We spend a lot of time in the fitness industry learning skills. We learn how to do particular poses and exercises, what order to put them in, what to look for in alignment, how to do calorie calculations or figure out 1 rep max or calculate macros. Anyone can learn those skills. I don’t know that any fit pro would consider what we do art. But maybe we should. There’s a certain level of creativity, artistry, in how we communicate and structure and teach those skills to others. There’s artistry in excellence. Excellence comes through practice and refinement.
Today we’re talking about 3 ways to refine our skills as instructors and coaches for a mindset shift that can transform a hobby into a career.
As a part of my mission to bring a legacy of resilience through movement, each month you can join me for a hike on the bike trail followed by a free trauma informed vinyasa class back at the studio on Main Street. Go to savagegracecoaching.com to see the calendar and join my newsletter, Yoga Life on Main Street, to stay up to date on all the latest studio news, events and gossip. And now… on to this week’s episode.
It’s time to stop working out and start working IN. You found the Work IN podcast for fit-preneurs and their health conscious clients. This podcast is for resilient wellness professionals who want to expand their professional credibility, shake off stress and thrive in a burnout-proof career with conversations on the fitness industry, movement, nutrition, sleep, mindset, nervous system health, yoga, business and so much more.
I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a resilience coach and fit-preneur offering an authentic, actionable realistic approach to personal and professional balance for coaches in any format.
The Work IN is brought to you by savage grace coaching, bringing resilience through movement, action and accountability. Private sessions, small groups and corporate presentations are open now. Visit savagegracecoaching.com to schedule a call and get all the details.
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Finding artistry in excellence
How do you feel about art? Do you feel like an artist?
Have you been to a museum lately? Maybe an art museum or history museum, or even browsed pinterest or etsy and taken a moment to really look at the creations there? I’m blown away by the skill and talent that goes into some of those things. It’s easy to forget the work and practice that went into creating that thing.
As coaches and instructors we don’t create tangible physical things in our work but that doesn’t mean we aren’t creating. Music isn’t tangible but it is an art form.
My husband plays the guitar and spends his limited free time following other really great guitarists and musicians. One of them is a classical guitar player named Tommy Emmanuel. Possibly the best on the planet. He has a YouTube channel where he teaches sometimes. I'll include a link in the show notes in case you’re curious about what good music sounds like. In one of his videos he just drops this bit of wisdom about the process of learning to play…
“It’s not music yet. It’s skills. Practice the skill enough, it’s like magic, it turns to music. You can’t have the music before the skill.” Tommy Emmanuel.
We spend a lot of time in the fitness industry learning skills. We learn how to do particular poses and exercises, what order to put them in, what to look for in alignment, how to do calorie calculations or figure out 1 rep max or calculate macros. Anyone can learn those skills. I don’t know that any fit pro would consider what we do art. But maybe we should. There’s a certain level of creativity, artistry, in how we communicate and structure and teach those skills to others. There’s artistry in excellence. Excellence comes through practice and refinement.
Today we’re talking about 3 ways to refine our skills as instructors and coaches for a mindset shift that can transform a hobby into a career.
Get to know and love our strengths AND our weaknesses
This is critical. If you haven’t taken the time to do this yet as a coach or fit pro or even a regular person now's the time. You can find strength assessments, core values inventories, spiritual gifts quizzes, all kinds of things like that on the internet. You might think you know what your strengths are already and you may have some strengths you didn’t know you had and they also highlight weaknesses and most of us try not to look at those very closely. Weaknesses generally show up as all the stuff we hate doing. If you don’t want to take a quiz you can ask a good friend what they think. Just be prepared for things you might not have thought of.
Why is this important when we’re trying to refine our skills in the fitness industry?
- We want to use our natural strengths as much as possible. One of mine is creativity. When I started I didn’t think that was something that I could use in fitness because I wasn’t making things. I suspect that was some of the source of my early dissatisfaction and burnout in my career. But once I made the connection it changed everything about the way I work. I use the hell out of that to create new classes every single day, to spin up old workouts in new and different ways, to offer endless possibilities to my classes and clients. Another one of my strengths is discernment, sometimes called intuition. It lets me read the energy in the room and create and change things on the fly to fit the people in front of me. Knowing both of those things gives me permission to use them in my work and they make everything I do and every decision I make feel easier because I trust them.This is also why I choose not to work with pre choreographed fitness systems like Les Mills. Those systems would deny my personal strength.
- Knowing areas of weakness are just as important because we can either use that knowledge to direct new skill acquisition or use it to set mindful boundaries. That might look like pursuing some kind of business or marketing education to help your business grow or it might help you set boundaries around your work schedule or the types of classes you teach or clients you work with. I could never figure out the 32 count dance choreography and I had no desire to learn it. So that was a hard line for me. I don’t teach classes like that. Could I learn it? Yes. Do I have to? No. And that my friend is what a boundary looks like.
Leaning into our personal strengths and weaknesses and weaving them into our professional development can only build confidence in what you do and who you are.
Seek out collaboration over competition
It’s lonely at the front of the room. Fit pros spend a lot of time alone. Even when we’re one of many instructors or coaches at a facility we often don’t get to hang around together. There might be a sense of competition for classes or clients in some facilities as well. Not everywhere, but if the places we teach are made up of independent contractors it can be hard to get to know other instructors and to establish professional networking relationships that are based on trust. I know I’ve had my ideas (taken without permission) by other instructors and it made me never want to share anything again. Which kind of sucks because I like brainstorming with people. It's one of my strengths. But there needs to be leadership in the industry to create a non threatening environment of collaboration so people don’t feel taken advantage of. And legally intellectual property rights are a real thing. Even more so if we want to draw out the art of fitness.
But I think it’s important in the fitness industry that we pursue these collaborative relationships more than we do. Because we don’t get better alone. Talking with other instructors can clarify our own thoughts and positions and expand our point of view. And we can cultivate a list of referrals so if we come across a client that needs something we don’t have we can send them to someone else that we know, like and trust with that much more confidence. And in the same way if we are offered an opportunity, a class that isn’t a good fit for us we can pass it on to another coach.
Passing on an opportunity can be uncomfortable unless it’s a clear no because so many of us trade dollars for hours. But the ultimate in professional boundary setting is to get good at saying the mindful NO so we can embrace the very intentional YES.
Push your comfort zone
We can’t get better at anything by only doing what we always do. Of course we want to practice our own format. It’s not the physical format that needs to change necessarily but there are many ways to improve that skill set by expanding our soft skills.
What’s that saying? If you always do what you’ve always done you’ll always get what you've always got. SO if you want something different, you need to do something different. Or do what you do in a different way. That is gonna look different for all of us. For me I can tell the edge of my comfort zone by all the things I am resisting. Sometimes it has nothing to do with fitness. For example, I really struggled for a long time with social media marketing. I was very resistant to the idea of paying FB for ads. I hated the idea of that.ANd I don’t like not liking things because usually it's rooted in fear. So I let that guide me and took a FB ads course to learn how to do it. It was difficult, not only the skill itself but the mindset around it. I wouldn’t say I mastered it. I’m not sure it’s possible to master it but I did learn enough to be able to use FB ads as a tool and to know that it wasn’t the direction I wanted to take my business. And that was a valuable bit of learning.
For some of us pushing our comfort zone is in talking about ourselves and what we do. That can be really tough. It can feel risky to put ourselves out there in the arena. But every time we do it gets a bit easier. Our comfort zone grows. Our skills and our confidence in them, as a communicator, instructor, coach get better.
And then just Like Tommy Emmanuel said, “practice the skills enough and it’s like magic, it turns to music”. That’s what we want to find in our work: the magic, the music, the artistry in excellence.
Thanks for listening to The Work IN today!
I appreciate all of you so much and if you like what you heard and you are looking for a way to uplevel your own skills or step out of your comfort zone into a coaching business in the coming year I’m opening a couple private spots in my Clarity program for new entrepreneurs. Charity is a year long 1:1 program. This is for new solopreneurs in the wellness space and beyond looking to build a deeper foundation and are ready to go from concept to career. The program covers Clarity mindset, setting up digital, social media and email marketing systems, creating your first product and launch, getting paid, and so much more. Basically all the stuff I wish I’d known and what I learned along the way. Except you get personal attention.
Head to savagegracecoaching.com and book a call give yourself the gift of clarity in your business this year.