The best personal trainers educate and empower. Ownership over a decision leads to adherence. A client needs to feel as if they had a say in the design of their workout or nutrition protocol. You lead the way and guide them towards a decision, but let them make it. New clients have often been inundated with information before they come into the gym. They know the basics. For example, the amount of times a new client told me that machines were bad and he or she heard that squats were a great fat burner always surprised me, but it happened often. When it comes to nutrition, clients knew the 20% that would get them 80% of the results; they just didn’t know they knew it. So I would get them to track for 3 days what they ate and present the sheet to me. I then: 1. Looked over the sheets. 2. Spread them on the table where we could both see them at the same time. 3. Asked him or her to circle whatever habits he or she wanted to change. 4. I then told him or her to rank what they considered to be the most important habit that needed changing to least important Without fail they picked what I would have picked, except THEY PICKED IT. I then looked at them, smiled, and said I agree. Their goal for the coming week was to fix that one habit; once they did, we would move onto the habit they chose as #2. Always ask yourself: are you giving your clients what you want to give them, or what they need?
Posted on: Sat, 18 Jan 2014 13:00:00 +0000
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