Photo by Matthew Henry
We all know the importance of continuing education through pod casts, books, seminars etc… for a personal trainers. But I know most personal trainers are EXTREMELY busy developing programs, responding to emails, writing, training clients, training themselves, and so on. Heck a typical personal trainer starts training at 6 am and ends around 9pm. In between that time it’s difficult to fit in all the above mentioned points, business development, and doing your professional reading. So I thought I’d share some basic tips that I’ve found to be EXTREMELY effective for my time utilized traveling around New York City as a personal trainer and sports performance coach.
Pod Casts
I’d love to be able to get to more seminars but a trainers hectic schedule doesn’t always allow for travel during the weekends. So I turn to Pod Casts to learn from other personal trainers, strength coaches, and performance coaches around the world. Some of the ones that I particularly like are:
Honestly this saves me so much time and gives me great perspective on my many things from business tips, sprint training tips, other coaches perspective, and much more.
Audio Books
I have a LONG list of books I needed to read and have downloaded a ton on my kindle and phone. While my intentions are to read as much as I can, it can be a very difficult task while navigating the streets of NYC and on the train in between my personal training clients. So I turn to audio books, I know what you’re thinking- “Thats super expensive!” I get it, why pay $20-30 when you can buy the book for half that and be able to highlight all your notes.
Well my friend thats why you should turn to the membership sites. Right now I’m a fan of Audble.com because they are an Amazon company and let’s face it Amazon is awesome 🙂 Here are the x3 that I’ve looked and seem to get the best reviews.
- AudioBooks.com – $14.95 a month for one book a month from then on you can either wait for the next month or pay a $12 credit for another book. This has been great because you just download an application and you can either stream the book or download it to the application and it’ll start at where you’ve left off.
- Simply Audio Books – this is more like netflix where you get an actual CD. The cost start at $17.98 for x1 cd at a time and it’s unlimited, so once you’re done you can just resend it and get another one. I can see how it can become a bit cumbersome rather than just downloading a direct MP3 through the application but the bright side is that it’s unlimited.
- Audible.com – It’s pretty much the same as AudioBooks but you have the option to get x2 books a month at $22.95, x1 for $14.95, x12 for $149.50= $12.45 a book, or x24 for $229.50= $9.54 a book.
I can honestly say that audiobooks are well worth the price, especially if you’re a NYC personal trainer. For us New Yorkers, we spend so much time walking and in the subway it makes sense to utilize that time. Not sure for others, but it’s extremely difficult for me to read while I’m on the subway and waiting on the platform or even in a taxi ride. The extra few bucks spent through these audiobooks membership sites have allowed me to pump out book each week. The downside is not having be able to highlight and put down notes but the overall upside is well worth the hassle of typing down my notes in my phone.
That’s it for today, I hope this was helpful for all you personal trainers, fitness professionals, and anyone else!
Train smart,
