There are a few vitally important elements that make up a successful client-trainer relationship: your knowledge as a personal trainer; your client’s willingness to change, work hard, take action and trust you to help them get to their goal; the training environment; your attitude and your motivational skills. One of the most important of these is your ability to motivate your clients – both in the gym and once they step out of it because as you know a successful transformation takes more than just exercise. It is about nutrition, motivational factors and mind health too.
Personal Trainers Often Refer to Themselves as Therapists
Although this could be seen as bad, your client trusting you enough to share their problems with you is an indication that you are doing well at gaining their trust. Trust between you and your client is important as this indicates whether they will follow your guidance and leadership regarding training and nutrition, or not.
Your client’s success in losing weight, living healthier, gaining muscle or – whatever their goal is – largely depends on not only your knowledge and expertise but your ability to motivate them too. Motivation is one of the most powerful tools in any profession and in life in general. If you can adequately motivate your clients, the bulk of the work is done!
5 Motivational Factors You Should Consider When Training Your Clients
1. Your Energy and Attitude
As the personal trainer, your client trusts you to get them the results they want. They follow your guidance and instructions and it is therefore important that you always have a positive, energetic, encouraging attitude and energy when you train them. Energy is contagious. If they feel that you are not quite there or not really motivated to train them, they won’t give their all and probably won’t reach their goals.
2. The Environment
People are often influenced and affected by their environment more than they know. Ensuring that the environment you train your clients in is motivating, upbeat, energetic and fun to be in will help your clients enjoy their exercise sessions and feel excited and motivated to come back. Small things like the type of music played in gyms can make a big difference!
3. Your Constant Guidance, Support and Advice
Your clients will look up to you as a leader and will most likely trust you with some of their personal problems as well. In addition, motivating them constantly through messages, texts and posts on social media will be fuel to the fire within to succeed! There are few things as motivating as your trainer sending you a random motivational message. And few things show your commitment to your client and their goals as going out of your way to constantly motivate them – in the gym and in their personal life.
4. Results
Ultimately, that is what you want to see and that is what your client wants to see. There is nothing as motivating as seeing positive results when you’re trying to reach a goal. Constantly reminding your client of their achievements and results so far can be incredibly motivating; whether it is a personal best on a squat or last week’s progress photos. Always tell them how well they are doing.
5. Being Motivated Yourself
They say that you cannot pour from an empty cup, meaning that you cannot help and look after others if you do not help and look after yourself first. Make sure that no matter how busy or frustrated you get in your career, you always have something that motivates and drives you to motivate your clients. After all, it is easy to motivate others if you are motivated yourself because you don’t have to fake it!
As a personal trainer, it is important to keep your clients and yourself motivated at all times. It could determine a successful or unsuccessful transformation or client-trainer relationship, and it is as important as the actual, physical training itself, so don’t neglect it! To learn about motivational factors you can use as a personal trainer, sign up for Trifocus Fitness Academy’s Personal Training Certification today! Follow this link to find out more.