SHANNAN PONTON: CREATING OPPORTUNITY FROM CHALLENGES

Shannan Ponton will be sharing regular insights with Personal Training Academy into developing his career as a personal trainer and fitness advocate.  Be sure to post any questions you’d like to ask Shannan in the comments below.

PTA:  What have been the biggest challenges you’ve faced in your career? What are your biggest challenges now?

Shannan Ponton:  Being totally uncoordinated and unable to hear the beat in music but still determined to teach group exercise.

Making a reasonable living was hard pre-Personal Training. I used to teach 20-30 classes weekly for over 5 years to make enough to pay the bills.

Breaking into the very ‘clicky’ and tight knit gym instructor community in the early 90’s. Unlucky for them, here I am straight from the footy field….And here to stay.

My biggest challenge now is staying on top of my game. There isn’t an instructor in Australia that wouldn’t do things differently or better than me. It’s seems too easy to sit back at home watching the TV and bag what’s going on, poor technique, too much yelling, too much crying blah blah blah. One problem for the ‘knockers’ is that I’m here to stay again!

I must continue to evolve as a trainer, continue to learn eternally with quality CEC courses from PTA, push myself out of my comfort zone and set new personal challenges or I will be ‘old news’ and get left behind. I make no mistake about that.