This series took on a special significance for me when I was recently offered a job in Rochester, NY to become part of upper management of a very large corporate health club chain. Among other duties, I'd be implementing programs to train the trainers, and part of that includes preparing them for the hell that is personal training. Having said that, personal training can be a rewarding experience for both the client and the trainer, it's rare that you'll ever be able to have such huge impact on another persons life. I can think of no other profession, with the possible exception of a doctor or surgeon, that allows you to totally change another human beings mental and physical well being in a short period of time.

Motivation

With the obvious exception of knowledge, the most important thing you're going to impart to your client is motivation. I'm going to be real unpopular here with a lot of trainers and say the one thing they don't want to hear. The biggest motivating factor in any client/trainer relationship is the physical condition of the trainer. I will be the very first person to admit that some of the most knowledgeable trainers I've ever met have had the worst physiques. And for the most part, these trainers survived on reputation alone. However, given that most trainers do not have a reputation that proceeds them, they are the proverbial book being judged by its cover. And as a client, that cover is going to speak volumes (ok, enough with the book puns) to me about what that trainer actually knows. Furthermore, even if I give that trainer a chance and find out that they actually do know what they're talking about, why in the world am I going to want to suffer on a diet or workout program when it's obvious that my trainer isn't willing to do so? I can think of a somewhat humorous situation that is analogous to what I'm discussing here. What if you went to your doctor, and after finding out you took steroids, he began a long-winded tirade about how steroids are dangerous and how you were slowly killing yourself. Here's the kicker. You're physician is 100 lbs overweight. Furthermore, you go out later that night to dinner and see you doctor in the bar of the restaurant, completely hammered and smoking like a fiend. How much credence are you going to give to the advice of a man who clearly is the very worst kind of hypocrite? Physician, heal thyself!!

The same kind of relationship exists between a trainer and client. Given that we've already established that your clients will use ANY excuse to cheat on their programs, you're opening the door to a failure after failure if you can't or won't follow your own advice. If you're knowledgeable enough or a good enough salesperson to be hired by clients despite your horrible physical condition, you're going to run into the inevitable situation where clients will not follow your advice simply because they don't see you following it yourself!!! At many points during a client/trainer relationship, the mood becomes almost adversarial as your attempts at helping the client achieve their goals are at some point going to cause them discomfort. When this happens, the out-of-shape trainer is going to start dealing with opposition on the part of the client, the root of which is a train of thought that goes something like this:

"If he can't even eat right or workout himself, why in the world should I suffer? He has no idea what I'm going through, yet is on me constantly to stay on my program. FUCK HIM!!"

Think this won't happen? Place a large middle-aged woman on a low carb diet for the first time in her life and see what happens. The bottom line is that it's imperative that you're client can not only seek motivation from you, but can actually LOOK at you and be motivated. Looking the part is just as important as being able to play the part.

Tailor Programs for the Individual

Part of my job here at AE involves training clients. And in the course of doing this job, I've been able to review the work of a lot of the trainers that failed to properly do their job. Now, when I speak about tailoring programs for the individual, I'm referring to a lot more than simply plugging in the obvious variables, such as sex, weight, and body fat and waiting for the computer to spit out a program. ANY trainer with a few hours of instruction on the latest fitness software can easily accomplish this, and it probably wouldn't take me more than a day to teach a chimp to do so if I had enough bananas.

What I am referring to is having enough knowledge to allow your client to achieve their goals in an expedient fashion with a minimum of suffering. Case in point. Let's take two female clients, both of whom are overweight, both in their late 20's, both seeking to lose fat with a minimum loss of lean body mass. Both are roughly 40 lbs overweight, but one, let's call her Suzie, wants to get into good enough shape to enter a local bikini contest. The other, let's call her Betty, simply wants to lose about 20 lbs of fat.

In most gyms across this country, the programs most trainers would put these women on would look EXACTLY the same. That's because most trainers are not taught to think outside the constraints of whatever system they've been trained in, and lack both the knowledge base and confidence to tailor programs to suit the individual needs of their clients.

Let's start with Betty. She has the simple goal of wanting to lose 20 lbs of fat. Now, it should be understood that Betty is fully aware that she's 40 lbs overweight, and is still perfectly fine with wanting to only lose 20. Betty's program should be designed with that in mind! Given that, she should not be subsisting on only chicken and brown rice, nor should she be asked to commit to a program that requires a tremendous amount of time in the gym. Quite frankly, Betty can reach her goal with a few simple changes and the absolute bare minimum of suffering. Perhaps after easily reaching her initial goal of losing 20 lbs, Betty will commit herself to an even greater level of fitness and decide to lose another 20. Bottom line here is that it's much easier (and more responsible on the part of the trainer) to get Betty to implement a few simple changes that will permanently change her weight and body composition than to place her on an overly restrictive program that in reality, is just a quick fix. Although she may stick to an overly restrictive program for a period of a few months and rapidly achieve her goals, the moment she is happy with how she looks, she'll return to her "normal" way of eating and begin the inevitable yo-yo process most dieters go through.

Given that Suzie has much more lofty fitness goals, her program WILL have to be very restrictive. However, someone who has decided to pursue such endeavors is almost always prepared for the rigors involved in doing so. My simple point here is that you cannot simply plug people into a system because they happen to share a few obvious variables. A competent trainer plans not only to help the client achieve their goals in the short term, but maintaining those goals after the trainer/client relationship has ended.

Teach, Don't Preach

Your job as a trainer is to impart your knowledge onto the client, helping them achieve their fitness and physique goals. Inevitably, every one of your clients is going to ask you the dreaded question"Why? Why am I doing this exercise? Why do you have me eating these foods?" Believe me, it's going to get really old after a while.

Too bad. It's one of the more unpleasant aspects of the job, explaining the same things time and time and time again. After all, to you these things now seem like second nature, and it can be somewhat shocking to learn how little most people actually know, or to discover some of the absolutely asinine things people believe. And again, 9 times out of 10, you are not preaching to someone whose mind is ready to accept what you have to say as Holy Writ, as almost all clients come to you with preconceived notions as to how to properly eat and exercise. When what you tell them doesn't jive with these preconceived notions, expect to be asked "Why?".

All too often I see trainers who have become jaded in the business and are tired of educating clients, wanting only to have clients follow their advice without having to explain why. Trainers who have the attitude of, "I'm the expert here, just do what I say!!" And although this seems to be the prevailing attitude amongst trainers, this simply means that there are a lot of lousy trainers in the business!! Only the most docile of clients are going to totally change their lifestyle without wanting to understand the reasoning behind the changes. I liken these people to sheep, willing to be blindly led wherever you might take them. For better or for worse, 95% of clients are not going to be sheep, and it's going to be up to you to not only help them achieve their goals in the short term, but educate them so that they can maintain their results long term.

If you're going to make a living as a trainer, or even if you're just considered an authority on getting into shape and am constantly being asked to help others, perhaps one of the most effective time saving endeavors you can engage in is producing a document or Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) sheet that covers a lot of this material. Rather than answering the question, "Why am I doing cardio in the morning before I eat?" for the one-millionth time, put it in your FAQ. Look, even the best trainers have common threads running through every program they design, if they didn't they wouldn't be successful. It's these common threads that should be addressed in such a document. Doing so will not only make you appear more organized and professional to your clients, but will save you Excedrin Headache #25 when you're asked the same question 5,295 in a row.

Obviously there's a lot more to being a successful trainer than what I've outlined in this series. However, if you can follow the advice I've given you, everything else will soon fall into place. Like I said in the introduction, personal training can be an extremely rewarding experience. It can also be an absolute nightmare. The choice is largely up to you.