Today I wanted to talk about the upstream cause of the issues we see in the fitness industry, high turnover, burnout and low skills is coming from a lack of understanding about what the job actually is and a true understanding of the skills that are required to succeed in a professional capacity without sacrificing your body through burnout over time.

So I want to start with this question. What is your real job? If you are a group fitness instructor, personal trainer, health coach, fitness specialist. Whatever your job title is, what is your real job?

I don’t care who you are, you are not a bottomless well of energy. 

Not only is your job to refill other people but you also have all the other obligations and expectations in your “real life” outside the gym and studio. If you discount these things or ignore them for too long that’s when the burnout creeps in.  And for fit pros that burnout can kill your career. So what do we do?

Just because something feels easy to you does not mean that everyone can do it. You are unique in your particular zone of genius. Even though there are many, many people out there that teach what you teach, that are a coach of what you are a coach of that provide services the way you provide services, but they don't do it exactly like you because you are an individual and what you bring to the table. What feels easy to you does not feel easy to everyone else, and that's why they're going to hire you.

If you don’t have time to recharge and refill your well of energy now, when will you have the time for the inevitable crash and burn that happens even when we’re doing something we absolutely love?

So today I want to talk about something that Dr. Kate Steiner shared in episode 47. She explained the importance of defining your recovery formula. That’s simply a list of things that you can use that will help you recover and rest from the predicted and unpredictable burn events that we all come across in our day to day lives.

We can still bring the burn for our students without sinking into burnout ourselves. Part of the process is learning to navigate our own stress curve better so then we can help our students.

One part of that navigation process is to begin to integrate an understanding of our nervous system into our class design.

Burnout is really characterized by three things beyond the fatigue, feeling emotionally drained feeling overwhelmed. Those pieces are part of burnout. But when you are waking up more days of the week than not, and you feel as though your work is unmanageable or that your work is a burden, or that you have lost the joy and passion that you previously had for your work. You're likely in a state of burnout.