As a personal trainer, mastering and teaching proper form is not just a skill—it’s a commitment to your client’s health and your career’s longevity. Imagine the confidence your clients will have, knowing they’re in the hands of someone dedicated to their safety and growth. Picture your reputation becoming a trusted expert, attracting more clients and allowing you to increase your rates. Proper form isn’t just about preventing injuries; it’s about maximizing muscle growth and ensuring every workout is efficient.
Protect yourself from potential lawsuits and financial loss by prioritizing proper form and securing the right insurance. Your clients deserve the best, and so do you. Embrace the responsibility of teaching proper form—it’s a win-win for everyone involved.
The Benefits of Using Proper Form When Exercising
Proper form isn’t called proper form for nothing. It’s called proper because it offers the most benefit, not to mention the fewest drawbacks. The top benefits of using proper form include:
Minimal Risk of Injury
Getting injured is always a possibility while exercising, even when using the best of form. That said, using proper form greatly reduces the risk of fitness injuries.
Why? Because proper form ensures that there isn’t too much stress being put on any one part of the body. It ensures that weight is being distributed equally, and thus keeps all the parts of the body in line where they’re supposed to be.
If you use improper form, you will be putting an excess amount of stress on some parts of the body. Rest assured, this will greatly increase your risk of injury.
Maximum Muscle Growth
Another benefit to using proper form is that it will maximize muscle growth. This is because proper form optimizes muscle targeting, ensuring that each muscle gets as much benefit as possible.
If you use improper form, you’re bound to see muscle growth deficiencies in certain muscles throughout your body. Conversely, other muscles might grow rapidly, resulting in an unbalanced physique.
So, if you want to target muscles equally, make sure you’re using good form. Good form will maximize workouts in the gym and thus ensure that you get the most out of your workout plan.
Energy Conservation
In order for a client to get the most out of their workout, they must conserve their energy as much as possible. If they wear down prematurely, they’re not going to be able to lift to their full capabilities, resulting in less-than-optimal gains.
There are all sorts of things that can lead to wasted energy during a workout. One of the primary factors is poor form. Poor form puts undue stress on specific parts of the body, hindering their performance and wearing them out before their time.
The solution, of course, is to practice proper form. If you need help with this, consider hiring a personal trainer.
How Can Teaching Poor Form Affect a Personal Trainer?
It’s not just the person exercising who’s affected by poor form. Personal trainers can be negatively affected by teaching poor form as well. Here’s how:
By Negatively Affecting Their Reputation
As a personal trainer, in order to continue getting clients, you need to develop a good reputation. After all, no one’s going to hire a person who countless past clients are denigrating.
Key to maintaining a good reputation as a personal trainer is teaching the right things. This, of course, includes proper form.
If you teach poor form, and several of your clients suffer negative effects (i.e. injury, muscle imbalance, etc.) as a result, word’s going to get around that you’re not good at your job. This will negatively affect your ability to thrive as a personal trainer in the future.
By Keeping Them from Making More Money
When you start as a personal trainer, you tend to charge a little less as a means of securing clients. The hope for most is to increase rates over the years and make more money.
If you’re going to do this, however, you’re going to have to provide top-notch training on a consistent basis. Failing to do this will make it difficult for you to find new clients. This, in turn, will make it difficult for you to leverage higher rates.
Teaching proper form falls into this realm. As noted above, teaching improper form will hurt your reputation. If you have a bad reputation, you will struggle to attract new and high-paying clients; it’s as simple as that.
By Leaving Them Vulnerable to Lawsuits
Finally, teaching poor form as a personal trainer can leave you open to lawsuits. If a client’s paying you good money to train them in the proper way, and you’re not living up to those expectations, you could absolutely be sued.
If your style of training results in a client getting injured, you’re even more susceptible to being sued. If you’re sued for an injury, you could be fined substantial amounts of money, endangering your future as a personal trainer.
Fortunately, you can minimize the risk of injuries greatly by simply teaching proper form. If one of your clients is injured while practicing proper form, they’re going to have a hard time proving you were negligent in any way. In other words, in such a case, you likely won’t lose an injury lawsuit.
Nonetheless, you should be prepared for such matters. If you want to avoid having to pay large legal fees out of your own pocket, you need insurance. Personal trainer insurance will cover all of the incidents that a personal trainer might encounter and should be part of your business arsenal.
Teaching Proper Form Will Benefit You and Your Clients
When it comes down to it, teaching proper form will benefit you and your clients. By teaching proper form, you’ll reduce the risk of injury in your clients, keeping them healthy and saving you from potential lawsuits.
That said, teaching proper form alone won’t necessarily keep you protected. This is why, as a personal trainer, you need to have fitness instructor insurance. This insurance will protect you in the event that you’re sued, ensuring that you’re not seismically financially affected.
Interested in buying personal trainer insurance? Insure Fitness Group are the ones to see. Learn more about our personal trainer insurance policies now!
