[This is a compiled series I wrote back in 2016, when my business partner Andrew and I were teaching college-age personal trainers how to do their job well. The concept still reflects how I think about my own role as a coach for you as the athlete. Enjoy! – Coach Dunte, 2024/05]
First Day As A Personal Trainer
Imagine it’s your first day as a personal trainer, fresh from your certification exam. A gym owner has taken a chance on you and the supervisor of training has assigned that all-valuable first client. Naturally, your new client is brand-new to the personal training process as well. They have no idea what great training that progresses smoothly toward their goal looks like, nor do they have any sense of ineffective training that flounders from workout to workout.
Your new client submitted all the necessary forms early. You know their availability, they completed their health history, they have a medical clearance, they have a liability waiver on file. They are excited and fired up to finally get help, after nearly ten years of abortive starts into a healthier lifestyle. They believe that personal trainers are more than knowledgeable professionals; they believe you could be the magician that finally leads them to progress.
So with all this enthusiasm, on part of both the client and you, with all this ambition and expectation…
If you want to validate all their expectations, and in fact, want to go miles beyond their expectations…
Just what should you do FIRST?
Clients Have Options Other Than Trainers
Online resources like Livestrong and DailyBurn are to a fitness journey what a compass and image of the 50 states are to a road trip. If you’re in Texas, knowing that Washington is northwest is a lot better than nothing. Internet fitness resources can point new clients in the general direction of their goals, by showing simple starting points for exercise.
Fitness classes are more effective. With a trained instructor, purposeful programming, and the energy of the group, clients have a much higher chance of success. Taking classes is akin to knowing which highways to take on a road trip. If the client’s goal is not extremely specific or they will accept a loose timeline pursuing it, classes are an affordable and enjoyable means to achieve it.
Clients with a sense of urgency or a clearly-defined goal, however, choose personal training. The mission of being a trainer is to dramatically exceed the effectiveness of atlas & compass, to completely obviate the need for highway names and written directions, and to become the precise, step-by-step directions for the most direct path to their destination. A personal trainer should be every client’s GPS for fitness goals. Our task as trainers is to provide every client with the fastest route to their goal with the fewest delays or distractions. It is why we charge a premium for our services: our knowledge, our ability to apply it, and the system within which we apply it are — allegedly — superior and more refined than that of our peers in the industry.
Every trainer I have met is quite proud of their exercise knowledge. I feel confident suggesting it is, in general, superior to that of most instructors and internet writers. Most trainers I meet invest time in developing their communication skills for applying their knowledge. They experiment, evaluate, and refine their cueing. In this regard, actually, trainers and instructors both are absolute professionals. But the discussion of systems — having a consistent application plan from Day 1 with a new client through every training day until they achieve the goal — seems to stump new professionals.
If the trouble with online fitness programming is its expanse of options and disorganized arrangement…
And if the trouble with fitness classes is its limited capacity for progression and inexact direction toward a goal…
How do we organize all of our hard-earned knowledge to provide the clarity and convenience of GPS units?
What You Think You’ll Do
Remember, in our scenario here, you are a new fitness professional, just days removed from your national certification. Every personal training certifying organization has some structure for the client experience. There is an assessment phase, a training phase, an education phase or transition phase, and, theoretically, the client continues on to independence. Executed to the letter, you should produce exceptional results and have a steady stream of happy clients.
So begin with assessment. You crack open your cert manual to the assessment and functional movement screening sections…only to discover 100+ exercise options for determining client function. How can you possibly know where to begin?
Perhaps you reference specialty magazines. Runner’s World, for example, offers simple fitness tests and interventions for new runners to avoid injuries and run faster. If your client is a runner, this isn’t too bad. But the assessments and interventions you read in Runner’s World may differ from the running recommendations in Triathlete magazine…and you may well see new suggestions in next month’s issue.
Your situation is made worse if your clients are interested in fat loss or muscle building. Compare the recommendations in Shape to those in Muscle & Fitness and you’ll begin to wonder if we, as an industry, actually believe anything concrete about training!
Perhaps you have made big investments in your professional knowledge. You could be familiar with FMS, Z-health, Chek Institute, NASM Corrective Exercise, ACSM, American Society of Pediatrics, NSCA, Functional Path Training, Pose Running, or…
There are a lot of “systems” out there, all of which purport to be the only system you need to serve your clients. Trouble being, like the [pending] Universal Theory of Gravitation, the human body seems to defy our attempts to turn its dynamics into an algorithm. Simply put, there cannot be one system of assessment and training because the body is a changing, growing, self-repairing system, operated by a fallible human mind and a host of instincts and reflexes we barely understand.
Again, the question has to be asked: in order to provide the clarity and convenience of being your new client’s GPS unit, where should you begin?
A Different System For Training
We propose a different sort of system. If you cannot systematize HOW you train the body, we believe you can systematize how you THINK about training the body. When faced with the question of “Where do I begin?” with a new client, do you remember their goal?
Ponder that: What was the goal?
Now, take your professional knowledge and do some brainstorming.
- What do I know about this goal?
- What commonly stops people from succeeding?
- How can I measure those factors that impact success?
- Will those measurements change over time? If so, how often can I expect them to change?
- What exercises best reflect and/or change the relevant measurements?
…and, finally… - Does my client understand WHY I have selected these exercises?
If, instead of wondering which assessments we should do, which exercises or sets and reps we should choose, or which training package would be most profitable, we thought this way, the Fitness GPS concept wouldn’t feel so daunting. A GPS begins by asking “Where do you want to go?” then works in the background to answer all of the above questions.
“What should I do first with my new client?”
You should THINK.
How To Think About Training
How we think about training the body can be condensed into a few simple steps:
- LISTEN
- FILTER
- ITERATE/REFINE
Listen: to the client’s stated goal, to your expertise about attaining that goal, to how their body moves (in exercises that affect the goal), and to their lifestyle (in factors which affect the goal). By listening and observing closely, we can weigh where the client is now against what we know is required to attain the goal.
Filter: your knowledge down from general facts about exercise and healthy behavior to specific movements and habits which guarantee success in the goal. By taking our awareness of where the client is now and comparing it against what is known to be necessary in order to achieve the goal, we can be selective and precise about what instructions we give from the first day of training.
Iterate & Refine: every training day, every email follow-up, every conversation you have with the client should be checked against the goal. When you’ve made the right selections, the client makes progress. In that case, keep going with no changes. When progress stalls or you anticipate an obstacle to their progress, like a GPS unit, update the route and say why. Your training program is not a static entity — it must change, evolve, and adapt as the client changes, evolves, and adapts.
To have a full sense of how to begin with a new client, you must consider how their program will end. Like the GPS, you start a training process by asking “Where do you want to go?” In other words, you ask about the destination, then work backward.
There is more to training than just exercise selection, of course. Our certification manuals promise steady business and professional happiness if we just execute the right exercises, yet experienced personal trainers know there is more to the story. The TRNR Academy AFT model is YOUR GPS unit to professional success, incorporating this mental model for training, habits for keeping clients compliant and invested, and scripts for gathering testimonials and receiving referrals.
But that’s all down the road, to keep our metaphor going. For now, imaginary new trainer, think carefully about your client’s entire journey. Only by knowing exactly where they want to go and providing accurate, explicit, clear directions to get them there without delay can you defy expectations. Only by becoming their Fitness GPS can you also be the magician that leads them to progress in their health and fitness.