There are actually a range of job roles that are ideal for sport and fitness enthusiasts. Some involve more teaching than others, but all will enable you to develop your own health and fitness knowledge, while getting paid.

Here are 3 of the main routes open to those seeking a career in sport or fitness.

Personal Trainers and Gym Instructors

Personal trainers (PT) are the hands-on experts in body toning that almost everyone comes into contact with at one time or another. You often can’t join a gym without being offered at least one taster session with a PT.

If your passion for fitness manifests itself through love for circuits, weights and crossfit, working as personal trainer is a great way to earn money whilst doing what you love. It’s also a great career for people lovers out there, as you’ll often work one on one with clients.

As a PT, you will create fitness programme for your clients in order to promote realistic health and fitness goals, as well as one-on-one training sessions with clients to further help them meet their individual goals. This includes anything from losing weight to gaining muscle, and can be done through a variety of means, such as through aerobics, using gym machines or weights.

In order to become a personal trainer, you will need to have some kind of personal trainer degree. This will cover the biological, anatomical and physiological aspects of being a PT. It’s not all about practice, it’s also about the principals.

Courses that provide you with the best possible chance of employment in the personal training industry must be accredited by the Register of Exercise Professionals (REPs). In order to be accepted onto these courses, you will usually have to show some sort of enthusiasm towards fitness and the gym as a whole.

FE Sport and Physical Education in Schools

With recent statistics showing that 58% of women and 68% of men in England are overweight or obese, the importance of providing young people with the tools to be able to exercise effectively cannot be overstated. By setting them up with good habits for life, the problem of obesity can be effectively tackled. This is where sport and fitness educators in schools and colleges comes in.

There are a number of jobs in FE sport and physical education, ranging from sport lecturers, to football apprentices and youth activity leaders, as well as PE teacher and other educational roles in secondary schools.

With the Department for Education promising to double the amount of funding for PE and sport in schools by the end of the year amid concerns about the health of young people today, working as a Sport and Fitness instructor will allow you make a real difference to young people’s lives.

In order to thrive in this role, you’ll need a range of different skills, including:

• Good organisational skills – to effectively plan your lessons
• The ability to manage classes
• Be able to deal with challenging behaviour
• Excellent communication skills

You’ll need to be physically fit, and having previous experience of some sports coaching or teaching is beneficial.

The most common route to becoming a PE teacher is to do an Initial Teacher Education or Training (ITET) and gain qualified teacher status (QTS). You can gain an ITET either through a university qualification (either an undergraduate degree or postgraduate award) or from school-led work-based training.

Nutritionists and Dieticians

If you enjoy the physical part of fitness, but are more passionate about the science side, you might want to work as a nutritionist. This will allow you to work with people who are actively trying to improve their overall health and influence them to lead an all round healthier lifestyle, imparting your knowledge of clean eating to help others, all while educating yourself.

Nutritionists work in a number of different settings, including offices, hospitals and schools, as well as one-to-one with private clients.

Your main tasks will include explaining the benefits of nutrition and what it can do for your clients, and by assessing individual clients’ health needs and diet, developing meal plans for them. You will often need to provide customised information for different individuals, like teaching a patient with high blood pressure how to eat less salt, or help overweight people lose weight by planning diets with less processed foods and sugar.

To be a nutritionist you will need a good scientific brain above all. Most nutritionists have a qualification in nutrition, which usually comes in the form of an undergraduate degree, such as those in nutritional science or dietetics, or a food science degree. There are entry level degrees readable available for those who don’t have qualifications already.

Training has provide me with not only a way to look great but to feel great emotionally too. It helps elevate my mood and to release tension from my hectic life in the city.

Going on holiday is one of the highlights of the year for most people and I’m no different to a degree. I relish the chance to have a new experiences. Whatever the setting! From snow to sun to built up cities and even being in the middle of nowhere. The only part I stress over is the change to my routine that is embedded within me – in-particularly my training.

A change is good though and a chance to relax is also good but two weeks away for me without an escape space is murder. So it’s important for me to be able to incorporate some sort of training whether it’s body weight training or in a make shift hotel gym. You know the ones – they make claims of having resistance weights and cardio machines. The truth is routine goes out the window – you start to sleep in too late and stay out too late. You indulge in too much wine and rich food. You simply can’t be bothered, even with the unserviced exercise bike the hotel has!

Ultimately there’s nothing wrong with that but for me personally it’s the knock on effect it has when I return home from holiday. Those holiday blues kick in and make me feel totally unmotivated to get up early and train.

Gym Nomad

My best solution is to train and preferably in a gym to keep me motivated. So this is where Gym Nomad will help make my life that little bit easier!

Gym Nomad is a new concept that is taking Amsterdam by storm! It’s an easy to use site that helps find the right place for you to train, based on your training preferences. The site then goes one step further and shows you the costings of the gym and their classes, meaning you get value for money.

Create a Gym Nomad account and then all you need to do is search, select and book. Then wait for a confirmation email with your booking code and you can get started straight away when you get to your destination – it really is that easy and totally stress free!

The search function is great as it’s really simple with the use of a map – meaning you can see where you’re staying in relation to where you might train. Once you have selected a facility to check out further, you get to see the gym equipment on offer, the classes, if personal training is on offer and what the opening times are. The website is really mobile friendly too so if you’re out and about you’re sorted.

The concept is brilliant and I’m looking forward to going to Amsterdam and maintaining my sanity by using Gym Nomad!

You Can Have a Home Gym

The ideal answer, of course, is to have a home gym. Perhaps you have a spare room in which you could install the equipment, or as with many people, you could convert your garage into a gym. This leaves all the living space to use, so you don’t have to sacrifice any for your gym. But, we hear you wondering, how can you afford this? Yes, gym equipment is expensive – especially as you need quality – so how do we reckon you could afford it? You go to Hire Fitness, a company specialising in the rental of top quality gym equipment, with many satisfied customers already.

Hire Fitness was founded by a man who found that, when he wanted gym equipment for the home, there was no rental service available. It is now the leading name in home and commercial hire of all types of equipment and machinery, and works with the leading names in the business to ensure its clients get only the very best on machinery and service. With a full range of accessories on offer you can easily equip your home gym, and you will find the rental rates to be very favourable indeed.

Rent to Buy

Whether you are looking to hire a rowing machine or a treadmill, or any other gym equipment, you will find the deals at Hire Fitness to be the best around. Indeed, you can get some excellent deals when you take more than one item together. You can also find excellent special offers on their website, so it is worth keeping an eye on things on a day to day basis. If you do want to purchase your equipment outright they also have a rent to buy deal, in which you eventually own the equipment.

Hire Fitness offers you the opportunity to rent for as little as four weeks, perfect for those who want to try out the idea of a home gym before committing in the long term, and has everything you need to build the perfect facility. It’s affordable, cost-effective and gives you the convenience of a full gym without the need to travel – great for those cold winter nights! Have a look at the Hire Fitness website now for more details of the excellent range on offer, and soon you will have your own home gym at surprisingly sensible weekly rates.

However, all you need for an effective home workout is you. You might need a little help from a table or from the sofa, but the most important piece of equipment is your own body. Be careful to warm up first with some stretches, and a gentle walk or jog on the spot – just because the workout isn’t in a gym, it doesn’t mean that you won’t hurt yourself if you don’t treat your body kindly.

Your most valuable piece of cardio equipment is your staircase; you probably walk up and down it countless times a day without even registering what you’re doing, but if you put it to work, it can be as valuable as the treadmill at the gym. Whether you choose to walk or run up and down the stairs will depend on your level of fitness and also your level of stability – start with 10 repetitions, then take a short break, and then 10 more. If it’s safe to do so, you could even miss out steps to make your workout even harder.

If you have good upper body strength, you will be able to do push ups and sit ups at home. However, if you’re not at the level of fitness yet where this is an option, you can do weight work quite easily at home – you don’t even need a set of dumbbells (although this is something you might wish to purchase further along the line). The next time you go to the supermarket, buy your milk in the four pint containers and save them when they’re empty. Filled with water or sand, they make effective weights. If you need something a little heavier, stuff a backpack with tinned food – you could even wear that to make your stair workout harder if it’s getting a little too easy!

Even more experienced athletes will pick up an injury from time to time, and if it persists for longer than expected, you will want to seek medical assistance, especially if it is preventing you from exercising, or even going about your day to day life. A quick solution is to book an MRI scan in Chelsea, so that you can find out what treatment and physiotherapy you might need at a time that is convenient for you. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a professional athlete, or just trying to stay fit – you are equally important to your specialist in terms of your physical wellbeing.

Unfortunately, with so many fitness coaches and personal trainers out there – some already well-established and a lot more struggling – you really have to bring your A-game if you want to survive.

Here are 10 steps you have to follow if you want to be considered among the best of the best.

1. Focus on Your Client

You may have your fitness idol to thank for inspiring you to fulfil your dream of becoming a personal trainer. However, you need to understand that you’re doing this not for them but for your clients. Your clients and their referrals will be the ones who help you establish and build your fitness and personal training business. This also means that the fitness programs you design should be done for your clients and your clients only – no peacocking or showing off.

2. Seek Guidance

While you may be designing programs for your clients, it also pays to keep drawing inspiration from the masters of fitness. Ask for mentorship and learn everything you can about the ins and outs of managing your entire business.

3. Show Integrity in What You Say and Do

If you are into health and fitness, then you should be able to back it up. If you want your clients to be eating healthy, then you should be eating healthy as well. If you want them to be disciplined and focused in their fitness goals, then you should be able to show the same level of commitment and dedication you expect from them. There is nothing more frustrating than having someone tell you what you need to do yet they themselves fail miserably at doing it. You have to walk the walk.

4. Strive for Your Goals

Be clear about your own goals. Write them down and make a plan for how to get there within a specific period of time. For example, since you’re just beginning, you’ll have to work your butt off at gaining clients. This means you have to seriously consider how you can spread the word about your services to as many individuals as you possibly can.

5. Capitalise on Your Strengths

Knowing your strengths can help you define the kind of personal trainer or fitness coach you want to be. Do you see yourself as naturally charismatic? A natural-born leader? Can you make very interesting videos complete with a great selection of music? Are you an excellent marketer? Do you know load of information about sports nutrition? How about your ability to strike up a conversation? Some of these may be considered soft skills but they do matter a lot in the long run.

6. Coach “Influencers”

One of the best ways to really make it to the top of the chain is to get connected with at least one very influential client, someone with a large base of followers or who has an impeccable reputation. If you can net one of these people and are able to establish a healthy professional relationship with him or her, the association will almost always be enough to guarantee you a slot with the big players in the industry.

7. Strive to Deliver More than Expected

Always under-promise and over-deliver, and never ever promise something that you cannot achieve. To do so, you will have to really work closely with your client in the development of his fitness goals. This is very important, as you are effectively teaching your client to have realistic aspirations and empowering them to be in full control of their fitness regimen.

8. Coach Friends for Free

What better way to get known than to coach your friends for free? If they honestly believe that you’re doing a great job at personal training, they’ll do your word-of-mouth marketing for you. If they get their friends involved, give them a discount or perhaps a small freebie for trying your service, and everyone’s happy!

9. Continue Evolving

Never stop learning. If you want to dominate your craft, you have to constantly up your game and create a unique brand of fitness coaching that your clients know you for. This is only possible if you keep on pushing yourself to become better every single time.

The best way to keep improving is by continuing your professional education. You’ll have done fitness instructor courses and your Level 3 Personal Trainer Certificate already, but there are many ways to specialise, whether it’s by teaching kettlebells, focusing on those with lower back pain, or moving into sports massage. This could be the USP that makes your business take off.

10. Care for Your Clients

The whole idea of personal training and fitness coaching is for you to make a significant impact on the lives of your clients. You need to show them that you’re more motivated by the opportunity to help them lead healthier and happier lives. When they realize that you’re after their welfare and not just their money, they will open up and begin trusting you. This is the foundation of great personal training and fitness coaching.

If you follow these steps, you’ll have a fighting chance at becoming a great personal trainer. It takes time to reach the top, but never forget that it’ll be worth it.

The concept is simple! MP45 is a 45 day plan that will completely transform your body. This program is suitable for both males and females of any age or fitness level.

Here’s a breakdown of the program and what you will experience each week.

Week 1 – Foundation

With any type of workout you must build your foundations strong. MP45 will start you with beginner workouts so you won’t feel overwhelmed. You will then be introduced to tiny adjustments in your routine. You will notice increased motivation and excitement with the idea of going to the gym and eating healthy. After week one, the training will get a little more intense as you advance through the weeks.

Weeks 2-3 – Base

Throughout weeks two and three you will build up a strong base. This will be through weightlifting workouts that focus on correcting muscular imbalances. You will begin to experience a real increase in fat loss and strength. This phase also introduces some traditional cardio workouts to burn fat.

Weeks 4-5 – Activation

Weeks four and five focus on activating the central nervous system to create a systemic process of packing on lean muscle mass. You will see muscle gain taking shape in places that were once covered by a layer of fat!

Weeks 6-7 – Final

When you’re on the home straight, you have progressed your mind and body to handle athletic based workouts. You will now focus on putting fat burning in hyperdrive and carving out the lean muscle that you worked hard to develop for the first five weeks of the program. After these final two weeks, the program will be complete and you will look and feel better than ever!

As with any type of workout plan, your time in the kitchen is just as important as the time you spend in the gym. So along with your 45 day workout plan, you’ll also receive a 45 day meal plan. Forget the calorie counting and get this proven custom meal plan to keep your body looking lean and feeling energised.

What do people think of MP45?

“I’ve been working out for years at the gym but still couldn’t find a way to break out of my plateau. My strength and body image weren’t improving even though I worked out constantly and ate healthy. A friend of mine recommended MP45. The program was exactly what I wanted. This is the best way to lose weight and to get ripped. This was honestly the best gym training program and routine I ever did.” – Jack H.

“I had so many problems whenever I tried to lose weight. I was labeled obese by several doctors and pressured to get weight loss surgery. Instead, I was able to quickly lose weight naturally and safely using MP45. This program completely turned my life around. I am so happy.” – Kelly S.

Conclusions

I really enjoyed this workout program. It was easy to download to my phone and also easy to follow. So take your health and fitness to the next level and get signed up to MP45 today!

How Does It Work?

Tape is thought to work in a number of ways. Firstly, it enables the wearer to more easily ‘feel’ the taped limb or muscle. Proprioception is important, as it tells us where in space our body is. This not only allows us to reduce the risk of injury, but it also helps the body to feel exactly where an injury is affecting it.

Tape can also reduce pain and can appear to speed up recovery, perhaps partly because of this increased proprioception, which prevents overuse of the affected area.

Types of Athletic Tape

There is a range of different tapes available. These include:

Rigid tape – A stiff tape, such as Leukoplast tape, offers efficient stabilisation of joint structures by providing little give and reducing movement within the joint.

Under tape – This is typically applied under rigid tape to protect the skin.

Elastic tape – A flexible cotton tape which allows the skin to move and breathe.

Felt tape – A comfortable glue-less tape which provides a barrier to the skin.

Cohesive bandage – ‘Sticky’ bandages which can be wrapped around the muscle or joint.

Kinesio-type tape – Particularly popular within sports, as it enables the wearer to move freely.

When and How to Use Athletic Tape

1. To Stabilise Ankles

Alongside the use of orthotics, ankles can be taped to stop them rolling inwards and prevent sprains. You should use an adhesive, glue-based or rigid tape, such as Leukoplast, applied directly above the anterior and medial malleolus, on the inside of the foot and threaded under the sole. Pull the strip up the front of the tibia, ending approximately 10 cm under the knee. This can be reinforced with a second piece if necessary and secured with a strip at each end.

2. To Stabilise Knees

Knee taping can be used to provide support and promote better joint awareness. Again, use a glue-based adhesive tape applied to the extended knee. Place two lengths of tape on the lateral and medial of the joint, and secure with anchor strips on each side. It is possible to buy pre-cut packs of Kinesio tape.

3. Strengthen Shoulders

Tape can be used to solidify shoulders and increase proprioception of the joint and muscle. You may need help to apply tape to the shoulders. Raise your shoulder approximately 1 cm by flexing and raising your elbow. Then place three strips vertically – travelling posteriorly, medially and anteriorly – across your shoulder and down your arm. If positioned correctly, your shoulder should feel slightly raised.

4. Open Elbows

Adhesive tape can be used to reduce pain and discomfort in the elbows. It can take a little practice to achieve this, but once correctly positioned, it can be very effective. Apply two pieces of tape together over the painful area, pulling one onto the forearm either medially or laterally.

5. Shore Up Muscles

A cohesive bandage, glue-based adhesive or elastic tape can be wrapped around the affected muscle or joint. Reduce swelling and prevent occlusion of the joint by wrapping lightly at first.

Regardless of how or where you use tape, always check for tingling or numbness, and if necessary re-wrap or adjust.

Using a pedometer for weight loss

There has been research into the use of pedometers that has revealed people who use them to track their movements actually increase the average steps they take by up to 2,000 per day. To put this statistic into some context, 2,000 steps equates to around a mile. For the average person, taking an extra 2,000 steps a day will burn off an extra 100 calories, or 36,500 calories over the course of an entire year. If you can make this relatively small adjustment to your daily routine, you could lose more than 10 pounds in a single year.

There are three effective ways to use a pedometer to achieve fitness goals, and they are relatively easy to implement.

1. Plan your activities around your daily steps target

You might think that taking 10,000 steps every day is a tall order. This equates to around five miles – something you might consider to be an impossible task. What you’re forgetting, however, is that you are probably already taking several thousand steps a day going about your daily business. You don’t always need to set aside time specifically for activity, as making a few changes to your daily routines is often enough to drastically increase the number of steps you take.

If you make the one or two mile commute to work by car or bus, trying walking occasionally instead. Simply getting off your bus or train a couple of steps early might also help you to achieve your 10,000-step goal. Instead of shopping on the Internet, head to the supermarket or shopping mall. And instead of using the elevator, take the stairs. If you spend a lot of time on the phone at work, go hands free and walk around your workplace as you talk. There are countless ways to make walking part of your everyday life, they just require some permanent changes to your lifestyle.

2. Use a pedometer with a healthy eating regime

A healthy, balanced diet is crucial to fitness. There is very little to be gained in tracking your steps if you aren’t also tracking the foods you eat. Some people keep food journals in order to track their consumption levels and net calorie intake, but a fitness tracker can perform both functions in the background.

In order to make your workout sessions as effective as possible, you need to fuel your body accordingly. Eat too few calories, and you simply won’t have the energy your exercise requires. Eat too many calories, however, and all the extra steps your pedometer is counting will be for nothing. An activity tracker acts as a pedometer and a calorie counter, and some of the latest trackers provide useful recipes and nutritional information too. Stated simply, you won’t be able to reap the full rewards of a pedometer unless you have a healthy eating regime in place.

3. Set challenging goals for yourself

In order to lose weight and gradually build on your fitness levels, you will need to be constantly pushing your boundaries. You can use a pedometer to gradually increase your activity as your fitness levels improve. This will not only allow you to monitor your progress, it should give you some much-needed motivation. And if done correctly, it can be a lot of fun too. An activity tracker can help you set and track your goals – providing you with a real sense of achievement when your performance starts to improve.

A pedometer can play a major part in fitness and weight loss regimes, but only if it is used in the right way. By using your pedometer effectively, it can provide the motivation and information you need to achieve all your long term health goals.

Cricket: Capturing Hearts and Minds

The great joy of the World Cup is that it is accessible for people of all ages.

People who are cricket ‘purists’ love the game as it contains all of the key components without simply being the ‘boom and bash’ of the Twenty/20. For those who are new to the game, or just want to see the ball given ‘a good whack’, the game is short and sharp, meaning that the game keeps its interest for those who simply don’t want to be sat in front of the television all day.

Nowadays, with the shorter boundaries introduced, alongside bigger bats and newer balls, we’re seeing more runs scored, more dramatic run chases and bigger sporting moments. In this tournament already, we’ve seen Chris Gayle hit 200 and AB De Villiers hit 150+*. With some of the sixes travelling 100m and above, even hard hats are needed in the ground, so the entertainment value is high.

Finally, because more funding has been given to the associate nations (those who don’t play test cricket such as Ireland and Scotland), we are also seeing some of the smaller teams beat some of the more established nations. With no guarantee of the rests in any of the games, television audiences remain captivated as the games go down to the very last balls.

The best part is that there is still over two weeks left, too. So there’s plenty still to enjoy if it is yet to captivate you.

How Can You Get Involved?

Getting involved in playing cricket could be simpler than you first thought, too. Long gone are the days of cricket being inaccessible for the majority of the public due to a lack of clubs and expensive equipment.

There are numerous sites such as Play Cricket that you can use to find local clubs, and online retailers such as Talent Cricket can help ensure that you have all the correct gear. So, what’s stopping you? Head out now and get started. It could be your turn to be at the Next World Cup in four years’ time.