When it comes to health, fitness and nutrition, it seems there’s very little we can agree on.

Doctors argue about best treatments for various cancers, and fitness fads burst onto the scene one day, claiming to have the magic solution for everyone, and then POOF, they disappear as fast as they appeared. Meanwhile, dieticians can’t even agree on some of the very basic nutrition principles, like what percentages of carbohydrates, protein and fats we should be eating each day. And don’t get me started about the latest “superfood” of the month…

Our lack of apparent consensus feels almost equivalent to physicists disagreeing about whether gravity is a real thing, or psychologists debating about whether thinking happens in the brain or the elbow.

I digress. Our disagreements when it comes to health, fitness and nutrition comes down to this: There is no one way of prescribing diet and exercise to the masses. It must be done individually, which means sometimes it seems like we still know absolutely nothing!

It also means we of all people—fitness coaches—need to be constantly educating ourselves about the latest research, constantly learning from smart people, so we can do our best to help our clients.

And it also means that even the best coaches, the experienced ones who have been coaching for a decade, will also benefit greatly from the OPEX Coach Certificate Program (CCP).

3 Reasons Why Even Experienced Coaches Should Take the OPEX Coaching Certificate Program (CCP)

3. The More You Know, the More You Realize You Don’t Know

Someone wise once said this…

Another way to look at this is that CCP, a comprehensive course that covers not just program design, but also provides business coaching as well as how to properly assess and connect with clients among other things, helps even long-time coaches expose what they don’t know (aka their blind spots).

This was the case for Brandon Heavey of Missouri, a CCP coach and the owner of Evidence Based Athlete.

Heavey is no stranger to education. He has his master’s degree in electrical engineering and worked for NASA for 10 years before getting into coaching.

He said this about  CCP: “CCP exposed me to major blind spots in my coaching, which have fundamentally altered the way I work with clients.” He admitted he signed up for the course to learn more about program design, but soon discovered a new area he had never considered—his blind spot.

“While I did come away from the course with a lot (about program design), it was the impact of (OPEX’s) education on client assessment and life coaching that affected me most,” he said. What he learned helped him “develop an appreciation for the uniqueness of each client and provided (me) tools to connect more deeply with them,” he explained.

Regardless of what your blind spot is, CCP’s expansive nature will help you uncover it. Get an introduction to the same expansive principles taught in CCP here.

2. Uncharted Waters  

If you have been coaching for a while, chances are you have taken a number of courses, maybe even completed an academic degree in exercise physiology, kinesiology or human kinetics.

While learning about human anatomy and exercise physiology is invaluable to any coach, most courses and certifications, be it college degrees or coaching certifications, do not go into lifestyle coaching or mentorship. Every single CCP coach I have spoken to says these modules in CCP hands down set them apart from any other education they have done.

For example: Andy Ewington, a CCP coach living in Dublin, Ireland said this:

“I wasn’t that excited about the lifestyle stuff at the start, but I sort of fell in love with it. I learned so much about how to communicate with people, and how to work with them on realizing where they want to go and what they want to do…,” he said.

Ewington added: “It’s a different feeling when someone has a breakthrough there. …When you see someone get a personal best on a lift, that’s great, but when you see someone have an aha moment, when something clicks with their lifestyle, I think it’s where you can make a bigger difference in their lives.”

CCP coach Abby McCormick added this: “CCP exceeded my college education. … CCP really gave me a new perspective: To be less dogmatic. In university, they teach you the way things are, but they don’t do a lot of explaining about why this is the case, or why this might not always be the case.”

“Even the practical application we did in school didn’t really apply to real-world people. It didn’t really teach you how to help them,” she added. During CCP, however, McCormick said she learned how to actually “connect the dots” and put it all together in a practical sense. Much of this had to do with the lifestyle modules.

1. The path to a professional wage

One of the biggest problems in the fitness industry is undoubtedly that coaches and personal trainers cannot earn a decent enough living without burning themselves out by working 40-plus exhausting on-floor hours a week.

CCP seeks to (and does) develop professional coaches who have the ability to earn a professional wage and have a long-time career in the industry as a full-time coach.

Many coaches dream of owning their own gyms, but much of this comes down to financials: They know their only chance of earning a living is if they become a business owner. Thanks to CCP, this is no longer the case.

There are more than 60-plus OPEX licensed gyms around the world right now, and many of them are hungry to hire a CCP coach, who will have the opportunity to grow his/her own book of clients and be compensated on a percentage of revenue basis, meaning the sky’s the limit for a coach to earn six figures and not get burnt out in the process.

Most CCP coaches working at OPEX Gyms work no more than 15 (max 20) on-floor hours a week. The rest of their time is spent on program design and on continued education.

Mischa Jemionek, the owner of OPEX North Scottsdale in Arizona added this:  “Coaches can go on vacation and their paycheck isn’t affected. Or they can have kids and a family and program from home. As long as they’re in touch with their clients and their client retention is good…they can work remotely when they’re not on the floor coaching or doing consults,” she said.

“If you have 100 clients (paying around $300 each a month, which is typical for an OPEX gym) at 40 percent, you do the math. That’s a pretty good living,” she added.

So there you are: CCP will help you uncover your coaching blind spots, provide you a tool that no other education or coaching course teaches, and you get to earn a professional wage as a full-time career coach. Not too bad, right?

On top of this, CCP coaches have access to the OPEX community, a growing community of pretty smart people, to say the least, to learn from and to bounce ideas off, to help turn you into the most badass coach you can be.

Abi Hammond, an owner and head coach at OPEX Gold Coast in Norwalk, Connecticut explained it this way:  “When you do the course, you start building relationships with others in the OPEX network, and it starts to feel like a big family you can rely on,” she said.

“It has been massively beneficial.”

The OPEX Coaching Certificate Program (CCP) is an all-encompassing coaching education that provides coaches with the skills they need to become more professional in every aspect of their career. Get an introduction to the same principles taught in CCP and sign up for The Free Coach’s Toolkit.