understand is that the clock is ticking. Immediately following his or her workout, the body needs to be refueled so that all that hard earned muscle they’ve worked so hard to build isn’t broken down for glycogen replenishment. That’s right, if you don’t replace what you’ve burned within 30 to 60 minutes of a workout your body begins cannibalizing its own muscle tissue for energy completely diminishing your efforts in the gym. Eventually, you end up with a smaller version of yourself with a higher fat to muscle ratio than when you began. So the truth is, we need to replenish quickly and what a better place but at the Juice Bar minutes after your last rep. You see that wasn’t too difficult to explain. This kind of information is out there and is well documented it just needs to be shared.
Create a Nutritional Zone
So, within your Juice Bar space, create a Nutrition Zone where your members can come to depend on for accessing the most recent cutting edge nutritional tips that may make the difference between success and failure. We are all thirsting for that information. In this world of fad diets and misinformation, a juice bar should be a great place to help them access sound, nutritional information, along with refueling after a hard workout. Put it all together and you will help your members achieve their performance goals and you will keep them as members for a long, long time.
