Creating A Succesful Personal Training Business Part 7: Mastering In-Person Personal Training

The Tools of the Trade: Mastering In-Person Training

The nuts and bolts of doing good personal training rely on two central principles:

Value Delivery

1. Exercise Programming

2. Nutrition

3. Overall Health

4. People Skills 

Personal Happiness

1. Creating an ideal working schedule

2. Efficiency and Personal Margins 

3. Training for the long term 

Exercise Programming

You can learn, and should have, how to program in your personal trainer certification. To the best of your ability, your training program should be reproducible and essentially stay the same for most of your client base. The more novelty and unexpected twists and turns in your programming the potential more mental energy you waste and the harder it will be to scale. 

These tenants apply for the general population, which accounts for 99% of the training populace and paying customers. If you want to work with the top 3% of elite athletes, you should have a different skill set. The staff at Barbell Medicine are a great resource for advanced training techniques.  Although, even most competitive athletes can follow a general population template and experience great results!

Jesse’s Personal Training Commandments!

Notes. Take good notes of every session and keep them stored in a safe place to keep for at least two years. This will keep you from getting sued. Google calendar works well, google spreadsheet is a good place to upload and keep them. Some clients balk at you taking notes during a session. I handle it as such:

“I know it looks like I’m texting on my phone, but it's SUPER important for me to take detailed notes of our sessions to ensure I can do my job as best possible!”

Clearance. Never, ever allow your client to forgo a PAR-Q questionnaire. Never train a client if they need physician clearance and don’t get it. A lawsuit will ruin your business. 

Novelty. Some clients are in search of novel exercises and experiences. There are even recent research studies showing higher adherence to exercises that are novel; just look at the popularity of something like CrossFit and group exercise classes. Unfortunately, clients don’t know how big of a wrench this can throw into your training program’s spokes. If you are bringing the scientific method from above into your training program to get a specific outcome, we know every variable change can mess with your data leading you to not know what caused what reaction. Say you are doing a knee extension exercise and the client balks. How can you “on the fly” program something that still hits the muscle group, with a similar RPE, that is novel. Can you use different equipment or modalities? While this may look very similar to you, even basic changes can be highly novel for the client. 

Stretching. This is controversial but despite the common narrative, the evidence is not great for supporting stretching. The only time I allow this is if the client thoroughly enjoys it, and you think you may lose them for being too stringent. Try your best to encourage resistance training or aerobic activity. Make sure you can have the conversation about stretching pros and cons when the topic does come up.

Warm-Up. There is good evidence that the way you warm-up should be specific to the exercise. We know resistance training serves the greatest good and we don’t want to cut into that time at all. Warm-up to an external load of RPE 5 with around the same amount of reps as the working sets, this should take around 3-5 minutes. Then progress into your working weight. This may be less relevant at submaximal external loads and intensities.

RPE. It may be wise to give up percentages of one-rep max! Moderating all loads with RPE on a 1-10 point scale has been scientifically backed as effective for judging intensity. This helps give the client self-efficacy and control by helping them autoregulate their exercise experience as well! 

Mobility. Mobility work is also on shaky ground! Deficits in mobility do not cause injury and, scientifically, we aren’t able to accurately assess deficits in mobility and you can not accurately track their progress. Mobility was and should still be a term used to describe deficits in activities of daily life in a clinical setting, not made up ranges of motion based on visual assessment. If a person is having issues with their ADLs, train the movement in incremental steps until they have achieved their goals. Say a client has issues or pain reaching overhead. How can you slowly build up a tolerance to allow this client to eventually do a weighted overhead press? 

Corrective Exercises. Another endeavor that doesn’t quite hold water. What are you correcting? Only 4% of orthopedic physical examination tests were shown to have high clinical utility, another 4% are stand-alone. I don’t know one trainer who has been trained in physical exams, let alone a made-up movement screen, that can validly diagnose a dysfunction. If you’re going to tell someone is broken and in need of correcting, it should be for a valid reason. 

Foam Rolling. Feels good, doesn’t have much utility besides feeling good. Try not to allow it to take any time away from resistance training or aerobic exercise. Muscles don’t get tight and foam rolling does not “release” them. Tight muscles are a subjective perspective and any release is neurologically moderated. Although this can allow the client to feel good, have them do it on their own time if possible!

Functional Exercises. The literature is clear that resistance training compound movements to develop strength have the greatest ability for improvements in big picture qualities like lowered mortality rates and increased quality of life. For athletes, a certain degree of sport-specific movements should be used, but not before adequate strength in the major appendages has been developed. It may be wise to leave the sport-specific skills to the athletic coaches while you help the athlete develop strength.

General Program

Your program should incorporate mostly compound movements. Accessory exercises are of limited utility for the general population. A general program, in terms of exercise selection, should look as follows:

Resistance Training

1. Lower Body Compound Anterior Dominant

2. Upper Body Compound Horizontal Push

3. Lower Body Compound Posterior Dominant

4. Upper Body Compound Vertical Pull

5. Lower Body Compound Accessory Anterior Dominant

6. Upper Body Compound Vertical Push

7. Lower Body Compound Accessory Posterior Dominant

8. Upper Body Compound Horizontal Pull

B) Aerobic Training 

1. 3-7 30 second interval at RPE 8-10 with 2-4 minute rests

2. Minimum 150 minutes of aerobic activity for the client weekly - Aerobic
   

3. Make sure to program volume, intensity, and tonnage as appropriate for each client's unique goals and needs.
   

Client Psychology

When programming the basic exercises remember that a good program meets the clients' needs to a large degree. While you are not at the client’s beck and call, try your best to program exercises and workouts that your client enjoys. Whether that’s through barbells or free weights or machines. When we can make exercising relatively enjoyable and intrinsically motivated we can better assure exercise compliance - which helps the client; and your wallet!

Nutrition

Your nutritional scope of practice may be highly limited as a personal trainer, so make sure to stay in your lane. Never recommend a client eat a particular food, and give global guidelines and recommendations. You do not want to get sued for overstepping your scope of practice! Here’s where the current science is! The average person should eat 35 grams of fiber a day, 6-10 servings of fruits and vegetables, and a minimum of 1 gram per pound lean body mass of protein. Less than 10% of total calories from saturated fats. Keep things simple, behind complexity is simplicity!

If your client wants to lose weight, no diet works any better than the other. The only way to lose weight is through a daily caloric deficit over a long period of time. A basic starting point is that a client can lose around 1% of their body weight on a weekly basis, but can lose less or more if they want and upon further discussion of their needs. 

To figure out their caloric deficit have them write down a week-long food log of daily calories. After you get this information to subtract enough calories per day to facilitate the 1% per week weight loss. Weight loss is recommended for females if their naval circumference is greater than 34-37inches, for men 37-40inches. BMI may be useful in this regard as well. 

Weight gain is the same as weight loss except it should be taken at a much slower rate than weight loss. For both goals you should track progress, if the client is comfortable, objectively using:

1. Weekly Photo, same lighting, mirror, and distance

2. Weekly Naval Circumference

3. Tri-weekly Weight Check using the same scale at same time

4. Navy Body Fat Algorithm 

Psychological Red Flags

Body dysmorphic disorder is all too common in the general population and maybe a daily occurrence in your life as a trainer. These clients will never be happy with their results and consistently upset with their looks. If you can see objective improvements in their health, but they can't, these clients may need the help of a medical professional. If you think a client has an issue with their relationship with food or their body, a very careful conversation may be warranted and it may be wise to refer them out to a medical professional. 

Overall Health 

Clients out of gym living habits can greatly affect progress in the gym, and while it may or may not be your decision or right to intervene, knowing these can help. Undiagnosed or diagnosed mental health issues can be a serious barrier to success for clients. Sometimes, very delicately, if you think someone has an undiagnosed mental disorder or someone is struggling personally it may be wise to encourage your client to receive help. SSRIs can potentially inhibit weight loss as well, so you may need to have a working relationship with the physician to facilitate weight change. 

Clients with high trait anxiety may be neurotic in their behavior and it may be a challenge to not let their anxiety have transference to you. Make sure you put up the right boundaries to ensure your personal well-being. Never let a client demean or talk down to you. You are in charge of the session and there is no need to become defensive and overly defend your training protocols and your unique product! Try your best to negotiate proper boundaries with these clients, and if necessary refer them to another trainer. 

Clients in different demographics can have different working habits. Where I’ve worked in Silicon Valley, clients are sometimes workaholics who devote most of their waking lives to work - at the sacrifice of personal balance. All people need between 7 and 8 hours of sleep with a very small minority of outliers who may need less or more. Lack of adequate sleep is linked to all sorts of comorbidities, and will potentially hinder exercise performance and weight loss. While potentially exacerbating psychic and physical pain. Sleep quality may be an issue as well, many people who report consistent daytime sleepiness may have sleep apnea of some kind. This may be particularly common in your overweight clients or broader built clients, usually correlating with a 17”+ neck circumference. While you are no physician, be aware of your clients overall health and able to effectively negotiate the conversation if it ever occurs.

People Skills

People skills may make up to 90% of why your clients choose to stick with you long term! A good trainer is an inspirational entity!  Oftentimes the best trainers do not deliver results, they deliver a feeling to their clients. The client not only gets the benefit of physical activity but also the benefits of interacting with a confidant as well. How can you develop this skill set? Here are a couple ways:

Becoming a confidant requires:

1. Active listening

2. Tactical Empathy

3. Being genuinely interested in the person

4. Asking open ended questions

5. Figuring out the person's motivations and values

6. Mirroring their body language

7. Genuine care for the person

8. Giving them what they want, not what you think they need

9. Motivational interviewing

What Motivates People?

People are motivated in a couple of different ways. Self Determination Theory outlines people's needs as follows:

1. Autonomy

2. Relatedness

3. Self Efficacy

The positive psychologist Martin Seligman says PERMA is the way to human flourishing by increasing:

1. Positive Emotion

2. Engagement(Flow State)

3. Positive Relationships

4. Meaning

5. Achievement

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs explains that for people to become self-actualized their physiological needs must be met first. Food, shelter, safety. Without these needs being met, it can be challenging to meet the more advanced needs listed above.

When you understand these principles of motivation, you will understand your clients!