T
he key to delivering best-in-field quality workouts to your clients every time comes down to one simple secret: plan your workouts beforehand. All you need to do is play the workout out in your head before the session, taking into account your clients previous workout and the bigger picture of their goals and future pro- gress.I know what some of you are thinking, “I don’t want to spend any extra time on my clients than I already do”. Do you think it takes too long to plan a session in advance? Well then find me a better use of your time toward getting and keeping clients. Finding new clients? Now that takes a long time; even with the best marketing practices, acquiring new high-level clients that you actually
like to train is time-consuming. Once you have one such client, you have to bind them to you with hoops of steel. You have to make Personal Training an indis- pensable part of their lives: something they can’t live without. They could lose their job, have a child on the way, or just have experienced $30,000 in water dam- age to their house, but the last thing they should ever want to give up is their train- ing sessions. Delivering a top-notch session every time will ensure that. When you can do that consistently you’ll never have to go looking for clients – they’ll find you.
If I had to point to one thing that has led to the quality of my training ses- sions more than any other, it’s the fact that I plan my sessions in advance. The training session is too valuable and too costly to have to worry about what you’re doing while you’re with the client; you need all of this figured out beforehand so that when you meet your client, your mind is clear to focus on other things.
When you have a client locked-in to a 60 session package, or you’re mak- ing $15-20 per training session, pre-planning a session may seem unnecessary. But when you’ve positioned yourself as a premier expert in the field and you’re charging top-dollar, it becomes essential.
When you’re actually in your training session, you have a lot of things to think about. You’re in charge of the clients entire training experience, and as we mentioned, that’s where the value of the session comes from. Minute by minute, you need to be tuned-in to the what they’re doing and feeling; that doesn’t leave you any time to wing the session.
If or when you’re a TLT I’m sure you’ll have at least 10 clients – if you’re utilizing some advanced techniques like the Super-Trainer System, you may have 20 or more. And when your business has matured further, the number of clients will grow much larger than that, and most or all of the clients won’t be directly trained by you. Remembering what your client did last session, what body-parts they’re working today, and creating an interesting, challenging workout are not things you can figure out after they arrive. If you do, the quality of your sessions will naturally drop, and what you can charge for the session will drop too. If you want to get to the level of $100 training sessions, this is a base you need to cover.
You don’t want to be in a session trying to remember what the client did last time, or asking them what they did or what they want to work. They’ve hired you to be in charge of all of that, and they’ll lose respect for you if you’re not on top of it.
session? The way I like to think about it is as if my client is screaming a few questions at me; whenever you go into a training session remember to answer these questions:
1. Show me something new!
One of the main advantages of having a Personal Trainer is the variety you can get from the sessions. Part of the reason your client has hired you is to re- lieve some off the boredom of exercise. In addition, they’re looking to experi- ence something a little different and new every time. Besides that, variety is one of the best ways to make the body adapt and achieve results.
This point is so important I actually have “Show Me Something New” written at the top of each of my training sheets, right next to the workout plan, to remind me to include some new elements to each workout. At the same time, you don’t want to swap out the entire routine every time you train them – you just want to mix-up some aspects to keep it fresh. It’s also a subtle re- minder to your client that there’s no way they could get anything close to the same workout without you.
2. What are my goals this session?
Another important thing to remember are the client’s goals during each train- ing session. Each workout needs to be structured around these goals, for two reasons.
1. You can’t expect to achieve the result your client is looking for without keeping their goals firmly in mind every training session. Achieving real results quickly is one of the best forms marketing, besides being your job.
2. You may occasionally choose to reinforce the purpose of the exer- cises to your client during the workout. If your client knows that every workout is somehow getting them a little closer to their goal, it will lead to even more client satisfaction, irrespective of the ac- tual result (remember what we said about the illusion of change).
Bouncing
B
ouncing is term I introduced into Personal Training because of the effect it has on contributing added value to training sessions and increasing client satisfaction. The concept is very simple: moving your client to multiple locations. What this does is create the impression that more was achieved and more activity was per- formed during the session. They’ll also feel like they did more things and trained for longer period of time than they actually did. Keeping multiple bounces in mind is how I’ve been able to “hook” clients on my services for such a long time.The essence of bouncing is going to at least three locations during the ses- sion. If you don’t think this makes a difference, try it a few times in your next few sessions and notice whether your client has a different feeling about the work- out. Changing locations is almost like hitting the reset button on the workout: it creates a subconscious feeling of starting over. This will alleviate boredom and monotony in your own mind, and have your client feel a renewed burst of energy every time you start a new group of activities after a venue change.
By venue change, I’m referring to a very simple change. Some locations in a gym to execute a bounce are:
• Cardio and treadmill area - performing intervals, exercises involving
cardio equipment, or mixing cardio and weight training
• Aerobics area - performing matt based, boxing, or dynamic training • Outside - sprinting or dynamic exercises
• Staircase - performing lunges or stair climbing
While it may seem simple to just move around, keeping this consciously in mind and building it into every session will definitely add value. If you can charge $5 more per session just because you’re the trainer that moves people around more, is it worth it?
The bounce is actually built-in to my training sheet as well. I have three lo- cations always set-up and firmly in mind as to where to take the client during the training session. These areas shouldn’t require too much set-up - remember your priority is to create client enjoyment during the training session, so the workout