What Does a DNA-Based Fitness Coach Do?

There are a lot of different ways to specialize if you are a personal trainer or planning to become one. Specializations allow you to stand out from the crowd, offer clients additional services, and potentially earn more income. 

DNA-based fitness is one of the fastest-growing specializations in the industry. It combines genetic information with exercise science for fitness training that is powerfully effective and highly personalized. Learn more about DNA coaching and how you can use it to help your clients reach their goals. 

What Is DNA-Based Fitness? 

Anyone who has tried to lose weight or get fit knows that there is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all diet or training plan. Meeting health and fitness goals is always more successful when approached with a personalized plan. 

It doesn’t get any more personalized than using your DNA to create a fitness or diet plan. This is exactly what DNA-based fitness is all about. A participant undergoes genetic testing specifically looking for genes that impact: 

• How easy or difficult it is for them to lose weight

• How readily they lose fat when doing cardio exercise

• How their bodies utilize carbs, fat, and protein

• Whether they are better at endurance or power workouts

• How their insulin levels respond to fat in the diet

• How well their bodies utilize vitamins and minerals

These are just some of the things your DNA can tell you. A trained DNA-based fitness coach knows how to read all this information and apply it to a client’s diet, nutrition, and fitness plans for greater success. 

What Does a DNA-Based Fitness Coach Do for Clients? 

In many ways, a DNA-based fitness coach is like any personal trainer or fitness coach. They assess and evaluate clients and help them develop health and fitness goals. They then create training plans and workouts to help them achieve their goals. They reevaluate clients along the way, adjust the plan, and keep them motivated to keep working toward their goals. 

What sets DNA-based coaches apart from other personal trainers is the information they use to develop plans and provide advice and motivation. They begin with the results of a DNA health and fitness test and use that information to develop highly personalized strategies for each client. 

Assess and Interpret Client DNA Testing Results

Client genetic testing is the first step in DNA fitness. The coach gets the results and interprets them for their clients. The information can seem very technical and isn’t necessarily easy to understand for the typical client. 

A vital part of the coach’s job is to educate their clients about their test results. They help them understand what the results mean for their health and fitness and how they should approach meeting their goals. 

Develop Training Plans Based on DNA Test Results 

Once the coach has a client’s DNA results and a good idea of the goals they hope to achieve, they can build an individualized training plan. This includes a long-term strategy as well as short-term plans and single workout sessions. 

One example of the fitness information you can get from a DNA test is the potential for power versus endurance. Genetics can tell a coach if their client is naturally better at one or the other. This could help the coach design workouts and long-term goals, whether their client is better suited to train for a marathon or to be a sprinter. 

Choosing the type or workout a client is most suited to will help them get better results from their fitness. It also will also keep them motivated to continue to exercise. It’s frustrating to try to do a sport or activity that doesn’t come naturally, but when you find something you excel at, it’s exciting and rewarding to keep working at it. 

DNA information can help you decrease the risk of exercise-related injury in your clients. Find out more here. 

Provide Personalized Nutrition and Weight Guidance

One of the primary reasons people turn to personal trainers or fitness coaches is to lose weight. As a fitness professional, you know how complicated weight loss can be. Strategies that work for weight loss vary a lot from one person to the next. 

Genetic information can be really helpful in guiding someone through more successful weight loss. Some of the nutrition and weight information DNA health tests provide include: 

• Protein, fat, and carbohydrate utilization

• Glucose response to cardiovascular exercise

• Insulin response to cardiovascular exercise

• Insulin response to dietary fat

• Fat loss response to cardiovascular exercise

• Overall weight loss ability

• Weight loss response to exercise

It’s out of the scope of practice of DNA-based coaches to actually prescribe a weight loss diet, but using this information, they can educate their clients and make helpful recommendations. For example, a client’s DNA might indicate that they would benefit from shifting their macronutrient ratios to consuming more protein and less fat. 

All of this genetic data also informs how a client’s weight or body composition responds to types of exercise. If you have a client struggling to lose weight, their DNA might indicate that they should spend more time weight lifting than doing cardio exercise. 

Learn more here about how DNA information about nutrients, fitness, and weight can make a client’s weight loss journey easier. 

Help Clients Meet Health Goals

This is where a DNA based fitness coach really rises above what typical personal trainers can do. Using genetic information, they can help their clients get fit or lose weight but also improve overall health and wellness. 

While a fitness coach cannot diagnose or treat a client’s illnesses or symptoms, they can provide guidance on improving health. For example, a DNA test provides information about how a client’s cholesterol or insulin levels respond to different types of exercise. This can help you design more effective training programs for optimizing these kinds of health markers. 

Another example is caffeine. Genetic health tests can tell if an individual metabolizes caffeine quickly or slowly. If a client is a slow metabolizer, you can suggest they limit caffeine, which for these individuals can increase their risk for high blood pressure. 

How to Become a DNA Fitness Coach

If all of this sounds fascinating to you, consider getting certified. If you are already a certified personal trainer, you’re just one short step away from calling yourself a DNA-based fitness coach. Enroll in and complete a course to get certified. With an online program, you can be ready to work with clients in just a few months. 

There are no prerequisites to take an online course to learn how to work in this field. Just enroll, study and learn, take the certification test, and get your credential. Look for an accredited course from a reputable institution that is recognized in the fitness and wellness industry. It should have been developed by experts in fitness and DNA health markers. 

If you are not a fitness professional, you don’t have to start with a personal training certification, but it’s a good idea. Most clients looking to work with a DNA-based coach will look for someone who is also a personal trainer. They need you to interpret and educate them about their genetic health information but also be able to plan fitness routines to help them meet their goals. 

Genetic information is the future in many industries, but especially health, medicine, fitness, and wellness. If you’re part of this industry or would like to be, becoming more knowledgeable about DNA-based fitness will help you take your career to another level. 

The ISSA’s DNA-Based Fitness Coach certification program is an online course that teaches you everything you need to know to work with clients on personalized fitness. Enroll today for instant access to this self-paced course.