Mental Health Statement
As a personal trainer it is your initial job and role to help someone with their physical fitness however it isn’t just the physical needs of a client or group that needs to be considered. We should also think about mental health. N.I. Fitness Academy offers fitness industry experts and PT students the Active IQ Level-2 mental health awareness course. This is your first step in gaining your qualifications in order to train client’s with diagnosed mental health conditions. Our director Robbie is currently one of a small group of the personal trainers in the UK that holds his level-4 in training clients with diagnosed mental health conditions.
He stated in a comment for the blog:
“Having small, manageable, and achievable goals helps a person stay motivated, positive, and upbeat about training and seeing little progressions often is better than setting unrealistic goals and never achieving them. Not only does training produce a feel-good factor, but it can also give client’s a sense of achievement and it may not be hitting goals right away but just following a specific programme or going out for a walk or hitting your daily steps can make all the difference to someone’s life.”
Mental health is vitally important in helping someone overcome probably one of the main barriers that we have heard about at N.I. Fitness Academy. Anxiety causes a lot of pressure for people and feeling like you cannot go somewhere or do something without being judged in a negative way can have a real impact on someone’s life, their goals, and their overall health. By offering mental health courses, N.I. Fitness Academy aims that students and current PT’s understand the benefits of learning, understanding, and empathising with client’s. In his dissertation, Robbie reveals that the main two components that make the PT-Client relationship successful are trust and empathy. These directly relate to mental health and should be considered when training clients with mental health conditions. If your client trusts you, trusts your programming and trusts that you are a genuine and good person then they will continue to use your service. This is achieved through empathy, understanding and good communication.
It is our goal that any client with a mental health condition will feel safe knowing that their PT has achieved their qualification through us and someone that has been there and done it himself whilst training up to and above 10+ client’s with diagnosed mental health conditions.
