The holiday season is fast approaching, and we are entering a time where fitness clients experience extreme “overeaters’ remorse”. With an abundance of food and drink options (many calorie-laden in nature) and a decline in physical activity during this season, clients...
Erin Nitschke
Dr. Erin Nitschke, NFPT-CPT, NSCA-CPT, ACE Health Coach, Fitness Nutrition Specialist, Therapeutic Exercise Specialist, and Pn1 is a health and human performance college professor, fitness blogger, mother, and passionate fitness professional. She has over 15 years of experience in the fitness industry and college instruction. Erin believes in the power of a holistic approach to healthy living. She loves encouraging her clients and students to develop body harmony by teaching focused skill development and lifestyle balance. Erin is also the Director of Educational Partnerships & Programs for the NFPT. Erin is an editorial author for ACE, IDEA, The Sheridan Press, and the Casper Star Tribune. Visit her personal blog at belivestaywell.com
How to Add Healthy Calories to Meals – Ideas to Share with Fitness Clients
The world of diet culture primarily focuses on telling individuals to “reduce”, “limit”, “restrict”, “avoid” and “eliminate” certain foods and/ or entire food groups. When you break it down, messages of diet culture are inherently negative – it’s a “don’t do that”...
Reminders About Common Diet Culture Messages
As a personal trainer, educator, and health coach, my students will express what they hear or observe on social media related to the toxic and damaging nature of diet culture. The messages diet culture promotes are sometimes overt and loud. Other times, these messages...
Quick 20 Minute Mini Workout to Break Up the Day
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many of our fitness clients experienced a shift in how they live and work (as did we). We all, at some point, entered the land of Zoom (or other teleconference platform). As a result, sedentary behavior, and episodes of prolonged sitting...
5 Tactics to Get Fitness Clients Excited to Move
Motivation changes from day-to-day. Our clients (and we) all experience dips in motivation and there are days we just “don’t feel it”. That’s ok. It’s normal. What is also normal is to expect that a client’s optimal performance and their “best-effort” looks different...
Diet Culture Lies Debunked
Diet culture is loud. It’s pervasive. It’s promoted and celebrated by individuals who are (mostly) not heavily credentialed and who make a linear connection between weight and health. As credentialed and practiced exercise professionals, we are uniquely positioned to...
Train the Core Without Crunching
It’s a popular fitness belief that the “core” is all about the abs – the anterior compartment of the body. This isn’t entirely inaccurate, but it paints a very narrow picture of what the core is and does for the body. The core is comprised of more than the abdominal...
5 Fitness Myths That Need to Die
As with any field of study there are overstatements, assumptions, misinterpretations of evidence and science, and general “flabby facts”. Fitness myths related to nutrition, exercise, and general health are prolific in the health and fitness industry. Consequently,...
Six Soft Skills Every Personal Trainer Needs
All personal trainers must possess a solid foundational knowledge of exercise science, biomechanics, exercise physiology, anatomy, safety, and program design. But what about those less tangible skills we refer to as “soft skills”? How might developing and utilizing...
8 Valuable Fitness Client Relationship Builders
Relationship builders make excellent service providers. Even if a personal trainer knows the science inside and out, it means very little if that professional is unable to build solid, trusting, and empathetic relationships with their clients. Personal training is...
The Dark Side of Food and Fitness Tracking
Tracking steps, physical activity, food consumption, and water intake offers a great self-monitoring approach. Fortunately, there are multiple fitness tracking devices and free apps on the market that clients (as well as health and exercise pros) can use regularly to...
Helping Your Fitness Clients Handle Stress Binging
The COVID-19 pandemic hit our world and industry with an unexpected force. As a result, most businesses/jobs found ways to work remotely as social distancing became the go-to recommendation. Schools delivered lessons online/virtually. Gyms and studios were forced to...
Consequences of a Low-Carb Intake
Personal trainers need to be prepared to properly educate their clients on all things fitness and nutrition-related, given the amount of misinformation and fad diets that have become ubiquitous over the years. Among those pervasive myths that require dispelling is the...
A 25-Minute, No-Equipment Workout for Your Fitness Clients
A workout doesn’t have to be lengthy or involve expensive equipment to be effective, fun, and functional. There are times when a no-equipment bodyweight workout is just the right approach for a client who is just not feeling the weights, or who is headed out on...
Unintended Consequences of “Clean Eating” for Fitness Clients
"Clean eating" has become yet another fitness buzz phrase as of late. I frequently hear statements such as “how do I eat clean?” or “I need to eat cleaner foods”. I’m sure this is common for you and your fitness clients, too. While these statements are well-intended...
6 Factors That Affect Health Separate from Body Size or Weight
When weight loss is the only goal for a personal training client, it’s natural for them to focus solely on the number on the scale. It's a common misconception that a person's weight is a direct reflection of one's health or defines what “healthy” is. There are other...
How to Leverage NEAT to Help Fitness Clients Burn More Calories Throughout the Day
Teaching clients how to leverage NEAT may be the missing piece to the puzzle of weight loss they have been searching for. Non-exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT) is the energy we expend each day unrelated to exercise, sleeping, and eating. NEAT “ranges from the...
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Techniques for Fitness Clients
Helping our fitness clients reduce stress through exercise might be a given, but personal trainers can consider the application of "mindfulness" as a means of stress-reduction as well. And truly, mindfulness and exercise should go hand-in-hand. What is Mindfulness?...