How to Keep Your Personal Training Clients Motivated

The fact is we all want to be healthy, but when the motivation disappears, that’s when the problems start.

Why some people might ask? The reasons can be endless. Fitness can be challenging and it’s also a very long-term process. Society is trained to prefer immediate results. Personal training doesn’t always work that way.

Luckily there are strategies to keep defeatism at bay and ensure your clients continue to show grit and resilience when it comes to their health and fitness:

1. Set realistic goals

First off, it’s important people know they are making progress. How are they going to do that without a target to work towards?

The goals should be measurable and achievable. Get your clients to be open and honest about their targets. You can then work with your clients to ensure these goals are realistic based on your professional knowledge. For example, what are their current circumstances? Things to consider are what their goals are in relation to factors such as their age, gender and how much time they can dedicate to achieving their goals.

My PT Hub has specific features dedicated to Client Compliance. Once you have clients signed up to specific programs, you can use the Compliance feature to track their progress against the program they are following. The Client Compliance feature makes it really easy to see what percentage of the program a client has completed and whether this is ‘on track’ using a traffic light system.

2. Make it personal

As time goes on, you’ll start to build a picture of the types of personal training your clients enjoy. You might even notice they’re well suited to activities outside of the gym such as swimming, dancing, or even yoga. Can this be incorporated into their training program? Actively make it your mission to help your clients look forward to their training program.

3. Be flexible

One huge obstacle for a lot of your clients could be time. We all feel short of time occasionally. So the idea of committing several hours to the gym each week can look daunting on the surface.

As a fitness coach, support your client to look for a way around this. Is there an exercise they can do while cooking dinner, or doing the dishes? Could they carry weights while walking up and down the stairs? Whatever you think of, try to be versatile and work around their daily routine. They’ll appreciate your commitment to them.

4. Praise, praise and more praise!

Seems obvious, doesn’t it? However, you should never underestimate how much of impact praise and positive feedback has on people.

You should aim to provide one thoughtfully positive comment during every session. Maybe you noticed their cardio has improved, or that they returned to train after a really difficult session? Either way, try to keep it specific and relevant to the objectives of fitness.

My PT Hub allows you to send positive feedback and messages to your clients easily using the Chat feature. Send voice notes, video messages, texts with emojis- whatever your style Chat allows you to send that weekly or daily dose of motivation to keep your clients on track.