Why You Should Attend a Personal Trainer Expo
In a previous post, we highlighted the top 5 personal trainer conferences that you should attend if you are a trainer. However, if you have never been to a personal trainer expo before, you might be wondering why you should attend one. We know it’s always difficult to stop your routine and take time out of your schedule to attend a personal trainer expo. However, there are some significant benefits to doing so. You can learn a ton, get continuing education credits, network with others in the industry, and more. Let’s dive in.
Continuing Education Credits / Units
This is an obvious benefit. As a certified trainer, most certifications require you to continue your education. This is to ensure you stay up to date on the latest developments in personal training and fitness. You are required to obtain a certain number of continuing education credits (CECs) / continuing education units (CEUs). These are required in order to maintain your certification over time.
These certification boards realize how beneficial a conference can be to a personal trainer’s knowledge. Therefore, they will often give you continuing education credit just for attending a conference. Additionally, most conferences also have breakout sessions or courses that are taught on specific subjects. These courses can sometimes count for additional credit.
New Fitness Industry Trends and Research
The reason fitness certification boards require CECs, is because the fitness industry is always changing. It is constantly evolving and there are always new things to learn. Just think of all the things people taught us about fitness 10 years ago that are no longer true. That alone is another reason to attend a personal trainer expo. You can gain exposure to new ideas and trends in the industry that can help you be a better trainer.
Your personal training clients look to you as the fitness expert. You want to make sure you are aware of all the latest fitness trends before your clients are. Whether you think that trend is worthwhile or not, you should at least know about it. That will ensure you are able to educate your clients if they bring it up.
Additionally, technology moves extremely quickly these days. More and more it’s permeating fitness. You want to ensure you are aware of the latest fitness technology. This technology along with new tools out there could potentially aid you in being an even more effective trainer.
Connect With New People
Personal training is a unique job compared to other jobs out there. It’s often nice to be around other personal trainers because you can share your experience with them. They will likely understand you better than those outside the industry. Personal trainer expos are great opportunities to connect with people that share similar experiences to you. It can be nice to learn from them, share your knowledge, or even just connect over a funny shared experience.
With most people spending the last two years more isolated than ever, getting out there to connect with people can be tremendously helpful. The people you connect with could become friends or business partners. They could also become someone that hires you or that you hire, or just someone to learn from or teach.
Explore a New Fitness Niche
Many times personal trainer expos will have experts on specific fitness niches. For example, the Functional Aging Summit focuses on helping personal trainers that want to target training aging populations. Many younger trainers have trouble marketing to older populations and have difficulty finding older clients. At this summit, there is a breakout session on this specific topic (among many others).
Most personal trainer expos will have breakout sessions like this with experts that will speak on a variety of topics. You can view the personal trainer expo agenda ahead of time. There, you can see what courses or talks cover a specific niche that you are interested in. Not only can you attend the talk but you will likely have the opportunity to talk with the speaker at some point during the conference. Additionally, you can talk with other attendees of that session for more information and insights. You might even connect and stay in touch long-term. It could even lead to a career switch up if you want to move to focus on that specific niche.
Launch a New Business Idea
So that’s a lot so far. At a personal trainer expo, you can meet new people, explore new niches, and gain exposure to new ideas. Additionally, you can talk through those ideas, and learn about new trends. All those things coming together seem to be the perfect recipe for launching a new business idea. Numerous businesses have been conceived and/or launched at personal trainer conferences. It’s a can be a wonderful opportunity to take advantage of.
Or maybe you already have a business idea. You can test it out at a personal trainer expo as you talk with all the people in the industry. You can get their feedback on the idea. Many people there are also trying to learn about everything that’s happening in the industry themselves. It’s likely that they will want to hear about cool new ideas. We here at FitSW personal training software have tested out new features at expos. We have also gained ideas for some awesome functionality from the personal trainer expos that we have attended. In fact, we demoed a brand new feature at the upcoming Functional Aging Summit. We hope to gain feedback from personal trainers and are highly confident people will be excited about it.
