By Xu Haihong

Personal fitness coaches have been listed by Times as one of the top 20 popular occupations in the 21st Century. With the improvement of the social living standard, people pay more and more attention to their bodies. Many people are no longer satisfied with such things as doing bodybuilding exercises together with a group of people in a gymnasium or doing exercises with instruments under the direction of servicemen. More people hope that they can have the "fitness guidance" made by a professional coach according to their own needs when doing exercises so that they can be less blind and spend less time doing exercises wrongly.

When "getting sweaty in a gymnasium" has become a preferred choice for people in doing exercises, individual coaches emerge as the times require and have rapidly incurred large quantities of followers in a short period of time. Recently, the author came to the Zuoan Club, a club of the CSI-BALLY Total Fitness in Beijing. As soon as the author went into the club, it was found that the photos and materials about individual coaches in this club were hung all over a wall.

Ms. Liu Zheng, who was engaged in the IT industry, told the author that it had been over 3 years since she began to come to the club for fitness. At the very beginning, she just came for fitness and health. She used to have a poor health, fragile and in low spirits, and she could not climb up even the Fragrant Hill (a 500m hill to the west of Beijing). Then, she finally made up her mind to go into a fitness center, doing exercises there without any guidance for quite a few months. Although her fitness got improved to some extent, her progress seemed to be rather slow, and she even suffered an injury when doing exercises and got her foot hurt. After that, she became unwilling to go there.

Once upon a time, she went to a fitness club to do exercises together with a friend. There, she met a middle-aged woman whose elegance and appearance were exactly the same as those stars in pictures. In the beginning, she thought that woman was a coach, but later Ms. Liu got to know that she was coming to do exercises. Ms Liu asked that woman how she did exercises. Liu Zheng was told that that lady had been asking personal coaches to make exercise plans according to her conditions and she had thus obtained pertinent effects. Liu Zheng got deeply touched and began to ask personal coaches for guidance on exercises. She went to do exercises one hour each time, three times a week. She has been sticking to doing exercises in that way till now. After employing personal coaches, Liu Zheng has not only formed a habit to stick to her exercises but also has got the functions of her heart and lung well improved. For years, she has never taken any medicine and her skin has become ever better than before.

For the time being, more and more common people like Liu Zheng have employed their personal coaches. Personal coaches, who used to serve professional sportsmen and stars, have thus begun to enter into the life of common people.

Guan Wei, who has been working as a coach since 1995, is one of the earliest personal fitness coaches in Beijing. Having obtained such certifications like the US Ally University's professional personal coach certification, CSI-BALLY Third Class Coach certification, the Four-Strength Training certification, and the aptitude certification as a national body-building supervisor, Guan Wei now is the personal coach manager in CSI-BALLY.

According to Guan Wei, as a personal fitness coach, he should possess comparatively professional knowledge about psychology, medicine, nutrition, and sport skills. Personal coaches belong to the service industry; in order to serve people, one must learn to be modest and restrain oneself.  They can play different roles in their jobs: sometimes as supervisors and guides; sometimes as personal doctors; sometimes as friends and listeners; and sometimes, they are even to endure their trainees' relief. As people are different from one another in terms of physical conditions, personal coaches should make training plans according to the specific conditions of their trainees; at the same time, they should instruct their clients on their daily dieting habits and have the physical quality of their clients improved more quickly and more healthily.

This profession can be a lifetime vocation, in which experiences and services are key for winning clients. Guan Wei said that his father who was already in his sixties had been working as a personal coach. With the development of the fitness industry, senior personal fitness coaches are more and more popular among people: they not only possess profound theoretic knowledge but also give authoritative direction to bodybuilding clients.

Overseas personal coaches not only have their "stunts" like extraordinary professional knowledge and teaching capability but also have generous income. In recent years, all kinds of bodybuilding venues appear like bamboo shoots after a spring rain in China and the demand for bodybuilding coaches and supervisors is also increasing.

It is known that personal bodybuilding coaches in various bodybuilding clubs in Beijing collect a fee at the rate of RMB150~1,000 per hour. They usually teach 3 or 4 hours each day, about 100 hours a month. Even calculated with the minimum hourly charges, a bodybuilding coach can have a monthly income of over RMB10,000 at ease. Of course, the hourly charge of various bodybuilding clubs is assessed with a basic price as the norm while referring to the whole industry.

At present, there are over 300 bodybuilding gymnasiums in Beijing; in addition to common bodybuilding coaches, there are a thousand or so personal coaches who provide person-to-person services. Therefore, there is still a rather large gap in the market. The bodybuilding industry has a vast potential market, and personal bodybuilding coaching will become a very promising vocation.