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Future Fit Traning

Dr. Gary Mendoza Driving Behaviour Change

Whilst working as a Personal Trainer he studied nutrition and developed successful nutrition and weight management course; teaching PT’s the skills to achieve long-term change in relation to their diet and exercise behaviour. This formed the basis of his doctoral research which focuses on the psychology of behaviour change.

“The one common thread I’ve seen with every client/member when they sign up is that they all want to change some habitual behaviour. The leisure industry invests a lot of time and effort into producing new exercise regimes and accompanying training courses. The same is also true of nutrition. There are numerous different nutrition courses all claiming to have the ultimate answer for either weight loss or sports performance. But whether it be a new exercise regime or new dietary programme the one thing that holds true is that in order to follow either (or both) you are going to have to change your current behaviour. It was this realisation that led me to incorporate the psychology of behaviour change as part of my doctoral research.”

“In my doctoral research, I used PTs who had trained with Future Fit Training. I knew a lot of them as I had trained them in nutrition. I asked them if they had any clients about to start work with them that would be willing to participate in my research. I psychometrically tested these volunteers to assess their readiness to change. Twelve weeks later I went back to the volunteers directly and re-tested them. I found that from their initial test scores I could predict who would be successful at losing weight and who would fail and stop training with the PT. This highlights that people will employ a PT even if they are not psychologically ready to change. Ultimately, as my data showed, this will lead to failure. For the next phase of the research, I asked for trainers who would like to be trained in the psychology of behaviour change.”

“The trainers that volunteered to participate in this phase of the research undertook further training with me to learn the theory of behaviour change as well as how to administer, score and interpret psychometric tests. This theory and the psychometric testing are now incorporated into the Behaviour Change Coaching course launched in partnership with Future Fit Training.”

In collaboration with Dr Gary Mendoza, the updated Behaviour Change Coaching course will give you the skills and knowledge to enhance your ability to help clients and become a more skilled and sought-after personal trainer or nutrition advisor.