Become a personal trainer: Hypnosis will make you a better trainer

Becoming a personal trainer can be done in many ways, but how do you become a góééde personal trainer? That's something hypnosis can help you with.

Recently, one of the participants of the HIN's programs said that his personal trainer was a hypnotist. He could exercise better and go farther than he could without a personal trainer, and it was because of the trainer's "suggestions" or encouragement. "Yes, you can do high-knees for half a minute longer. You can elevator those extra pounds." That's what a good personal trainer can do for you.

Become a personal trainer

To become a personal trainer, it is initially helpful if you have knowledge of sports, the body and nutrition. This is something you probably know or are already learning, because exercise is something you enjoy.

But how do you go about helping people who have a personal trainer because they just don't really like sports, but who need extra encouragement because they still find that sports are important for their health.

Encouraging someone who enjoys sports is super easy compared to encouraging someone who sees sports as some sort of necessary evil.

This is where hypnosis can get you off the hook.

Hypnosis and sports

In fact, hypnosis plays an important role in sports. For example, athletes' performance is improved when they exercise in a hypnotic state. This is very different from traditional hypnosis in which a person is very relaxed. Playing sports in a hypnotic state actually means getting into the flow that is good for the sport[1].

There are also overlaps between the state of hypnosis and the state of optimal performance as an athlete.

Many elite athletes also use hypnosis before a competition. Did you know, for example, that Mike Tyson was hypnotized in his prime to believe he was the best boxer[2]? His trainer used hypnosis, among other methods, and also took him to other hypnotists to get him into the right mindset for winning a match. Given how well-known he still is today for how he was back then, we can safely say that it was good for his performance.

When you hear what suggestions he received, his fighting style and the “ear incident” suddenly seem a lot less out of the ordinary. But which suggestions are useful to give—that’s another story altogether.

The idea is that in that state , you can overcome certain fears, which can help you while training for a competition. Or at the very least, you’ll stop worrying about how other athletes are doing and focus more on improving your own performance. It all depends on why someone wants to exercise.

Research shows that boys and girls benefit from being put into the sports state. This improves their performance with running, swimming and volleyball[3].

Other research also shows that suggestions while a person is hypnotized has an effect on muscle strength (source 3, page 154).

This is because hypnotic suggestions can affect your heart rate, blood pressure, blood flow in the forearms, breathing, the amount of oxygen you take in and the amount of CO2 you exhale during rest and during exercise.

In addition, suggestions can also change the idea of how hard it is to do something. You can make something lighter and heavier for the feeling of the person you are training.

You may have heard that visualizations are a part of hypnotherapy and these can also be used to effect the way you exercise and what exercise does to the body.

For example, visualizing sports caused physical reactions in subjects that were similar to when someone actually performs the sport (source 3, page 155).

Enhancing the sense of being able

One of the most important jobs of a personal trainer is to make your client feel that they can do what you ask of them. Hypnosis techniques can improve this feeling in exercising people.

The more confidence you have in your own abilities, the higher the goals someone sets for themselves—or that you can set for your clients. How cool is that?

Hypnosis can achieve this through visualizations, by helping your clients recall past successes, and through suggestions that enable them to encourage themselves[4].

Suggestions for personal trainers

Giving suggestions is an important part of personal training. As a personal trainer, you probably already give your clients suggestions without even realizing you are doing so.

So what are some suggestions that will help your clients get the most out of their training?

A suggestion whose only function is to have strong muscles does not always work well. But if the suggestion gives the idea that you will gain more strength and become more fit it can work very well to actually get this done (source 3, page 157).

For example, you can give your client the idea of what state of readiness or fitness he wants to exercise in. This can be done using a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is very relaxed and 10 is super active. The ideal state puts the client at 5. You can give your client suggestions to move on that scale to see how those states feel and to be at the fifth level (source 3, page 165) and then begin the workout.

In addition, you can also anchor this feeling with certain triggers[5]. For example, if you, as a personal trainer, tap your client on the shoulder 3 times he gets into that state that makes exercising better. Or your client can think of a movement himself to trigger the state or this feeling for when you are not there, for example just before a competition.

Visualizations for personal trainers

In addition, your client may also benefit from visualizing how they are doing when they are enjoying exercise.

Not everyone can do this for themselves. You can then help your client with a guided visualization in which you help them imagine what it feels like when they are in the sports flow and enjoying themselves.

How nice that feels. How the wind blows along his/her body. How the sweat cools the body nicely and how strong and fit it makes one feel. How alive.

Such visualization can help you make future trainings a success.

Psychological help for athletes

Research also shows that athletes sometimes need more than just encouragement to perform well. For example, if you notice that your client is struggling with a particular activity, there may be more to it than simply“not being able to do it.” If you have extensive knowledge of hypnotherapy and other psychological matters, you can also dedicate a hypnosis session to addressing the psychological issue that is holding your client back.

For example, regression can help you figure out why things are going the way they are when it comes to exercise. You can then use regression to change the moment that caused a sports-related mental block so that your client can still enjoy exercising.

Other techniques can also be used to bring unconscious problems to the surface. For example, a professional baseball player was asked to figure out why he stopped hitting the ball and to become increasingly aware of this by counting. On the ^10th count, the player knew what the problem was and could picture it completely in his mind and determine what to do differently. Then he was able to finish his season and performed at better than before this session (source 3, page 161).

Post-hypnotic suggestions can also be used to overcome a blockage. This is a suggestion that affects behavior after the hypnosis session. Usually you then say something like "From now on you are going to ... (and then the suggestion) and this will get better and better and in a few weeks you will notice that you do this automatically and don't have to think about it."

Becoming a personal trainer is something anyone with a sports background can do, but becoming a good personal trainer may take more than that.

Knowledge of sports hypnosis can go a long way toward helping your clients get the most out of themselves—whether they’re exercising for their health, training to run a marathon, or aiming to win specific competitions.

Hypnosis can be used to enhance athletic performance per se or you can use it if you notice that certain performance is no longer being achieved and you cannot find a physical reason why this is the way it is.

Would you like to learn more about how hypnosis works and how you can use it to help others? Then join the free online masterclass on hypnosis.

Or sign up right away for one of our training programs. In the first course, you’ll learn more about giving helpful suggestions and how regression works.

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