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Best Books for Personal Trainers
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Being a personal trainer can be a daunting task if you haven’t formally got your degree. Even if you have, it can be frustrating since there’s so much you need to know and to update every time.
Aside from working out, you can learn about fitness, nutrition, and business. Being a personal trainer isn’t easy, and it can be hard if you don’t know how to market yourself. If you want to become successful, I believe you need to learn the ins and outs of being a personal trainer.
But what if you’ve already known about the marketing world?
Is there anything else you can learn?
Yes! There are plenty of other topics that you can learn about. Some of the favorites are human anatomy, strength training, and learning how to optimize fitness through diet.
Besides that, there’s also the spiritual side of being a personal trainer. You may want to incorporate meditation, serenity, and motivation into your clients. If you’ve never practiced these methods, then you could easily benefit from a few books on meditation methods.
I believe that reading a few hours a week can enhance anybody knowledge, including for you as a personal trainer. Many of the top-rated influential trainers take time to improve their methods personally. But, not all of us have free time to read through books consistently.
Here’s a list of the best books for personal trainers, as recommended by the entrepreneurs, CEOs and freelancers on The CEO Library. Each of these books is top-tier and provides you knowledge on how you can improve your clientele.
Best Books for Personal Trainers

Body by Science: A Research Based Program for Strength Training, Body building, and Complete Fitness in 12 Minutes a Week

Own the Day, Own Your Life: Optimized Practices for Waking, Working, Learning, Eating, Training, Playing, Sleeping, and Sex

Living with a SEAL: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet

Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box

The Essential Wooden: A Lifetime of Lessons on Leaders and Leadership

The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal

Who’s Got Your Back: The Breakthrough Program to Build Deep, Trusting Relationships That Create Success–and Won’t Let You Fail

Unstoppable Teams: The Four Essential Actions of High-Performance Leadership

A Fighter’s Heart: One Man’s Journey Through the World of Fighting

Unleashing Excellence: The Complete Guide to Ultimate Customer Service

Michael Jordan: The Life

Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business

The Dichotomy of Leadership: Balancing the Challenges of Extreme Ownership to Lead and Win

Tiger Woods

Why the Rich Are Getting Richer

No Bull: My Life In and Out of Markets
As a speculator I learned to take the best from books and ideas without arguments (many readers seem to be training to be shallow critics)--good insights are hard to come by. One does not find these in the writings of a journalist. There are some things personal to the author that might be uninteresting to some, but I take the package. The man is one of the greatest traders in history. There are a few jewels in there.
The man did it. I'd rather listen to him than read better written but hollow prose from some journalist-writer.

Managing The Mental Game: How To Think More Effectively, Navigate Uncertainty, And Build Mental Fortitude
Jeff Boss is a former Navy SEAL and knows everything about mental fortitude, and controlling your emotions and impulses in the face of critical situations. He uses his expertise in this book to teach others how to develop resilience and fortitude and cope with difficult situations.
Resilience and fortitude are two key qualities of a successful leader, especially when faced with crisis situations or making tough decisions. This book is a great aid in such moments, when you feel unsure of yourself.

The Winner Within

Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell

Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality

Celebrating Failure: The Power of Taking Risks, Making Mistakes and Thinking Big

The Code of the Extraordinary Mind: 10 Unconventional Laws to Redefine Your Life and Succeed On Your Own Terms

The Mask of Masculinity: How Men Can Embrace Vulnerability, Create Strong Relationships, and Live Their Fullest Lives

The Consulting Bible: Everything You Need to Know to Create and Expand a Seven-Figure Consulting Practice

Dottir: My Journey to Becoming a Two-Time CrossFit Games Champion

Psychology of the Stock Market

Rich Dad Poor Dad
The funny thing is that the books that had the biggest impact (like my Verne’s favourite) are not necessarily the best books, objectively speaking. They were good enough to present a new worldview that I was not aware of. Timing probably was more important than their intrinsic literary qualities. They “managed” to fall into my lap at the right time. Such a book was Robert Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad Poor Dad”, a mediocre book by my standards of today, but deeply inspirational by the ones from yesterday.

Purple Cow

The 5 Second Rule: Transform Your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage

Human + Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI

Emperor: The Gates of Rome: A Novel of Julius Caesar

Reinventing Organizations

The Boron Letters
Here’s a few books I recommend (in this order) on learning how to write effective copy:
- The Boron Letters by Gary Halbert;
- Advertising Secrets of the Written Word by Joseph Sugerman;
- Kickass Writing Secrets of a Marketing Rebel by John Carlton.

Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
I read this book at a time when Udemy was rapidly growing—over the 18 months where we went from 30 to 200 people. It was helpful to read about Horowitz's challenges, worries, and triumphs when addressing the same types of issues at a similar stage of growth. There are so many big decisions you need to make where there's just no clear-cut, right or wrong answer. There are a lot of gray areas. You gather information from your team, but the hard decisions rest with you. This book helped me realize that while I needed to carefully and objectively consider feedback, I was responsible for making a decision in the end—even when it was an unpopular one.