Top Blogs To Follow for Sports and Fitness Entrepreneurs

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The sports and fitness industry is a constantly evolving entity. How do you keep up with the ever-changing landscape and manage your clients’ expectations? The answer is simple. You keep tabs on the leaders in the field. 

Some fabulous blogs cater specifically for sports and fitness businesses, but there are others that it’s good to follow because your clients will probably read them. You can’t keep up with client expectations and requirements if you don’t follow the trends.

Today, I’m going to point you in the direction of a few excellent blogs that will:

• Help you and your business development
• Give you important material for your clients
• And some that will do both.

Sport & Fitness Business Blogs

Your business will be your primary focus, how to make it work and provide the best service for your clients. You need to know everything from charging your clients for your time, expertise, and premises to the regulations for providing fitness training. Plus everything else in between and how to keep up with your professional training. It’s a long list of things you need to keep on top of. Below is a list of fantastic websites to help you connect clients and trainers, create the best membership and packages, and how to pay your coaches.

ACE Fit

The American Council on Excercise (Ace-Fitness) is a nonprofit organisation working on getting everyone more active. Primarily in the US, ACE-Fit has a global reach providing certification in four primary areas of sports and fitness professions

• Personal Trainers
• Group Fitness
• Health Coaching
• Medical Exercise

Not only does it provide accredited training in key sports and fitness categories, but the comprehensive blog also covers crucial information on health and wellness. Aside from the usual fitness and weight loss articles, there is key research on changing behaviour, disease and health contraindications that trainers and coaches will need to know. 

One of the best things about ACE-Fit is its work with legislators to make fitness a key consideration within health and medical circles.

Startup Active

You might have years of experience in your area, but what if you’re starting your own business? This is where you might need some specific help from people who know what it takes to build a fledgeling business from the ground up.

Startup Active is exactly that, it’s a resource for active business startups and the people there know their stuff. Sure they are selling their product in how to build your business. However, like any good business, they have plenty of free resources available to showcase their depth of knowledge. You just have to take advantage.

Two Brain Business

The product of Chris Cooper, Two Brain Business is a veritable mine of priceless information for fitness professionals and especially business owners.

Another positive multitasking blog resource with “Two-brain Radio” you can listen to success stories, advice from leading trainers, coaches and gym owners, and even Chris Cooper himself.

If you want resources on everything from creating a vision for your business to marketing and member retention, you need to take a look at this blog. There are also a lot of free tools available if you are willing to sign up for them (I know, it’s all lead magnets, but sometimes it’s worth it).

Health & Fitness Achievement Blogs

Nerd Fitness

As the title implies, Nerd Fitness is very explicitly geared towards fitness novices and complete beginners. This makes it an ideal source of information for those who are only just starting on their fitness journey (probably for the first time).

This says it all

WELCOME TO NERD FITNESS

I’M STEVE KAMB. I’M A NERD. I DEADLIFT.

Nerd Fitness helps desk jockeys, nerds, and average Joes level up their lives. There’s a lot of B.S. out there about fitness. We’re working to put a stop to it.

Since so many of us spend our working lives tied to a desk, this is probably appropriate for many of your clients.

Fit Bottomed Girls

You might not have heard, but diet culture is toxic (don’t you know). Body positivity has been gaining more ground than ever, and Fit Bottomed Girls has spawned some subcategories, such as FitBottomed Mamas/Eats/Zen. with a tag line that hits very hard:

“you can’t hate yourself healthy.”

Too true.

While this is not a website that you will want to share with your seasoned athletes and professional sports clients, you might consider it a different approach for people who tend to yo-yo diet or can’t stick to a strict regime.

While there is an implicit bias in the website’s title, more information is available for Fit Bottomed Guys than you might initially think.

If you have a client with self-esteem issues and a self-hate approach to their health and fitness journey, you might want to point them in this direction. 

Sport, Fitness, Health & Wellbeing – Business and Personal

If you don’t have time to spend keeping up with the industry, your best bet is to keep tabs on blogs that cater to individual fitness desires and those of the professional service provider. One excellent example is:

Breaking Muscle

Breaking Muscle is one of the world’s most reputable and beloved fitness websites. It was initially founded by Mindith Rahmat but was recently taken over by David Tao at BarBend. Covering everything from athletics and gymnastics to bodybuilding and Crossfit, it’s an invaluable resource for individuals on their health and fitness journey and coaches, gym owners, and other sports and fitness professionals.

Even the information provided for people on their fitness journey is written by renowned and trusted professionals and is helpful for people running their own businesses. 

No one knows everything about sports and fitness, so having a pool of experts to call upon if you need it is crucial.

And one last thing that puts Breaking Muscle as a “must-use” resource is the multitasking aspect. When time is tight, and you don’t have the time to keep up with a blog, switch to the podcasts, and you can listen while you get other things done.

Fitness Businesses Can’t Ignore Wearable Tech

It seems like people can keep track of their activity, sleep, goals, heart rate and all the other aspects of their fitness regime. Why do they need a trainer or coach to help them? The fact is that while clients might have all this data available, they probably don’t know what to do with it or what it means in terms of their fitness journey, achieving their goals, or their overall health.

Fitness professionals who have learned to use this data, and incorporate it into their clients’ regimes have a little bit extra to give their clients. If you completely ignore the information that a fitness tracker brings to the table in terms of monitoring clients successes and, you are missing out on some crucial information.

Two of the most prominent brands of fitness trackers, Garmin and Fitbit have some valuable information on their blogs., some is very specifically for the users, but if you look a little further, there is some in-depth data for trainers and coaches on how to interpret data in conjunction with a fitness plan. It’s interesting stuff that you might want to use.

Expertise and Diversification

You might well be an expert in your field, whether it’s pilates and biomechanics or football coaching. However, sports, health and fitness change so rapidly that only a fool would stand still and expect the industry to do so too. 

Depending on the business you run, you might also need to diversify your offerings. If you have specialised in one thing that’s now waning in popularity, you will need to upskill and diversify to maintain your business revenue. Keeping up with the new developments will let you know what is trending and how you can maximise your skillset.

It’s not just trends that alter. People have various phases of their lives. Many women have periods of pregnancy when their fitness goals and health targets differ vastly. People have varying health requirements at different times in their lives. Sometimes it’s all about looking good; at others, it’s about feeling good. Then there are the health targets irrespective of how they look or feel.

If you engage people to the point of loyalty that they want to keep coming back to you and your business, you need to know how to keep up with their changing needs. Conversely, if you can’t keep up with their evolving requirements, they probably won’t stay loyal.

People and Demographics Change

Let’s not forget that your target demographics change over time. Depending on your fitness enterprise, whether it’s training, sports coaching or running a fitness centre, you will find that the people and their demands will change with trends, health and fitness goals. 

Sure, if you run a large chain of fitness centres, you will have an extensive range of demographic targets that will stay roughly the same throughout your business life. Yet if you have a smaller boutique gym or coaching business, your target audiences will be smaller and more niche-oriented. 

Who has time to read blogs?

Sure, everyone is busy, but the plain fact is that if you don’t keep up with current trends in the fitness industry, you are likely to get left behind for someone with their finger on the pulse. No one says you have to indulge every fad that erupts from the mind of someone with an outlandish idea. Keep an eye out for the upcoming new themes, be ready to debunk any weird and wonderful pseudoscience, and guide your clients into a fitness regime that works for them (and doesn’t cause any harm).

Studies into new fitness trends, body positivity, research into optimal training for specific results are all essential to ensure you give the best possible service to your clients.