Hiring the Nutrition-Fitness Hybrid Pro

What are consumers looking for when they come to your gym or studio? Sure, they want great workouts and access to the latest equipment in a welcoming, fun environment. But above all, they really want to attain their health and fitness goals.

At our gym—One on One Fitness in State College, Pennsylvania—we’ve learned that lasting, consistent client success depends on intelligent nutrition and habit-change strategies. Thus, we’ve pivoted from workouts to wellness to help clients succeed—and to differentiate our business. We focus on three areas: fitness, nutrition and lifestyle habits.

We’re making this happen with a new job title: the nutrition–fitness hybrid pro. We recruit registered dietitians who love fitness, and then we train them to be fitness professionals.

It’s an incredibly exciting opportunity for the right people. These RDs interact with clients in ways that they wouldn’t normally, as clinical dietitians. Moreover, they help clients in ways that a dietitian or personal trainer, individually, could not.

“I became an RD because I have a passion for helping others,” says Haley Golich, RDN, LDN, a recent addition to our team at One on One. “The nutrition–fitness hybrid position enables me to promote healthy living, help clients set and achieve health goals, and contribute to the prevention of chronic disease. It is the ongoing interaction with clients that intrigued me the most.”

Advantages to This Professional Model

We employ four RDs and are recruiting more. Here’s what we’ve observed since implementing this strategy:

Our Pool of Hiring Candidates Is Wider

Hiring/recruiting quality fitness professionals can be a significant challenge because it’s so hard to find that “gem” of a personal trainer who is competent, professional and (of course) looking for work. The nutrition–fitness hybrid position lets us recruit outside the pool of personal trainers and kinesiology students.

“When I went off to college, I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to study kinesiology or nutrition,” says Bethany Paszkowski, RDN, LDN, another member of our team. “They both interested me, and both would allow me to achieve my longer-term goal of helping people. This position is perfect for me.”

RDs Have Advanced Skills

When hiring an RD, you’re getting someone who is dynamic, smart and organized. Five years of vigorous education forces a person to develop many of the professional skills required to succeed in this role. Although RDs don’t have a degree in kinesiology, they quickly develop an intellectual understanding of the science and prove that they can consistently apply it in a fitness setting. Bottom line: You’re not hiring a “project.”

RDs Enjoy Career Satisfaction

This position has a strong allure for the right kind of RD. After all, RDs rarely encounter so much diversity in their tasks and such a committed client base in clinical or community nutrition jobs. “I’ve worked as a registered dietitian in both the public health and clinical settings. These settings can be challenging to impact change,” says Golich. “By combining nutrition counseling along with fitness consulting, I am able to impact clients in a comprehensive way to elicit the most positive change.”

It’s Easier to Turn RDs Into Trainers Than Vice Versa

Teaching RDs about fitness is a time-consuming but straightforward process. Conversely, dietetics is a complicated, multifaceted subject that will soon require a master’s-level education. Thus, the model works only if you start by hiring RDs. Turning trainers into RDs is rarely achievable.

The Investment Will Pay Off

RDs are used to making a healthy salary, so you will have to pay them competitively. You will have difficulty competing against the pay of a clinical setting. However, we don’t try. Instead, we attract people strongly motivated to engage in our holistic wellness opportunity. We provide a 5-week training program whose value is clear to the people we hire. They recognize that our team will teach them a trade and that we’ve made an investment in them—knowing we won’t see a return until well after they start.

How the Nutrition–Fitness Model Improves Your Business

In a competitive marketplace, fitness businesses have to differentiate themselves and generate new sources of revenue. In our market, a lot of gyms and clubs are doing the same things: offering different spins/pricing on group training and selling supplements. Although many businesses succeed tremendously on this path, we think the competition will only get stiffer.

We believe that creating a one-stop shop focusing on fitness, nutrition and habit change is a win-win that helps our business while giving our clients the best opportunity to succeed. We hired our first full-time RD in 2015, and our nutrition program became profitable after about a year, mainly through individual counseling sessions.

Some of the most significant benefits are intangible. Having RDs on staff clearly differentiates us from our competitors and solidifies our position as leaders in our field. RDs also get nutrition clients interested in fitness, educate our community and contribute to our social media updates.