New Graduates and Scope of Practice

Just when you think you know it all.

Kinesiology is the science of human movement. It takes a deep dive into all things anatomy, physiology, biomechanics, and even dabbles in a bit of nutrition or physical therapies. Depending on your specific area of focus, you may find yourself specializing in an advanced degree that enables you greater access to powerful tools within your practice – on the other hand, you may not.

Social media has infiltrated nearly every corner of every industry, whether simple advertising or actual online service delivery. The pros still outweigh the cons for the most part, but there certainly are some cons. One of the foremost issues is the blurring of lines when it comes to scope of practice, particularly for personal trainers looking to stand out.

Ideally, each new graduate has undertaken some form of professional practice course during their degree – but not all trainers have a formalized education. Beyond that, the enticing nature of social media makes a refresher on scope of practice well worth it for us all.

What You Know

Fresh off the heels of any educational experience leaves you charged with knowledge just waiting to be leveraged into gains. A better grasp on the nuts and bolts of exercise science absolutely provides a stable base with which to build your career, but there is still years of experience needed to fully draw out the value of your degree.

Facts have been seared into your brain, but experience putting them in action is what empowers you to have wisdom. Even the most studious kinesiology student still needs time to understand exactly what they have memorized, where it’s applicable, and when there’s a human touch needed. Not every problem is solved with a textbook answer, and sometimes the book is straight-up out of date.

The biggest misconception is the depth to which any new grad actually understands the content they’ve just consumed. Kinesiology is a very visceral degree, both in the context of studying literal viscera – but also in its need to be physically enacted to truly understand.

You will graduate with a massive breadth of knowledge on muscle origin and insertion, adaptations, programming principles, and even some of the more complex topics such as endocrinology – but each area is extremely superficial. You are wildly more knowledgeable and qualified than you were before; however, a degree is a launching point for actual education to start. It puts you at the front of the line to truly absorb experience with your new encyclopedic vocabulary but you cannot skip this step.

What You Don’t Know

Quite simply, you don’t know what you don’t know. Ideally, the shock-and-awe you experienced from a basic anatomy course revealed that – but you’d be surprised at how often trainers believe they know every nook and cranny of human function purely from a single course or weekend certificate.

This is particularly dangerous when it comes to highly interactive (but alluring) use-cases within kinesiology. Fitness overlaps with numerous specialities and subspecialties that have enormous implications for progress in the gym. Nutrition and physical therapies are two big ones mentioned above, but also psychology and endocrinology. Given your degree-backing, clients may turn to you for advice in some of these areas – but you are far from the right person to provide this kind of service.

Your degree enables you to know what you don’t know. It’s a bullshit detector for charlatans and scam artists, but it doesn’t mean you know enough to be a jack-of-all-trades. Given your education and background, you should be able to tell when someone else is overstepping, given the intense detail some of your courses required to pass.

Fitness is bad for this.

There is rampant and outright hubris amongst trainers globally – not just those without formalized education. Even those with a degree that should know better will often find themselves risking liability believing they know more than they do.

Your training and education qualifies you to know when and where to refer, not handle every single question or client request on your own.

The Consequences

Scope of practice is there to protect you, not hamstring your business. You will inevitably be asked by a client or loved one for advice on a topic that is clearly outside of your expertise, and while enticing, the best route is to refer out. You may be able to help reasonably translate the subsequent advice for your client, but there are consequences to acting outside of your scope.

Your blind spots will eventually be exposed.They’re blind spots because you may not even know they exist. You cannot be aware of what you had no idea to begin with, but remember that advanced degrees exist in order to qualify someone to dish out much of the advice you see online today. When it comes to human physiology, there’s a deep rabbit hole of interactions, contraindications, and pleiotropic ramifications. It’s best not to dabble.

Networking

Networking felt like a buzz word for business professionals until I entered the workforce. Speaking with my first potential client with real physical challenges outside of your idealistic 20 year old bodybuilder – I started to realize the power of networking. When someone comes to you for help but presents you with unique (but more common than you’d think) case studies, having a qualified professional in your back pocket is going to save you big time.

This starts early, and remains consistent throughout your career. Experience in the field does not magically broaden your scope or make you more qualified to handle said out-of-scope issues on your own. It simply helps you recognize them faster and learn how to implement action plans.

Make friends in adjacent degree programs as you’re learning, go to therapists and consult with nutritionists yourself to find someone who may match well with your clients. The more effective and trustworthy you are, the more likely you are to experience additional instances where you’ll need your network. As client’s start to realize you’re not only skilled enough to help them within scope, but responsible and professional enough to connect them with a team – you’ll be drowning in potential clients via word of mouth.

Experience

Experience helps to normalize your anxieties. You become an expert in the field not just by completing a degree or a few continued education courses, but by accumulating years of trial and error in implementing that knowledge. Graduation is the first step to true education – your ability to wield and craft your degree into a useful tool to help more people faster.

Experience also validates your need for networking and referrals. Scope of practice is something that is appreciated only once you’ve gained enough skill and knowledge to attract clients that have real out-of-the-box needs. Growing muscle or getting stronger is something that your degree teaches universal principles about, but the more unique or narrow the case, the greater the level of detail required for service. Experience gives you the eye for these details, where the boundaries of your skills are, and where or when to go for complimentary assistance.

It’s not one or the other, but both. The best practitioners are educated (through formal means or otherwise), but also highly experienced. Take your time, grind as much as you can, and let your career grow organically.

Stay in Your Lane

You won’t lose business by referring out. Think of yourself as the leader of a team. As a trainer, you’ll be spending the most time of anyone with each client – be confident in your abilities to service them with the scope of practice you provide. Leaning on the expertise of others who dedicated themselves to an adjacent craft doesn’t make you less valuable, it means you care.