Do your students feel loved? 5 hacks for fitness instructors

Fitness Snob selfies

Recently I listened to an interview with Malik Yoba on FitFluential.  He covered a lot of points I agreed with on fitness. One that stood out the most was his comment that his fitness instructor was one of the most important relationships in his life.  I never articulated it like that but I couldn’t agree more which is why I’m developing Fitness Snob.  The Fitness Snob app matches people with instructors and classes they are likely to love.  But when students get matched, they not only want to love the instructor’s style, music and environment but they want the instructor to love them back. Now I can almost immediately hear instructors say “I teach twenty classes a week and have hundreds of students, I can’t love let alone remember everybody”.  As an instructor reminded me today, sometimes you have to fake it.

Five easy hacks to make your students feel like you love them back

1. Call your students by name.  Review the list of class attendees before class starts and refer to people by name. Look back at the list during class if necessary. Your students will feel like they are important enough that you want to know them even if you haven’t remember all of their names yet.
2. Pretend to care about their wellbeing.   Anyone will tell you that when I take a class, I typically go hard.  But recently, I have been suffering from a rotator cuff injury. A few of my favorite instructors noticed I was having difficulty with my left arm. They immediately asked me what was going on and gave me modifications.  Can’t get it together to be this personal? Before each class, you can ask if anyone has any injuries.  Give them some suggestions on modifications and keep an eye out during class.  This will keep your students from going M.I.A. when they have functional injuries.
3. Pretend that you miss them when they are not in class and not just because of the money.  Whether it is because of an injury or travel, some of your regulars will go missing. You haven’t remembered everyone’s name but you know the faces.  When someone reappears after weeks of not attending class, shout them out “we missed you”.  When I don’t show up for my regular classes, one of my favorite instructors hits me up on Facebook or drops me a text.  Feeling like I’m important to her is one of the things that fuels me to keep taking her classes (that and she is a damn good instructor).
4. Take time to chat.  I get it, we are all busy! Teaching back to back classes and/or multiple classes at different locations, makes it difficult to be social after classes.  But meeting your students at the door as they leave your class to tell them “thanks for coming” or “you killed the workout” will go a long way.
5. Take time for a selfie.  If you want to be a star, stars take pictures with fans.  Engage your staff to pull students together so you can do a group selfie. Have the staff take one with your phone and post it right away.  Tell your students to tag themselves in the pic.  Posting it right away gives you a pass from tagging everyone (you don’t know all of their names anyway).  It also puts the ownest on them to follow you on social media and to tag themselves.  They’ll feel special that they were part of the picture and will write great stuff about you when they tag themselves.

Need more students to love?  Visit the instructor’s page to learn what the Fitness Snob app can offer you.