Empower Change: Motivational Interviewing for Health, Fitness, and Wellbeing Professionals

Discover how to apply motivational interviewing to create stronger and more impactful change conversations with clients.

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HFE tutor using motivational interviewing

Leading motivational interviewing course for wellbeing practitioners.

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.

Time to complete:

2-4 weeks
Entry-requirements:

None
Study method:

Completely online

Location

Course dates

£275

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Payment Options

Pay in full
Total payable £261.25 5% discount £13.75
6 month payment plan
1 x £30 and 5 x £29 Minimum deposit £100 Total payable £275

Course overview: motivational interviewing

Discover the art and science of motivational interviewing so that you can better support your clients to make transformative and life-changing steps towards improved health, fitness, and wellbeing.

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 this course on motivational interviewing for health and fitness professionals.

It’s worth highlighting that the programme is specifically designed for those working in health, fitness, or wellbeing roles, and as such, without qualifications and experience in these areas, some students might struggle with some content. That said, motivational interviewing is a universal technique that can be applied to settings that reach far beyond specific professional roles. That’s why this course is open to any students wishing to learn more about motivational interviewing.
Accreditations

Our motivational interviewing course has been specifically designed for those working in the health and fitness industry, healthcare, or wellness and wellbeing roles. As such, the course is fully endorsed by YMCA Awards, the UK’s leading fitness industry awarding organisation.

This course is also endorsed by CIMSPA, and it’s mapped against the Working with People with Long-Term Conditions (LTC) professional standard.
Employment opportunities

While this motivational interviewing course isn’t linked to any specific occupational role within the health and fitness industry, it is arguably best suited to those working with clients that are struggling to make positive changes to their behaviour that will support their health and wellbeing. Personal trainers supporting clients with their health, fitness and wellbeing, nutrition coaches supporting healthy eating, or those working in exercise referral and/or health coaching will find this content especially valuable.
CIMSPA points

On completion of this course, students will receive 10 CIMSPA CPD points.

Course content: motivational interviewing

trainer delivering motivational interviewing to client

How is the course delivered?

This motivational interviewing course for health, fitness and wellbeing professionals is delivered exclusively online via a series of interactive eLearning and online theory lectures, practical demonstrations, and extension activities where you are invited to apply what you have learned to different situations in your life.
How much learning is involved?

This is a difficult question to answer because it depends how immersed students want to be. We advise that students spend around 5 hours per week over the course of 4-6 weeks, although it is possible to complete the programme more intensively. The more time students spend engaging with the learning, completing the extension tasks, reflective journal, and applying the content in the real world, the more they will get out of the course.
How is the practical training delivered?

In addition to the theory knowledge and understanding, you’ll also receive direction and coaching advice on how to apply the motivational interviewing techniques presented in this course practically to your professional role. You’ll have access to a range of practical video demonstrations of the methods being used, including training videos which codes the practice so you can see precisely which technique is being used and where. We invite you to take your time with your studies, and experiment with the methods taught, in order to maximise the impact of the training.
What additional resources are supplied?

To add more depth and context to the eLearning content, we’ve also supplied a range of additional reading and resources to support your development as a skilled motivational interviewer. This content is designed to take you deeper into the science of the practice and expose you to the spirit and ethos surrounding motivational interviewing. Some of this content is written/presented by the founders of the practice.

An industry-leading motivational interviewing course for health, fitness and wellbeing professionals that has been written and delivered by our esteemed behaviour change doctors and motivational interviewing trainers, ensuring that you get the very best online learning experience that is specific to your role and industry.

This is a comprehensive learning programme that is designed to provide students with a strong knowledge and basic practical skills on how to use the principles of motivational interviewing to better support their clients to make transformative changes in their lives.

Just some of the subjects taught in this course include:

– Spirit of motivational interviewing (PACE)
– Principles of motivational interviewing
– Coaching skills (OARS)
– Recognising change and sustain talk
– Working with ambivalence to effect change
– Stages and processes of motivational interviewing
– Understanding client motives and motivation
– Providing effective information and advice
– Implementing behaviour change

On completion of this course, you’ll have the knowledge, skills, and confidence to more effectively use motivational interviewing, both in your personal and professional life.

How you'll be assessed

Throughout this motivational interviewing course, you’ll be required to complete a reflective journal which is designed to broaden and deepen your understanding of the practice, and the techniques that are presented. Most of the activities in the reflective journal will take you less than 10 minutes to complete, although some are a little longer. In order to get the most out of this training, it’s imperative that you engage fully with these activities, so that you grow in knowledge and skill as a motivational interviewer. You’ll be surprised just how powerful and influential these techniques can be when they are applied.

Once you have completed the eLearning, online lectures, reflective journal, and practical training videos, you’ll be required to complete a short interactive and multiple-choice theory assessment online. This assessment will measure your knowledge and understanding of the techniques that you have learned, and many of these questions are scenario-based where you need to be able to recognise how to apply techniques effectively.

There are no practical assessments for this course.

50%

Reflective Journal

Extension activities
Theory and practical
Self-marked

50%

Knowledge Workbook

Scenario-based
Multiple-choice/option
Unlimited attempts

One MI Course. Unlimited possibilities.

Where will this motivational interviewing course take you? Many of our students and graduates of this programme, and others, are now working with some of the world's leading, health, fitness, and wellbeing brands.

Why use motivational interviewing?

Most health, fitness, and wellbeing professionals will support their clients on some level to make positive behavioural changes. Whether this is increasing the amount of protein they consume to support a strength training programme, reducing their calories to lose weight, or quitting a health-limiting habit like smoking or alcohol consumption, most clients need to make changes to their lifestyle beyond simply following an exercise programme. This is where motivational interviewing becomes useful.

Motivational interviewing is effective at supporting people with change, overcoming their ambivalence, especially with those clients that are resistant to making changes in their life. When motivational interviewing is applied effectively, clients are able to resolve their own resistance to change with direction from the practitioner, although this rarely involves offering advice or sharing information, as other behaviour change interventions might do.

Some of the best exercise, fitness and wellbeing professionals in the industry are those that are client-centred, and who are able to engage with their clients on a more personal level, demonstrating warmth, compassion, and empathy. These skills and attributes are central to the spirit of motivational interviewing, so learning how to use this technique can also help to develop and refine these attributes also.

While motivational interviewing is client-centred, it is much more goal focused than other client-centred approaches, and there is always a positive behavioural outcome to work towards (e.g., making dietary changes, getting more exercise). Interestingly, the origins of motivational interviewing lie in addiction, where the founders (Bill Miller and Stephen Rollnick) describe how they were amazed with the results they achieved because they were working with extremely difficult and highly resistant clients.

As previously stated, motivational interviewing is not just a technique that can be used to support behaviour change, it’s also a skill that helps to create stronger and more meaningful relationships with others. Therefore, any person wanting to enhance the quality and strength of their communication skills, or their relationships with others, should consider taking a motivational interviewing course like this.

Empower clients to make changes
Reduce future relapse risk
Overcome ambivalence and resistance to change
Develop self-efficacy and motivation for change
Identify and implement goal-orientated behaviours
Improve rapport, trust and quality of communications

FAQs

How can motivational interviewing benefit clients?

Motivational interviewing can simply be used as a technique to enhance person-centred communications, strengthening trust and building higher levels of rapport between people. When motivational interviewing is used as an intervention to help people make positive behavioural changes in their lives, the technique is especially effective with those people who have lower levels of confidence (self-efficacy) and higher levels of ambivalence (mixed feelings) about making the change. This is how many clients approach, or are referred to health, fitness, and wellbeing professionals for support. This is precisely the reason why this motivational interviewing course has been developed.
Is this a motivational interviewing practitioner qualification?

Firstly, there are no formally regulated qualifications in motivational interviewing, only training programmes that are endorsed by different bodies. Motivational interviewing is therefore considered a CPD activity that professionals (e.g., doctors, nurses, fitness coaches, nutritionists) undertake in order to enhance their client-centred communications. The industry standard for a motivational interviewing practitioner course is a minimum of 2-days attendance (in-person), followed by weeks/months of observations, coded practice, reflective journaling and additional training.

This programme isn’t intended to be a practitioner-level programme. That said, it is presented by a highly experienced MI trainer who also delivered practitioner-level programmes. The course is contextualised to a health and fitness sector, giving you a highly specific and focused motivational interviewing course.
Do I need to attend this course to complete it?

No, the course is delivered entirely online and on-demand. All you need to do is to work through the eLearning, online lectures, and complete the relevant extension tasks (usually these are practical and away from the learning environment) and reflective journal.
Who should complete this motivational interviewing course?

Anybody who has an interest in enhancing their knowledge, skills, confidence and awareness of person-centred communication techniques may want to consider completing this programme. While it is specifically designed for activity and wellbeing professionals, many of the techniques, principles and contexts can be applied universally, so this course is open to anyone.

Empower Change: Motivational Interviewing for Health, Fitness, and Wellbeing Professionals

Leading motivational interviewing course for wellbeing practitioners.

Time to complete:

Entry-requirements:

Study method: