Pre-Existing Conditions
It’s very important to remember each clients pre-existing conditions and contra- indications. What exercises can or can’t they do. Nothing is more frustrating than having your trainer constantly forget what you can and can’t do. We need to keep these in mind when designing their training sessions.
Pace and Intensity
With a training session, it’s not only the exercises you do but how you do them. You’ve always got to keep the pace and intensity of a workout at a level that will challenge your client. Besides variety, accountability, and motivation, a higher level of intensity is another reason why people look to hire Personal Trainers. You want them to achieve a level of intensity they couldn’t get on their own. No matter how much your client likes or appreciates you, they still want to feel like they worked hard during the session.
On the subject of pace and intensity, most trainers make two different mistakes:
1. Don’t work hard enough: When conversation, socializing, and mo- notony take over, the intensity of the workout really begins to suffer. The training session is not your social hour with your client: if any- thing, you should create field trips or go to a client’s parties whenever you’re invited so you have time to socialize and catch-up with them. Don’t get me wrong, listening to our client’s major issues is a valuable role we play as trainers; often times, we’re the only person they have to really talk to. But his should never take over the integrity of the work- out. During one of my training sessions, you’ll here a lot of conversa- tion and laughter, but it never takes away from the session. I’ll cut-off any talking once it’s time to get back to the next exercise or time to fo- cus. Any socializing should serve the purpose of the workout, not take
away from it. Remember, you’re a trainer first: be a pro!
2. Intensity for the sake of intensity: on the opposite end of the spec- trum is the trainer that physically kills their clients, but with no method to the madness. They just blast their client with a series of exercises without rest, but also without a definite purpose. The exercises and routines should not only make the client sweat, but also serve the lar- ger purpose of their long-term goals. The trainer that can design a ses- sion that not only makes the client work and enjoy that particular ses- sion, but also helps them realize how it’s creating change for their fu- ture goals can undoubtedly charge more in the marketplace. This is the Zen of Personal Training: treating each session individually while thinking of it as the first of a hundred sessions, both at the same time.
Note-Taking
After you’ve pre-planned your session, the next step is to take follow-up notes during the actual session. This will go on the same standardized sheet you used to plan the workout. Some of the information that will go on this sheet is:
1. The weights and reps the client was performing. 2. Any important new milestones that were achieved
3. Exercise that weren’t performed that need to be covered next time 4. Notes on exercises that work well for the client or they seem to re-
spond well too
5. Plans for the next session
6. Any problems the client is having performing a particular exercise 7. Any other sudden notes or realizations you have that can help your
client
If you’ve been a trainer for a while, you know that taking notes during sessions is nothing new. It’s one of the modern practices in Personal Training that has be-
(and you know who you are) that don’t take notes during their client’s sessions. They either have a photographic memory or don’t really care what was performed that session. Whatever the case, they’re really undermining their ability to add value to their sessions.
I remember when I first started as a Personal Trainer at a Bally’s Total Fit- ness. My training manager at the time didn’t think it was necessary for me to keep notes. He questioned why I did it and why I couldn’t just keep all the pre- planning and progress tracking in my head. Despite his advice, I kept doing it and in a few short years was earning a six-figure income. Last I heard about him, he was still bouncing around the chain gyms and still earning crappy pay with a huge workload and tons of stress.
The difference I realized at that time was the importance of adding value to my training sessions. Because of this added value, I was slowly able to train a higher level of client, charge more, and work fewer hours. This should be your goal as well.
Service
Providing outstanding service is a vital part of what we do as Personal Trainers. Although we’re leaders and multi-skilled professionals, we still need to keep the service we provide to our clients in mind. When you put that into the mix you’ll have a product so powerful that the sustainability of your practice will be guaran- teed.
What does it mean to give good service? It’s just extra attention to the needs of your client. Within the session, this means:
• Helping them rack weights at times • Handing them weights at times
• Keeping your hands close to them whenever they need spotting • Keeping your attention on them every minute of the session
• Never answering your phone during a training session under any cir-
• Never having a conversation with anyone else in the gym on your cli-
ents time.
Outside of the session, here are a couple of things you can do:
• Responding quickly to their voicemails
• Staying in frequent touch with them through e-mail • Showing up on time to every single training session • Rarely if ever canceling or rescheduling a session
• Giving them holiday and birthday cards and even small presents
T
he bottom line to delivering better training sessions is just being more present for the sessions. You have to be train your client for an hour anyway, so why not just pay a little extra attention to the details? It’s precisely that, how tuned in you are to your client, that separates the $150 session from the $15 session. Which would you rather earn? Well it all starts with you - how much of yourself you’re willing to invest. Since it’s not a tangible product we sell, everything comes down to ways you can add more value. If you want to raise your rates, half the battle is improving your session design. The rest is marketing, which we’ll cover in detail in later chapters.Especially once you’re no longer doing the training yourself, educating em- ployees on what makes up a high quality session becomes vital. That’s why learn- ing and mastering the techniques in this chapter and then making them a part of what you teach your employees in order to help them hold up your standards is a good idea.
P
rogress tracking is a technique you can use to bring instant value and better quality to your training sessions. From the minute you decide to use this habit, you can charge more and are perceived to be offering a higher value product than someone who doesn’t. On top of that, you’ll see your own performance improve: you’ll be more organized, and much more efficient at making changes to your cli- ents routines; this will yield even more progress.I’m sure for many existing trainers, you already employ some form of pro- gress tracking. Keeping track used to be something that only the best trainers did to monitor what their clients were doing and lifting during their sessions, and also to chart the progress they were making in their measurements and on the scale. It’s what used to separate the serious trainer from the amateur. It helped create better sessions, more personalized service, and measurable standards, all of which led to a higher priced session.
At that time you could get away without taking notes on your clients, but as Personal Training has gotten more expensive and clients have begun to expect more from their trainers, the need to use progress tracking has increased. Yes, it’s
true there are busy trainers who don’t pay much attention to what their clients are doing. But they usually aren’t the ones who move up in this industry and turn this into a lucrative career. Although I wish them well in their future pursuits, those are hardly the people that I’m watching to see how the job is done.
When I first became a Personal Trainer, it wasn’t a very common practice to take notes; in the first health-club I worked at, I was the only one doing it. Now, you hardly see a picture of a trainer in the media without a note-book, clip- board, or some other sort of tracking system in their hands. It’s become common place and a necessity. That’s because it works, for both you and your client. It lets you know what they did their last session, what changes to make for their next session, what’s working, and what needs to change. This brings about better re- sults for the client, and undoubtedly leads to faster progress.
But besides that, it also has benefits for the trainer as well. It allows you to be more relaxed and better prepared for the session. You can then spend your mind power on other aspects of the training session instead of worrying about what to do next, or trying to recall what the client did in their last session. If you have more than one training client (and I hope you do), keeping track of what they’re all doing will become difficult. Progress tracking allows you to just focus on motivating the client and all the other aspects that we spoke about in the previ- ous chapters that go into making a highly successful and sellable Personal Train- ing session. People expect a certain calmness, cool, and preparedness from the most expensive trainer on the market, which it is your goal to be. Having your workout planned in advance allows you to display these qualities.
It’s true that any tracking system is better than no tracking system, but when it comes to progress tracking, there are some ways that are better than oth- ers. For example, in some cases just keeping track of what the client is doing dur- ing their session is enough. Ideally , you’d like your system to be regimented so that at a glance you can locate and compare the information you’re looking for. If you want to know what the client benched last session, how long they sprinted for, or what they weighed, you want to be able to locate it right away. Having an or- ganize tracking system also helps when you’re preparing for the training session, allowing you to look up the necessary info quickly and not take up too much of your free time.