Here are personal trainer tips to become the best you can for your clients. Clients love it when their trainers do these things for them.
According to an estimate from the United States Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics, the personal training industry is set to grow by 24 percent from 2010 to 2020.
Other jobs are growing at an average of 14 percent, making this a great option for job security in the future.
Personal training can be a fun, exciting, rewarding career. However, it's also a competitive industry. You need to be the kind of trainer that clients love in order to succeed.
A thorough understanding of what makes a good personal trainer in the eyes of clients is critical. That's why we've compiled this guide to the personal trainer tips that will help you be great at the job, whether you're just starting out or have been training for years.
Read on for the best personal trainer tips you need to know!
Personal Training: What Not to Do
Before we get into the specific tips you need, let's go over some common industry pitfalls to avoid.
There are many misconceptions about this job. Having a clear understanding of what it entails will help you give your clients an experience they'll love. Read on for a quick guide to the common mistakes you can avoid.
1. Focus Too Much on Your Look
Of course, clients want to see a personal trainer who is in good shape. You should look like you work out, eat healthy, and generally take care of yourself.
But that doesn't mean you need to obsess over having the biggest muscles or a visible six-pack. In fact, looking too perfect can be intimidating for some clients.
A good personal trainer will always prioritize health over appearance. Not everyone's body is designed to look the same at a healthy weight and muscle mass.
If your body reflects health, that's what really matters. You'll notice that none of the personal trainer tips below focus on your appearance at all. Don't strive to look perfect -- just strive to be healthy. This will allow you to help your clients do the same.
2. Give the Fanciest Workouts
In today's personal training world, it can seem like you need to provide the most innovative, cutting-edge workouts to stay relevant. However, one of the best personal trainer tips is to keep it simple.
This doesn't mean that newer, more interesting workout methods don't have their place. But they don't need to be your main focus.
Some clients respond better to certain approaches. For one client, resistance bands and a TRX system may excite them and get them motivated. But for a different client, they may find that equipment scary to approach.
It's your job to make the equipment seem less intimidating, but it's also your job to help your client find the workouts that they feel most comfortable with. You don't need to push crazy new workouts on someone who isn't really interested.
Instead, you should have a number of different options in your workout toolbox. Some of them should be simple and classic, like weight training and exercises that use body weight. Others can be fancier and more involved.
This way, you'll always be able to customize and change things up, while having a solid foundation in classic workout methods to pull from.
3. Follow a Strict Protocol
This is another one of the personal trainer tips that you need to give clients the customized workouts they'll love.
You can't have a one-size-fits-all approach to training. Charts, clipboards, and tracking apps can be great, but not if you don't have any flexibility in the programming.
The best program in the world won't work for everyone. Some clients need more time to learn form and technique. Others have a harder time staying motivated and need a different approach so they can stay focused.
You need to be creative and learn to develop solutions when a client's diet is off track, when they miss a few sessions, or when they take longer to learn how to correctly do an exercise than you'd planned.
4. Provide the Fastest Results
Many clients claim to want super-fast results. But what they don't know is that fast results don't tend to be the ones that last.
Many fitness programs, devices, and diets promise to help people achieve their fitness goals in an unrealistic amount of time. That sets up expectations that you, the personal trainer, has to help the client revise.
Losing a lot of weight in a short amount of time can be unsustainable, and even dangerous. You'll need to encourage your clients to take the slow road to success, rather than promising to get them faster results than any other trainer.
One to three pounds a week is a reasonable weight loss goal. Make sure you fully understand why that is, so you can communicate it effectively to your clients.
5. Talk Badly About Other Trainers or Gyms
This is one of those personal trainer tips that should go without saying but still needs to be mentioned.
No career can be built on talking badly about others. Sure, there are personal trainers who use gimmicks or false promises to succeed. You can tell your clients what's wrong with their methods without naming specific trainers or gyms, though.
Make sure your public social media presence also reflects positivity, not negativity towards others in the industry. Personal call-outs look unprofessional. Focus on spreading information and knowledge, not on spreading discord in the industry.
13 Personal Trainer Tips Your Clients Will Adore
Avoiding these mistakes will already put you ahead of your competition. Now, let's take a look at some of the specific personal trainer tips that will keep your clients coming back for more.
1. Focus on the Feelings
Keep in mind that fitness is emotionally charged for a lot of people.
You may want to focus on the training and the knowledge. But when your client is caught up in feelings of frustration or guilt about their fitness level, they're not in a place to absorb that knowledge effectively.
Make sure to show your clients that you really care about them. Help them work through the feelings before getting into the information they need to know. They'll learn better and be more successful if you help them manage their fitness emotions.
2. Invest in Career Development
You should always stay on top of your industry. Once you stop learning, you've fallen behind.
Career development doesn't have to be expensive or time-consuming. It just means that you should read up on the industry a lot. If reading isn't your favorite way to learn, try a video series or a podcast instead.
If all you do is train, you'll never hone your methods and become the trainer your clients love. When you learn new things, you can bring that information to your clients and keep them excited.
3. Keep Your Shoes Clean
Some of the best personal trainer tips are seemingly minor things.
Keep a pair of spotless shoes just for training -- or even better, a few pairs. The Nikes you use for running in the rain shouldn't also be the shoes you train clients in.
As a trainer, your gym clothes are your business suit. You wouldn't show up for a job interview in dirty or ragged corporate clothes, so don't show up to a training session in dirty or ragged gym clothes, either.
4. Learn the Research
There is a lot of science involved in this field. Clients love it when you stay up to date on the newest research about health and fitness.
Sharing this information with them shows you're invested in the industry, knowledgeable, and committed to learning. This is a great way to remind them that they made the right choice in trainers.
5. Check In Proactively
Personal trainer tips that allow for open communication are crucial. You'll need to check in with your clients about any points of frustration or tension throughout their journey.
This means setting aside time to talk specifically about where they're at. A short phone call or in-person meeting where you ask them how they're feeling about their process, and if there's anything they would like to change, is good for both you and the client.
You want to be sure that clients feel like their voices are being heard. Give them an open, comfortable way to give you feedback, and assure them that you are open to hearing constructive criticism.
Asking them how you can do better makes you a better trainer, and keeps your clients much happier than if they never speak their true thoughts.
6. Never Forget the "Before" Picture
Take a picture before your very first session with a client, and get their measurements, too. This is the best way to help track their progress and keep them excited about the progress they make early on.
Keeping this information on file allows you to put specific numbers to their results. This helps both you and the client keep track of exactly how far they've come.
7. Use Humor
Make sure to have fun with your job -- and help your clients have fun too.
Share fitness memes, and your own embarrassing personal stories. Relate to your clients and show them that you're human. If you can laugh at your own mistakes, they'll be able to laugh at theirs, rather than getting frustrated and giving up.
8. Enlist Friends and Family Members
If someone close to your client is on board with helping them get in shape, they can be much more successful.
Maybe your client's husband is open to letting you check in with them about the food that's actually being consumed at home. A person's community can help keep a healthier environment for them, setting them up for success.
Ask your client if there's anyone close to them who is willing to help keep them accountable. See if it's okay for you to check in with their accountability buddy directly. This is one of the personal training tips that will really set your client up for success.
9. Help Them Find Small Successes
It is often easier for clients to focus on their failures than on their successes.
Maybe they broke their diet over the weekend, but also went for a jog in the park. They probably already feel guilty about the failure. Help change their focus to the success, instead.
Celebrating successes gives your clients motivation to do more of the same. Small fitness victories will eventually lead to bigger ones.
10. Compliment Them
Regular compliments, even on non-fitness-related things, help your clients look forward to sessions and feel good about themselves.
Notice their new haircut. Tell them you like their new workout shows. Praise them for incremental improvements in form. Anything that's appropriate for you to give them a compliment on -- do it.
This one of the personal training tips that you can't get enough of. Genuine compliments never get old and will help foster a positive relationship between you and your clients.
11. Understand Basic Nutrition
You don't need to know everything about nutrition, but you'll need to know the basics and be able to teach them to your clients.
Diet is an important component of any fitness regimen -- this is one of the most important personal trainer tips to understand. You can learn as much as you want about proper diets, but if all you know is how to create a balanced, healthy diet that covers the basics, you're good to go.
12. Learn How to Do Motivational Interviewing
This is one of the personal trainer tips that helps clients find the motivation within themselves.
As these personal training tips may have shown you so far, sitting down and talking with your clients is just as important as your workout sessions with them. Motivational interviewing is a great way to make sure those talks are productive.
13. Keep Track of the Numbers
Clients may have a hard time seeing the results on their bodies. They may be looking for dramatic changes that haven't yet happened.
Gradual progress can be measured with numbers, even if it can't be seen. Be sure to always keep track of your client's measurements and reps. Take new pictures at regular intervals, and show them to your clients.
Even if they are feeling frustrated about the lack of visible results, the progress in the numbers won't lie. Quantifiable results are something clients love because they provide proof that the program is working.
What Are Your Favorite Personal Trainer Tips?
These tips are great for keeping clients happy, but there are many other helpful personal trainer tips that will help you grow your business and succeed.
For some personal trainer tips on marketing your training business online, check out this post here.