Become an expert behaviour change practitioner and be that force for change
Maximise results and outcomes for your clients through effective evidence-based behaviour change strategies that work.
The foremost behaviour change practitioner course for coaches.
If you want to discover how you can become a positive force for change with your clients, you won’t want to miss our motivational interviewing course designed specifically for health, fitness, and wellbeing professionals.
-
Course type:
Online
-
Time to complete:
4-6 weeks
-
Entry-requirements:
None
-
Accreditations:
CIMSPA, YMCA Awards (endorsed)
Course overview: behaviour change practitioner
Become enlightened with the most effective behaviour change concepts, models and techniques with our leading behaviour change practitioner course that has been expertly designed to equip exercise professionals with the essential knowledge and skills they need to positively influence change in others.
Motivational interviewing is a client-centred approach that is designed to support effective behaviour change. Motivational interviewing is one of the most widely studied and evidence-based strategies for effecting change in others.
While motivational interviewing can be used as an intervention to support others to make positive and transformative changes in their lives, it can also it can also be used more simply as a method of communicating with others, like friends, family, colleagues, and clients, to create stronger relationships based on mutual respect and trust.
This leading motivational interviewing course has been specifically designed for health, fitness, and wellbeing professionals by our team of practitioners and trainers with decades of experience with the technique. This course will give you the essential knowledge and skills to be able to take the core principles and skills of motivational interviewing, and apply them confidently and competently to your profession.
Whether you are a fitness instructor, personal trainer, health coach, or you are working in more specialist roles like exercise referral, you can rest assured this motivational interviewing course and its content will add significant value to the conversations you’re having with clients.
-
Entry requirements
There are no formal entry-requirements for our behaviour change course because this is not a regulated qualification – it’s a CPD course.
That said, having prior knowledge and experience of coaching clients to support their behaviour change will be advantageous, as this will help to put many of the concepts and models into a more practical and real-life scenario. -
Who is this course for?
The programme is written for exercise professionals working with clients to support them with key lifestyle and behaviour changes. Whether you are a personal trainer looking to develop a greater insight into this field, a nutrition coach trying to improve dietary adherence, or a health and wellbeing practitioners (e.g., those working in exercise referral) who want to improve client and patient outcomes to improve their health. Fundamentally, this course is suited to any exercise professional who wants to deepen their understanding of the science of behaviour change.
If you aren’t a fitness professional and you are interested in completing this course for your own information, you are welcome to do so. However, without a fitness industry qualification, it wouldn’t be appropriate for you to coach others. -
Accreditations
This behaviour change course for health and fitness professionals is fully endorsed by CIMSPA and carries 10 CPD points on successful completion of the course. The programme is also endorsed by YMCA Awards, the most trusted awarding organisation to the active leisure sector.
-
Progression routes
Becoming a professional behaviour change practitioner is a long-term commitment that requires continuous learning, professional development, and reflection on your own practice.
There are a number of additional training courses and qualifications that you may wish to consider once you have completed this course, including our Level 4 Health and Wellbeing Coaching programme, Motivational Interviewing for Health, Fitness and Wellbeing Professionals, and/or our Solution-Focused Coaching for Health and Wellbeing Professionals.
Feel free to speak to our Careers Team on 0800 612 4067 if you’d like to learn more about these courses.
What you'll learn?
This is one of the most comprehensive evidence-based behaviour-change courses in the active leisure sector. The course is specifically designed for health, fitness and wellbeing professionals working with clients to support them on their behaviour change journey.
The course is divided into 9 distinct modules, and each module includes a range of learning and assessment resources to maximise your understanding of the topics presented. These modules are as follows:
- Introduction to behaviour change
- Professional practice for behaviour change
- Conceptual models of behaviour change
- Understanding habits and their formation
- Integrated habit and behaviour change cycle
- Motivation and behaviour change
- Principles of successful behaviour change
- Communicating with clients for change
- Effective goal setting for change
In unit 3 (Conceptual Models of Behaviour Change), the programme explores comprehensively the leading psychological theories, models and concepts about human behaviour and change. This content will give you a firm grasp of the optimum conditions for change to be able to take place. These models include the self-determination theory, theories of reasoned action/planned behaviour, social cognitive theory, the health belief model, the COM-B model, social ecological model, and the transtheoretical model of change (TTM).
How you'll be assessed
The behaviour change practitioner course is assessed on a module-by-module basis with a range of knowledge-based workbooks focusing on the core themes and topics covered in that module. All questions need to be answered correctly to pass the module. You can re-take these workbooks as many times as you need to pass them.
These knowledge workbooks are multiple choice and scenario-based. Essentially, you will be given a coaching scenario for a client and you’ll be required to answer a series of questions that demonstrate your knowledge and understanding in that subject area. Questions are phrased in a contextual and applied way, so they require more than basic recall of information.
100%
Knowledge workbooks
- Multi-choice
- Scenario-based
- Unlimited re-sits
One behaviour change course. Unlimited opportunities.
Where will your behaviour change course take you? Over the years, many of our graduates have gone on to work with and for some of the worlds leading health, fitness and wellbeing brands. a good many are also working more locally in community wellbeing and/or healthcare organisations like the NHS.
Why complete this behaviour change practiotioner course?
Whether you’re a fitness instructor, personal trainer, Pilates teacher or health and wellbeing practitioner, supporting clients to make effective changes to their diet, exercise and other aspects of their lifestyle is an integral part of your role.
You can write the most engaging and effective exercise or nutrition programme on the planet, but if you can’t get people to change their existing behaviours and habits, these programmes are effectively useless.
As a skilled behaviour change practitioner, you’ll be able to work with clients in a person-centred way, evoking from them their existing strengths, resources and capacity for change, instead of focusing on or highlighting their deficits and areas for improvement.
As a coach, this will help you to:
- better align your practice with the science and evidence-base
- communicate more effectively with clients about change
- empathise with clients so that you can meet them where they are at
- recognise the psychological barriers that are standing in the way of the client’s preferred future
- evoke from clients their feelings and ambivalence around change
- understand the common reasons why people relapse on their change journey
- more effectively support clients, raise their confidence and self-efficacy
This behaviour change practitioner course will give you the knowledge, skills and confidence to understand the underlying science of behaviour change so that you can work with clients more effectively. From a practitioner’s perspective, this understanding can be quite liberating because it helps you to unburden yourself of responsibility when things don’t go to plan.
Frequently asked behaviour change questions
Featured below are a range of questions that we are frequently asked about our behaviour change practitioner course. If, however, you do have any additional questions, please don’t hesitate to call our friendly and experienced Careers Team on 0800 612 4067.
-
How can motivational interviewing benefit clients?
This programme is classed as a CPD programme for exercise professionals so what you can do will very much depend on what your existing qualifications are. If for example you are a personal trainer or nutrition coach, you’ll be able to use the information and understanding you develop to more effectively support your clients to change key behaviours that are preventing them from realising their health, fitness, and wellbeing goals. If you are a Pilates or yoga teacher, this programme won’t necessarily improve your classes, but it may allow you to reframe the way you present homecare advice with clients to improve compliance and adherence. You may also decide to use the insights from this course to work with clients on a one-to-one basis, say to improve their posture, alignment, core stability or low back pain symptoms for example.
Naturally, you shouldn’t be advertising any behaviour change services that you offer as a counselling or therapy-based intervention because this would be beyond the scope of this programme. The contents of this course are designed to be embedded into other services (e.g., fitness instruction, nutrition coaching, health and wellbeing coaching).
-
How is the course delivered?
This behaviour change practitioner course is delivered in a distance-learning format and it its entirely self-paced, you can work through the course at your own leisure – although you will need to complete it within 6 months.
Shortly after enrolment, you’ll receive our comprehensive behaviour change practitioner training manual, both in print and digital format. You’ll also have access to a range of online lectures, which can also be accessed from with your print training manual by scanning the embedded QR codes. As you progress through the course and you complete individual units, you simply need to complete the workbooks associated with that workbook to close that unit.
If at any point you need to clarify specific aspects of the course, you’ll be able to reach out to your support tutor for further advice and guidance.
-
What equipment will I need to complete this course?
All of the course content and learning materials are provided shortly after enrolment. However, to access the online resources, you will need a device with an internet connection. We recommend that you use a tablet or laptop, as this will provide a much better user experience than a smart phone, although you can access all the lectures from your training manual using a phone. Additionally, if you do want to print the slide deck from the online presentations so that you can make your notes, you will also need your own printer. Otherwise, everything else is included.
-
What makes this course evidence-based?
This programme has been written and reviewed by a team of applied and clinical experts from multiple psychological, social, and health and fitness backgrounds. The course is aligned with and mapped to CIMSPA’s professional standards on behaviour change (a module within the Long-Term Conditions Professional Standard).
Additionally, throughout the entire programme, academic references are provided to support key principles and concepts being presented. This will enable you to undertake further research and reading if you wish to do so.
-
How long do I get to complete the course?
For individual course enrolments like this we provide you with 6-months to complete your learning and assessment. We do find that most students manage to complete this behaviour change practitioner course in around 4-6 weeks.
If due to unforeseen circumstances, you do need extra time, there are options to extend, although in some situations there may be a small charge to cover this extension. Programmes like this are best approached consistently, with regular and frequent progress. We therefore advise that you allocate sufficient time to study regularly each week.
Stay in touch
Ready to become a gym instructor or personal trainer? Keep up to date with the fitness industry by subscribing to our newsletter.
Thank you for signing up. If you want career advice or to learn more about the courses we offer, reach out to our friendly careers team.