How cutting edge Fitness Professionals are achieving their results.
Thirty years after it was originated, it is now becoming more widely recognised that the field of NLP ( Neuro Linguistic Programming) has much to contribute to the Fitness Industry. A number of innovative fitness professionals have taken the initiative and trained as NLP Practitioners and Master Practitioners – some have even continued to work in the Industry! Those of us still in Fitness stay because we have discovered for ourselves that NLP offers us powerful tools which complement perfectly those skills we had already learned and developed. Essentially what we are able to do is work with our clients’ minds, not just their bodies, and, as a consequence, we have seen unprecedented results.
Perhaps the clearest way of demonstrating how NLP works as an add on to existing skills is to consider Robert Dilts’ Neurological Levels model (1).
Identity
Beliefs and Values
Capability
Behaviour
Environment
Note for Editor -usually drawn in a triangle as a hierarchy
Currently, the changes we suggest a client makes are to do with their behaviour, that is what they do, or perhaps don’t do, such as exercising more and eating more healthily), while a fitness Professional trained in NLP will be able to work with their client’s beliefs and values. Why is this important – because if a client has a limiting belief related to their health and fitness, such as, ‘I can’t run’ or ‘You have to be slim to go to classes’, suggesting that they run or go to classes is unlikely to be successful in the long term, if at all. We can provide marvelous facilities (environment), teach clients how to use the equipment and how to get the steps ( the ‘how to’ is the capability level) and prescribe exercise until we are blue in the face, but if we don’t address what clients have going on in their minds it could be said we are selling them short.
Your challenge as a Fitness Professional will never be greater than when a client has a limiting belief around change; indeed some clients just don’t believe that they can succeed and sadly they often have plenty of evidence to support their belief. For those clients making the annual crusade to the gym in January, they have literally been there before but they never got the T Shirt – for them their attempts at fitness have become part of a pattern that doesn’t get them the results they want.
So what is a belief? Essentially they are the rules we live by which shape our world. We ‘believe’ our beliefs to be true and we often mistake them for facts, but they are not facts. We hold beliefs about others, ourselves and our relationships, about what is possible and what we are capable of - it is in this realm of possibility that they create or destroy our personal power. In Timeline Therapy and the Basis of Personality Tad James and Wyatt Woodsmall write
“Beliefs are our on off switches for our ability to do anything in the world, because if you don’t believe you can do something, you probably won’t have the opportunity to find out.” (2)
In the first instance it is important to find out what beliefs a client has that causes him or her to be able to do what they do. We also want to identify any limiting beliefs that a client has running which disable them when it comes sticking with the programme.
A Fitness Professional trained in NLP will use carefully crafted questions and listen carefully to their client’s responses ( this is the L - Linguistic – of NLP) for the tell tale signs. Asking a client how they rate their chances of success and whether they believe change is possible will reveal a great deal. The type of statements you need to listen for are
· I can’t………….because………………………………………….
· I’m no good at …………because………………………………..
· I must stay the way I don’t want to be because…………………
· I can’t get what I want because…………………………………..
· I’ll never be able to do it because………………………………
· My biggest problem is…………………because………………..
· I’ll always have this problem because…………………………..
· I don’t deserve…………….because……………………………..
· I’m not good enough to……………………………………………
So what can you do to help a client when you notice that they have a limiting belief in relation to their fitness goals? Initially we recommend that you reassure them it is not only possible to achieve their, but that they are able to achieve them and they deserve to. Most people have no idea how capable they really are and so you need to emphasize to them how much potential they have. Simple linguistic change can begin to loosen the hold an un-useful belief has; for example, if a client makes identity statements such as “I am just not a fit person”, you will suggest that they begin to say to themselves, “I am becoming fitter. I am feeling better and better about myself.” A simple affirmation such as this can help a client achieve their goals, because it shifts the focus from what they don’t want (which at the momment is part of who they are as expressed in their language) to what they do want, and having ‘positive’ goals or outcomes, as they are referred to in NLP, is crucial to success. Similarly if a person says ‘I can’t …..”, suggest they begin to say ‘I am beginning to learn how to…..”. Use the Positive Outcomes model as part of your induction process to help clients get really clear about their goals (see next issue on “Values; if a goal’s worth having it’s worth setting a Positive Outcome”). As a client begins to develop a greater sense of themselves as having choices, of being able to have what they want , the limiting belief will begin to lose it’s power over them.
Tell clients the Roger Bannister 4 minute mile story in order to make the point that limiting beliefs can be turned on their heads.
Before Roger Bannister broke the world mile record in Oxford on may 6th 1954 it was considered impossible for a human being to run the mile in less than 4 minutes. The belief at the time was that it would be dangerous and potentially fatal to do so. Bannister refused to conform to the belief and broke the 4 minute mile; interestingly within a few months of doing so, many athletes emulated his performance. Now, of course, it is commonplace
Of course there are NLP techniques such as The Timeline that allow a client to experience a Fit, Healthy Future more fully, and as a result the limiting belief can become null and void. It simply doesn’t stack up against what your lient now knows is possible. Similarly there are actual techniques such as a Submodality Belief Change that allow you to simply change a limiting belief, such as “I can’t run for more than half an hour” (coming from a client who would like to run a marathon), to “I can run a marathon.”
Robert Dilts has pioneered NLP in the realm of Belief Change over the last 30 years, and has developed patterns which are frequently used with athletes to help them overcome blocks they have developed. They work well with sports people because they are, as we say in NLP, ‘Kinaesthetic’ techniques – the patterns for change are literally marked out on the floor and you walk them through; by the time you get to the end of the process you have a new belief.
Dilts’ definition of NLP is “NLP is whatever works” – this is interesting because some of the exercises we use in The Metaphor Circuit TM have proved enormously successful in terms of helping people let go of limiting beliefs. One of the stations is called “Letting Go” and involves focussing on something you no longer want in your life as you throw a medicine ball away from yo, using a chest press action. Other clients have used the “Welcoming” station to welcome their new desired belief as they state their affirmation. It is great to know that we can provide for something as powerful as belief change in the context of the studio; using NLP in fitness is by no means confined to personal training.
The Metaphor Circuit TM is bodywork with an emotional content designed to encourage self-awareness. It provides a unique and fun filled opportunity for participants to exercise using a circuit training format while simultaneously working on personal development issues such as confidence building. This approach enables the client to work towards their health and fitness goals and effect real change in their lives.
The approach that The Metaphor Circuit TM is unique in that it goes beyond simply exploiting the feel good factor associated with exercise. Participants move through a sequence of predetermined metaphorical exercises, while focussing on specific emotional issues. The technique is powerful because the experience for example of ‘Letting Go’ is a physical one and not just emotional.
Participation will benefit anybody who would appreciate a more holistic, mind-body approach to their exercise.
References
(1) Robert Dilts
Changing Belief Systems with NLP
1990
(2) Tad James and Wyatt Woodsmall write
Timeline Therapy and the Basis of Personality
1980
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