Dubai is to many the land of employment opportunities. With its rapidly expanding population, more educators and fitness professionals are needed than ever before. This is where your sports coaching degree will come in handy. By becoming a sports coach in the UAE, you can turn your passion for fitness into a big, steady earner.
Sports coaching opens up a variety of possibilities that all involve the application of the skills you have learned. However, you should not only look towards full-time employment as you may find freelancing more suited to your training and expertise.
As a freelance sports coach in Dubai, you can offer services ranging from personal training to full-fledged in-school teaching. You will need an unrelenting passion for your work, as most gigs you will obtain will require applying your learning practically. This can become strenuous after prolonged work. Therefore, you will want to only opt for the positions which best compensate you for your efforts.
Specializing
A sports coaching degree will teach you a set of skills applicable to various areas of sports and fitness. While obtaining your degree you may have focused on a particular sport based on preferences. Your experience is likely to have been derived from this focus. Similarly, job hunting as a prospective sports coach will require choosing an area of specialization. While public health centers and schools are likely to require generic sports coaching, freelancing clientele will look for specialists based on their needs.
You will need to build a demonstrable set of skills in your chosen specialization to convince employers. This will require both research and training. As a freelance sports coach in the UAE, you can use tools such as The PEAR Personal Fitness Coach (available for iOs only) and the Nike + training club app to train yourself in your chosen specialization. The following are some of the most popular sports coach specializations in The United Arab Emirates:
Fitness Coaching:
Fitness coaches provide training in exercises centered around calorie-burning and muscle growth. Popular fitness practices include Aerobics, Zumba, and Cross-Training, and personal training. This type of coaching is normally experience-based; you will have to develop unique tips to derive the best from your trainees. You will also need to have a certain level of fitness yourself and be able to provide constant encouragement and assistance to your clients for prolonged periods of time.
Sports Training (Football/Tennis/Swimming/Athletics etc)
Sports training will require expertise alike for teaching. You will need to provide your clients with extensive knowledge of your chosen discipline. This will require accolades in your chosen category. You will need to have experience with tournaments, championships, and other competitive events. You will as well need to have technical knowledge of your chosen sport.
Gym Instructing
Gym instructors allow people to transform their bodies using a selection of exercises. These exercises are based on individual targets. When training to become a gym instructor, you will learn the use of each exercise, as well as the routines required to reach specific goals. You will also need to have basic knowledge of nutrition and dietary guidance to aid clients wishing to make a positive change. As a fitness gym instructor, you will need to self-market extensively to build a clientele.
Relating Business
Depending on your sports coaching specialization, you may have varying degrees of free time. Freelance gym instructors, for example, are rarely booked around certain periods of the day. Therefore, an increasing number of freelance sports coaches are looking towards business activities to maximize their revenue.
With the increasing use of social media as a source of lifestyle-based information, sports coaching has had to expand to the virtual world. This transition has been a source of earning for many freelance sports coaches.
You can monetize virtual sports coaching by uploading videos to platforms such as Youtube. You can also provide paid fitness advice through email and other web communications. If you wish to have direct contact with your trainees, you can opt for virtual, one-on-one video call lessons.
As a freelancing sports coach, you will want to create a safety net you can rely on in case of injury or at the point of your retirement. This should come in the form of a service or product-based business you will be able to run without being on the field.
Sporting merchandise, for example, allows many sports coaches to become entrepreneurs. With the sports industry being worth over $700 billion, there is the business to be made selling sportswear and other accessories to the public. In order to make this career move, you are likely to need sizeable investment and a client portfolio. Therefore, you may want to find an income-earning gig as you strategize your business. You will also need to study the Dubai sports good market to spot a gap that has not been exploited by sporting giants yet. With children and adolescents’ sports accessories remaining a steady earner, you may want to consider the production of goods catering to schools and health clubs/centers.
Creating A Brand
The most successful freelance sports coaches in Dubai and the rest of the world have coined particularities about their coaching methods. They have either created special exercises or have come up with engaging, memorable probes. This has allowed them to use their sports coaching experience to open gyms and other fitness centers, raise their consulting fee, or enter into the world of media and publications. As a freelance sports coach, you should consider how large you wish for your brand to become from the start. You will have to keep this in mind when training clients and build a portfolio using videos and recorded testimonials.
To Sum it Up
There are plenty of professions sports coaching graduates can consider. As a freelancer in Dubai, you will want to make the most use of your sports coaching degree by expanding your revenue stream. Vast career options are available to you through networking with fellow skilled individuals and the use of internet training resources. From consulting to entrepreneurship, a sports coaching degree can offer you multiple simultaneous revenue streams.
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