Feel the ViPR force
It’s a little like becoming a Jedi Knight. I’m talking about the honour of being called a ViPR national trainer (NT). NT’s are responsible for representing ViPR, and all it stands for, at public events as well as delivering the one-day workshop required to call yourself a certified ViPR trainer. You need to have a passion for the principles behind ViPR, understand how it works, and be capable of sharing the joys of working with ViPR to whoever wants to listen.
As well as being a columnist for Fitpro, and an actual fit pro, I am one of the many who has fully converted from the dark side. I use ViPR on a daily basis with a myriad of clients and can really see the benefits it can bring to many different facets of exercise. So I was honoured to be invited to see what it takes to become a ViPR national trainer.
Adam Daniel was our ‘Yoda’ for the day and he had a very specific list of attributes he wanted to see us display on the one-day workshop, This workshop was cleverly designed to be great fun, educational, inspiring and, above all, a job interview. Although a job interview was the last thing it felt like.
Unfortunately, on the day of my Jedi training, it decided to snow quite heavily over rural Essex, which turned my 50-minute drive into FitPro HQ into a four-hour slog. Thankfully, I arrived just as the first task was coming to a close; a rather intense workout with our ‘light sabre’. However, I would get my turn to sweat later on.
Then we were all tested on our skills as a presenter. Part of the job of a master trainer is to be able to teach other fit pros not only how to use ViPR, but to open up their minds to the endless possibilities it creates when training a vast array of clients. That requires confidence, assertiveness, quick thinking and, above all, empathy. All of which we were required to display with tasks that included a two-minute impromptu speech on a random item that Adam had borrowed from the FitPro office.
For the final task of the day, we were all required to teach a five-minute workout using ViPR. Now that’s all well and good but I was sharing the day with nine other men and there was plenty of testosterone on offer. Now it was my turn to sweat.
Was that really a job interview? No. Sure, there’s a job at the end of it, if I’m lucky but, instead, it was a fun day where I learned a lot from not only Adam but the other fit pros I had the privilege of spending the day with. I came away with a bunch of new friends, a smile on my face and a sore bum. So do I have what it takes to be a ViPR master trainer? Yoda, get back to me, he will.
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