Let’s tackle this impressive-sounding term and science so your exercise prescriptions are on point! 

Your Health Coaching certification and your Group Fitness training don’t cover it. Your personal training certification doesn’t. 

The “minimum viable information a fitness or health professional needs to enter the field” is not enough for your support of women. Let alone women in menopause, the most significant disruptive period of her life (pun intended). 

So this episode aims to give you the insights about what it is and how and why it’s important. 

Responses in groups range from, “every woman is different” to “something is better than nothing” and these comments come from both our consumer members and our health and fitness professionals. 

This information provided exclusively on the She Means Fitness Business podcast is intended for health and fitness professionals to grow their business by enhancing awareness of strategies for coaching midlife women, marketing to midlife women who are looking for support, and for coaching midlife women in a way that helps them most, and helps you grow a thriving business - as a midlife women - given most of our audience though not all are themselves midlifers. 

The second step we offer helps women go from earning a sporadic income to increasing their monthly income by at least $5000 a month so that they can make a reasonable living. Once someone goes through 90 days of coaching and training to reach that, there’s a level of sustainability and the focus becomes scaling. Some trainers and health coaches may feel this  is “success.” Most however, if they’re honest truly want a greater impact and influence and freedom in finances and time for themselves. That’s really phase 3. 

You may be wondering, what’s step 1? That is the Flipping50 Menopause Fitness Specialist. If you’re not already well-versed in exercise endocrinology, this is the way to make sure you have answers when midlife clients have questions. You know what’s possible and within your scope and how to support and receive support from other allied health professionals. 

Here I’ll discuss exercise endocrinology basics: 

• Definition (influence><) 

• Type of exercise 

• Timing of exercise 

• Exercise nutrition 

• Lifestyle habits influence on exercise endocrinology

Resources: 

Flipping50® Menopause Fitness Specialist: https://www.flippingfifty.com/specialist

Marketing to Women: https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/copywriting-course/

Health & Fitness Business Scorecard: https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/scorecard

Other Episodes You Might Like:

3 Reasons and fixes Your Female Fitness Clients Aren’t Getting Results: https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/female-fitness-clients/

3 Fast Ways to Better Results for Female Training Clients: https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/female-training-clients/

7 Tips to be a Personal Trainer Every Midlife Woman Wants to Work With: https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/be-a-personal-trainer/

Making fitness recommendations on social media or your “newsletter”? Are you meeting with clients and giving them some tips on how to improve their health? 

For fitness and health coaches working with individuals, it’s time we do them justice! These fitness recommendations need a tune up.

First, let’s acknowledge this: there are all kinds of health coaches. Some are board-certified functional health coaches that have a significant depth of study, knowledge, understanding what questions to ask and what answers reveal. 

Then there are health coaches that are certified by organizations that have required little more than reading a text or viewing training videos online, taking a test when ready and receiving a passing grade of 75% or more. (I always wonder about that 25% of comprehension, don’t you?) 

Then, there are health coaches that have adopted the title without diving into training of health coaching, how to answer questions. They may also be giving advice as a fitness or nutrition professional, and not actually coaching. There’s a distinction between the two. For more information on a CEU course coming up, stay tuned at fitnessmarketingmastery.com. As a part of the Flipping50® Menopause Fitness Specialist course for alumni and for CEU course alone, or as a part of renewing I’m providing a 2-hour training on coaching midlife women. 

Be the first to know by clicking here: https://www.flippingfifty.com/specialist  

I’ll let you know when we open again, and when the course is available to take. No obligation, we’ll just send the details!

OK, let’s dive into those recommendations and why so you have a much better understanding!

Common Fitness Recommendations that need to die!

1. Healthy Snacks 

Not all clients should snack. A percent of women over 40 are definitely dealing with some blood sugar issues or adrenal stress. However, many more women actually need to fast between meals so their liver can function optimally and they can begin to burn fat. Snacks keep someone using what goes in now. So the need for snacking is a clue. And yes, for those women who do experience shakes, or nausea or dizziness, they need to deal with that now. However, that’s a sign you need to get to the underlying cause of it. 

In the Flipping50 Menopause Fitness Specialist, we help clients (and trainers who work with them) identify which protocol will help them. Food, sleep, exercise - all need to be unique if this is the status of clients. 

Suggesting healthy snacks without suggesting when and why and who is a disservice to midlife women. It is keeping some fat.

2. High Protein Meals from inflammatory foods 

In 2014 some of the most popular pages on Facebook were those listed as “high protein meals” and now? On instagram it’s “fitness meals.” The following is huge. But the ingredients are often highly inflammatory foods for most midlife women (and others). 

Hormonal changes bring gut issues. They show up in skin issues, weight loss resistance, digestive issues, irregularity, inability to reduce fat, inflammation. That points to leaky gut. Leaky gut is an obstacle for weight loss, immune function, disease prevention because not absorbing foods or supplements means there’s a gap between what someone thinks is healthy lifestyle and what’s really happening. 

3. Exercise 1st Thing in the Morning 

This will be unpopular. Especially if you do something very Orange Theory and have 4:30am or 5am classes or meet with clients at this time. But there is greater risk of disc issues within an hour of waking. [A podcast with Dr Stuart McGill at Flippingfifty.com or on your favorite podcast platform will help you understand this]. So, are clients up by 3:30 to do your session? 

Don’t shoot the messenger. It’s science.

You also may be disrupting sleep, not something midlife women can afford. Working with your hormones on a daily basis - as well as weekly - is so very important.

And I won’t go into this, but end of the day isn’t ideal for intense exercise either. So HIIT at that 5:30pm class isn’t in your client’s best interest. 

Surprised? More blogs and podcasts at fitnessmarketingmastery.com support how and why.

You may also like this: https://www.flippingfifty.com/sleep-fmm-specialist-opt/

And last but not least, this common fitness recommendation is potentially the nemesis of some midlife women. 

HIIT Workouts to Burn Fat 

A midlife woman already under a high level of perceived stress, and sometimes not perceived is just increasing cortisol. That’s increasing catabolism. That as you know is when muscle breaks down and the body stores fat easier. 

The body can not both store and burn fat. Under stress, it will opt for fat storage. Stressed midlife women, or those with too little cortisol, needing a nap after workouts, are burning out… not burning fat. 

Sooner or later they will have to stop. Stop exercise. Stop training with you. 

HIIT workouts should be the smallest percentage of exercise and movement time a midlife woman does in a week. 

HIIT should also be the last thing added and first to go if a woman isn’t feeling amazing! And getting results from her program. 

Other Episodes You Might Like: 

3 Reasons (and fixes) Your Female Fitness Clients Aren’t Getting Results: https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/female-fitness-client/

Adaptogens for Coaching Midlife Clients: How & When It Helps: https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/adaptogens/

Coaching Clients Effectively | Weight Loss Success Coach Interview: https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/coaching-clients-weight-loss-success/

Resources: 

Flipping50® Menopause Fitness Specialist: https://www.flippingfifty.com/specialist

Help Clients Sleep Better: https://www.flippingfifty.com/sleep-fmm-specialist-opt/

Health & Fitness Business Scorecard: https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/scorecard

How would you like to reduce fitness marketing time and still continue to attract ideal clients? Yes, please, right!? 

Even better, is the idea that you can potentially get better results. You’ll hear why in this episode. 

Cranking out content every week takes time. I’m going to start with 5 mistakes I have made, and not going to lie, I can still default to these mistakes if I’m not careful! 

However, I want to say this, having to create content for two-arms of my business, our Flipping50® community and our Fitness Health Coaches and Trainers - has been the biggest eye-opening experience of my life. 

You can create MORE all day. And I'll tell you, I am prolific. It’s my superpower. I’m joking! It’s my safe place. I love to create. So naturally this is where I’ll bury myself on a Sunday morning. Not because I’m behind or don’t have a book or a walk or something better to do, I truly love it. But content creation - whether packages and services, or blogs and podcasts - that are not marketed… don’t help you or I. 

How bizarre is that? I just said that creating marketing copy that you don’t market doesn’t work. What I mean is the only way you can reduce fitness marketing time - and want to - is if you are getting the content you do create out there. You never want to create a podcast … post about it once, and never again talk about it!!! 

5 Ways to Reduce Fitness Marketing Time

1. Script your videos. Don’t just turn on the camera and riff. At least not until you have an established audience and you go live and have people there who will ask questions. 

When you start scripting… you may realize as I do, I don’t have one video, I have 5. I have 5 short videos that I can drip out this next 2-3 weeks and stay congruent with the topic that is in alignment with whatever we’re promoting. 

• Batch record. 

This is easy, when you do #1. Maybe it’s not batch record. Maybe it’s creating 12 photos of you with different expressions or using professionally done images in new ways. Maybe it’s finding the images you want to use or the graphics you’re going to use in Canva.com

• Create posts in advance. 

I’m still of the school of thought that posts done in real time do better. At one point, who didn’t use Hootsuite, or some other 3rd party scheduler? Even Facebook or Instagram in advance - though they’re popular - I generally don’t.

What I do is create the content and use Trello.com so that the content is there, I copy it, paste it to the site and I’m done in minutes.

• Observe engagement 

First because it informs what you do more of, what you stop doing or do less of, but also because this can be done in 15 minute increments every day. It’s THIS… not the post itself but you engaging with the followers who comment that matters!  

• Think ahead. 

The more time you spend regularly before you go into production mode, the more reduction in your actual time creating marketing content you will spend. I do this “think time” while I’m lifting weights or I’m taking a hike. It’s the best place for ideas to come to me!

What’s coming up right now? Superbowl, Valentine’s Day, St Patrick’s Day, Spring Break, March Madness…. What do you want to do with each of those? What are you launching next month, the month after that? What do your clients need to know before they’d realize they need what you’re selling? That content pre-meditated and not “hey, we’re open” is the difference between engaging content and flat feeling like an ad content. 

People are on social media to see family and friends. No one wants to feel judged, like they’re in school, or to see an ad in your timeline posts. 

A little bonus is this… I’ve found that no longer is 4 posts a day on Facebook an advantage. And the more time I give my reels on Instagram to marinate and be the most recent content, while using stories to stay TOMA, the better they do. So reduce fitness marketing time by posting less.. Could also work for you. Test it. 

What about you? Ways you reduce your fitness marketing time?

Other Episodes You Might Like:

10 Social Media Tips That Work for Fitness & Health Professionals: https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/social-media-tips-2/

Generate Simple Social Media Content Fast | Fitness Coaches: https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/social-media-content/

Fitness Marketing Secrets to Recession-Proof with Bedros Keuilian: https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/fitness-marketing-secrets/

Resources:

Health & Fitness Business Scorecard:https://www.fitnessmarketingmastery.com/scorecard