The ‘Personal’ in Personal Training

Scenerio: You are walking into a pressure-filled interview for the job of your dreams that will determine the rest of your future. You sit down with the big boss; palms sweaty and heart palpitating out of your chest, when the questions start rolling. The rest of your life could possibly be resting on this very moment and the only thing coming between you and your dream is the impression you leave on your possible future employer. How you answer the questions directed at you and how prepared you come to be open-minded, rational, honest, relatable and personable is the only elephant in the room standing between you and your calling. Your palms only keep perspiring and your heart is thumping so loud you can feel your own pulse resonating in your temples and in your fingertips. This is it. This is your moment. You begin to open your mouth to answer the first question and…


Do you sink? OR… Do you swim?


For those of you in the health, wellness and fitness industry, you are probably asking yourself “What does this have to do with anything?”, and my answer to you is “Everything”. If you think our careers aren’t based off of making good first, last and lasting impressions, you couldn’t be more mistaken.


Going back to last week’s spiel on the ‘trainers’ who are shaming our industry into reputable danger, I have yet another story to share with you that just so happened to occur the day after my last blog went live…


While at the same gym training, I was once again minding my own business when my trainer-brain got the best of me and I found myself, again, observing the young trainer right behind me as he trained his severely de-conditioned, senior client on the cable crossovers doing tricep-pushdowns with a rope attachment. Even though I had my IPOD in both ears and could hear nothing around me over the music, I could still tell the woman was only half into her workout as she did the motions lifelessly while anxiously talking her trainer’s ear off. And when I say ‘talk’, I mean non-stop-without-a-pause-or-a-breath type stuff. It was almost endearing in a way to see how her eyes never peeled away from her trainer and how she was completely confiding in him with whatever issue I could not hear at the moment. Her excitement had even me excited and once I could finally peel my own eyes away from her and look at her trainer to see how enticed he was…. My heart sank. This so-called ‘trainer’ was standing with his arms crossed tightly over his chest, hands were rolled into fists, his foot was tapping in what appeared to be annoyance, his face showed absolutely no hint of expression other than pursed lips, and his gaze was up at the television on the wall in the front of the room which was displaying sport recaps on ESPN. And yet the woman, still outright and obviously thrilled to be sharing her story to this person, kept talking up a storm, bad exercise form, bad posture and all. Boy did my blood pressure rise. I racked up my dumbbells even though I hadn’t finished even one set yet, and chose to conveniently station myself instead at the cable-crossovers on an apparatus separate, but next to where this ‘trainer’ and client stood. I took out my earphones and went through the motions myself of an exercise just so I didn’t appear to be nosey (although I will fully admit to being exactly that), and Just. Simply. Listened. As hypothesized, the woman never appeared to even take a breath as she was eagerly and elatedly talking about her granddaughter’s graduation and how proud she was of her while her ‘trainer’ fixated his stare to the TV monitor in front of him. I swear his foot-tapping got louder by the moment and his fists only grew tighter. I could not BELIEVE I was witnessing this! And he never even said ONE word the ENTIRE time! Nothing. Nadda. Zip. Not even to correct her bad form! When I couldn’t bear to stick around any longer, I, myself, took off with clenched fists of my own and observed from afar as the conversation eventually died down and the woman ended up just completely ceasing any conversation as she eventually got the point that she wasn’t receiving any feedback. After her session ended, she didn’t even get so much of a ‘goodbye’ from her sad-excuse of a ‘trainer’. In reading this, what can you assume this woman’s impression was of this trainer?


Just as a trainer conducts an initial interview on a client, the client is absolutely observing the client and getting a feel for an intention and a looking for a good impression as well. You are being interviewed for their own piece of mind and in order to be successful in the field of personal training, you have to realize this and learn how to adapt to the different people who come to you for your expertise and knowledge to help them reach their goals and aspirations in regards to how they want to feel both mentally and physically. Personal training in itself is an art-form and there is a definite reason as to why they call it ‘The Art of Personal Training’. It is an extremely personal art form that will be different for each person you come in contact with. There is truly no ‘one size fits all’ technique to personal training as each person will need to have a specific program designed to fit their specific needs. What works for one person will not be the same for the next person or the person after that. There is also a reason why another name for program planning is ‘exercise prescription’. As a trainer, your career rests on helping your clients reach their long- and short-term goals. It is your JOB to find out and know any contraindications your client(s) may have and to do thorough physical and mental assessments to find and dig up any possible information you can about your client in order to effectively design their training program. No two people will ever have the same exact goals, health issues, wants, needs, desires, physical and mental capabilities and restrictions, nutrition… and the list goes on, and there is no reason that any two people should have the same program.


These ‘trainers’ who don’t take the time to get to know the in’s and out’s of their clientele are actually doing more harm than good as there is no one way to do personal training. By not conducting fitness assessments and in not taking proper time to analyze and find out as much information as possible about your client, you are putting a disadvantage on both yourself and your client, not to mention you are also putting them in danger of being injured or worse. Say you have a client come to you with severe cardiovascular health problems and contraindications. If you aren’t taking the time out initially to make note of these health issues and you design a program for them similar to that of one of your more athletic clients; guess what? You are going to have some REAL problems yourself. Or what if your client comes to you with a history of rotator cuff problems and you further the problem by injuring them during a shoulder press as you didn’t take the time to design a program that worked around and with their contraindications. Guess what again? You are going to have some considerable explaining to do.


Just as well, personal training is a very mental and psychological game also as you must be able to adapt to and mold your own personality to mesh with opposing, opposite, different or similar personality types. Reverting back to the interview process, the impression we leave on our clients, regardless of the extent to which we are a wealth of text-book knowledge, is what will be the main determinant in whether or not our client’s stick with us or seek other options. How we interact with our client, how we make them feel, and if we can make them believe in us and in themselves is extremely foundational and of vital importance in being successful in this industry. Speaking from experience, during any given training session, you (as the trainer) WILL become a therapist, a confidant, a friend, a mentor, an idol, an answer book, and they will view you as the light at the end of their tunnel to meet their own goals. Part of what some people pay you to do is be these things to them. You are helping them and they learn to trust you with their health, time, LIFE and words. If you can’t make adjustments to accept this, then this is the wrong career choice for you. Embrace what your clients are telling you as THEY are the ones paying for your time. The hour they are with you on any given day is THEIR time. Without the client, no trainer would have a career. This is key to remember as they are talking to you. It is a proven FACT that the one universal topic that people like to talk about is (surprise!) themselves. People love to talk about themselves and as the trainer, you should feel honored that this specific person thinks enough of you to tell you the things that are most important to them. They could tell anyone else in the entire world, and they are choosing to tell you. The trainer I witnessed the other day was truly ungrateful for this act of generosity and I would be willing to bet that he will never fare as a success in this industry as he lacks the personal skills needed to be effective and ‘personal’.


And this all ties in, once again, with having the credentials as far as education and certification to meet the demands of knowing how to be effectual with general as well as special populations. In a perfect world, everyone would be happy, healthy and wouldn’t suffer from any diseases or have any past or present injuries that we should be aware of. But then again… isn’t it these SAME, exact people who give us our employment to begin with? Sure, there are vast amounts of athletes and people who are pretty healthy that train consistently on a daily basis, but if you aren’t working solely with that specific population and demographic, them you will find that the typical client isn’t going to be healthy and athletic. They are going to be part of the vast majority of the country who are overweight, obese, or who are well on their way to becoming so. That is the ‘typical’ client. As the trainer, you are responsible for being cognizant of these areas of concern and working around them; many times working closely with a doctor, dietician, or other professional or specialist. The emphasis on the importance of these issues can’t be stressed enough and the fact that so many trainers aren’t even taught in their eight-hour certification courses that they should be investigating and seeking out more information from their clients is truly unjust and uncalled for and these ‘trainers’ really have no business working with clients of any health and fitness level.


A huge reason that many people don’t take an initiative to start training is simply that they don’t like it, they fear embarrassment or they honestly feel they just will never be able to do it. A big part of being a trainer is the ability to not only change lives, but to change minds. It’s tough for anyone to start from the bottom of anything and work their way up while maintaining strict self-discipline and the ability to be consistent over a long period of time without wavering. By teaching and educating clients about their bodies and by constantly encouraging and motivating them to continue on regardless of how tough or ‘impossible’ it seems, you are giving them a reason to come back each day and each week. By pointing out improvements in measurements, assessment times, body composition, and other tangible readings and results, you are constantly reiterating to them that they can, indeed, do this and that they are making strides both big and small in their progress. It is also of importance to design a program not only around what each client needs, but what they WANT as well. You could have the best possible program in the world for your client, but if they don’t actually enjoy what they are doing, the chances of them sticking with the program long-term are slim. No one wants to endure something that isn’t enjoyable and making the program as FUN as possible will give your client an incentive to return each day and to show up for each session.


In every way, you need to match your client and be on their level whether it’s by personality or by being aware of what may or may not need to happen in order for them to reach their goals. In being a personal trainer, taking value in what the client wants, needs and desires is exactly what they are hiring you for. People seek a trainer not because they just feel like it, but because whatever they have tried, are doing and have thought about doing just hasn’t been working for them and they are desperate for a solution. And YOU are that solution. YOU are what is going to make things all better for them and you are what they have come to believe can change things for them and help them attain their goals and aspirations. You are what is going to help them get off their blood pressure medication and who is going to motivate, inspire and hold them accountable for showing up at the gym each session. If they felt they could do it on their own, they would not need a trainer to begin with and they would never have stepped through your doors in search of an alternative to what they are doing wrong or aren’t doing at all. You, the trainer, are who their doctor recommended they see as a supplement to whatever other treatments they are receiving. You are their life saver!


Being a personal trainer isn’t a one way street. Rather it’s an endless and constant changing path that must be followed and traversed around every single corner and turn and not kept at a standstill. Be personal and be prepared to be more than just a trainer. And lastly, watch your clients, pay attention to them and for goodness sakes- LISTEN to them and get ‘personal’.


Until next week, Faithful Reader…


You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand." – Woodrow Wilson


"Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing in the world is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent..." –Calvin Coolidge