You now know the nuts and bolts of designing fitness programs and interacting with your clients and students. This lesson is designed to help you become a fitness leader.

What Do Trainers Do?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, personal fitness trainers lead, instruct, and motivate individuals or groups in exercises, strength training, and stretching. They will consult and instruct clients of all ages and skill levels. Their duties will range from creating custom exercises for clients to giving clients tips and tricks when it comes to diet, nutrition, and overall lifestyle habits.

Personal trainers will get to know their client’s personal goals, habits, and aspirations regarding their physical health and customize a plan for them. They will monitor and advise on form and range of motion when it comes to their exercise routine.

Many people opt for a personal trainer for the many benefits they provide including:

·      On-going education

·      Correcting form and technique

·      Personalized training plan

·      Accountability

·      Efficiency in the gym

·      Encouragement and motivation

Initial Consultation | Program Design Overview | Program Review

• The first step is to meet you to discover—or help you create—your goals and expectations. We will also conduct a fitness assessment.

• Next, is to design a broad program overview, taking into account factors like your goals, schedule, exercise knowledge, and commitment.

• Discuss the program overview, agree then we’ll start training you on the program. This is where we get feedback on your performance. Periodically, we will repeat your fitness evaluation and update your program.

5 key concepts for cueing your clients, to help them get the results they deserve.

Getting the best movement out of our clients is, or better be, the most important and challenging tasks we have as fitness professionals. Clients all have different movement abilities as well as communication skills and life lessons that all play a role in how well they “get it” when it comes to establishing sound movement ability. Following some key concepts of how to communicate what you want to see in your client’s movement will lead to the results they are searching for.

In my experience, the best-developed program with all the bells and whistles means very little if you can’t communicate it to your client to deliver the results they are looking for and you ultimately promised to provide.

1. Attack one thing at a time

When it comes to technique, prioritize what’s most important at the time and focus on making that better. Many times, correcting that one thing leads to the client understanding and attaining the skill or exercise.  Grab the lowest-hanging fruit first and work one thing at a time. 

2. Use short and “sticky” cues

Keep each cue short, easy to understand and that has meaning to the client.  The cue should “stick” after establishing meaning and using it during the movement. One of my favorites is “tuck the tail” when coaching a posterior pelvic tilt to provide a more neutral spine during a movement. I don’t have to do a whole of explaining of what the means and I get what I am after and the next time I use that cue they will know exactly what I am looking for — it’s sticky.

3. Avoid too much technique talk

Even if the technical breakdown of a particular movement is correct, most of the information is meaningless to the client. You will be just clogging up the airways with terms and concepts that will get in the way of the client mastering the movement. Phrases like “extend to hip,” “squeeze your glutes” and “externally rotate your shoulder” will be a foreign language to most clients, causing a great deal of confusion.

4. External cueing is king

Use the environment and a client’s natural reflexes to help them understand a movement concept or body position. These external cues are so much more meaningful to the client, using fewer words than internal cues making them so much more effective. If I want a client to keep their chest up during a squat I will say “Zip up your coat” or “Proud chest”; or I can have them face a wall and they can’t touch it with any part of their body during the squat. Easy to understand with very little talking.

5. Shut up

Use as few cues as possible to get the movement you are after. Too much verbal coaching can overwhelm and confuse your client, leading to some big-time frustration if they can’t master the movement. Establish more meaning during rest periods, but continue to keep it short, to the point, and understandable. It’s OK for them to “feel the wrong” as it will allow for better learning, but don’t bombard them with words when they are trying to move.

Take Home

Your ability to communicate as a coach will determine how successful your clients will be. Sharpen that skill, and you will be more successful as a coach and provide so much more to your client. Online training over different platforms is no different and might require more effective communication, yet can be slightly easier in different aspects.

Commitment

There are few things more frustrating and perplexing in the life of a health coach than feeling like you have worked with clients on a committed plan of action for the week ahead, only to hear a couple of days later that they haven’t followed through. While clients seeking help with weight loss can often be coached to voice strong, intrinsic motivators for change, when it comes to taking action, the fear and burden of commitment can be a formidable obstacle. Motivation is the positive energy of desire that says, “Let’s do this!” while commitment cringes back, “Do I have to?” 

Fortunately, your toolbox is deep when it comes to coaching clients over the commitment hump. Learning to listen for when commitment is on shaky ground and shoring it up with these five coaching strategies will enable you to help clients embrace commitment as an empowering part of their weight-loss journey.

Make sure to secure a firm commitment. 

Clients often demonstrate “mobilizing change talk” which can be mistaken for commitment language. “I want to work out three times this week” signals desire but leaves the door open for life to interrupt (Miller and Rollnick, 2013). You can pull for stronger commitment language by asking for specifics like “What days of the week and what time of day will you go to the gym?” Listen for your client to articulate his or her plan in language that signals a solid intention, such as, “I will do my cardio workouts on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday after work.”

Right-size action steps to support commitment success. 

When clients struggle to hold themselves accountable throughout the week, they may be signaling a lack of readiness to take action. Revisit and revise problematic action steps to make them less intimidating and ensure they are doable under a variety of conditions. Breaking down things into smaller, attainable pieces allows your clients to feel the energy of success and build self-efficacy around their ability to make and keep their commitments. Consistent success, no matter how small, is more powerful than big, shiny wins when coaching for sustainable lifestyle change. 

Ask a scaling question to explore roadblocks. 

Clients often ride the positive energy of the coaching conversation into their commitments and fail to consider how they will follow through under less-than-perfect circumstances. Using a confidence ruler such as, “On a scale of one to ten, how confident are you that you will get to the gym three times this week?” is a way to explore obstacles and proactive strategies for addressing them. If their confidence level is high, ask them to tell you more to elicit additional change talk. If the number is low, dedicate time to troubleshooting and developing a contingency plan to strengthen their commitment.  

Normalize and practice weekly recommitment. 

It’s easy for clients to experience feelings of failure and self-doubt when they fall short of their intentions. Encouraging them to become curious instead of critical about the details of their missteps can normalize the ups and downs of a weight-loss journey and also provide valuable information for shaping more achievable action steps. Additionally, work with your clients to make “recommitment” a weekly wellness practice as a way to revisit their powerful “why” and reaffirm their resolve to take action.

Strengthen and widen their support systems. 

A strong web of social support can fortify commitment and create an environment that doesn’t sabotage follow-through. Arlonski (2014) suggests building social support into a client’s wellness plan to ensure this powerful tool is not overlooked. Go beyond discussing the benefits of a support system to co-creating tasks that build one into your client’s wellness plan. Brainstorm with your clients ways to share their commitments and accountability needs with key people. For instance, your clients may benefit from collaborating on scripts to use when asking partners, coworkers, or friends to support their weight-loss efforts in specific ways.

Never Give Up. 

It can be easy to default to the idea that clients don’t respect the coaching process or lack the determination to succeed at weight loss when they continually drop the ball after making weekly coaching commitments. However, your most important role as a health coach is never to lose faith in a client’s capacity to change. Framing commitment as an empowering skill rather than a force of willpower enables you to target your coaching efforts in this area. With patience, practice, and persistence, it won’t be long before motivation says, “Let’s do this!” and commitment answers back, “I’m all in!”