Success Secrets For Personal Trainers

Success Secrets for Personal Trainers:


One habit that you want to develop is the ability to monitor your clients’ reactions to exercise with your vision. You want to relax your vision and use your peripheral vision to get a broad view of your client while they are performing a movement. When you’re focused on one spot, you’re using Foveal Vision. It’s a sort of tunnel vision, wherein which you can only see what your vision is focused. The ideal state for you to be in is what is called The Learning State. In this state of Relaxed Awareness, your vision relaxes and you can take in information using your peripheral vision.

Peripheral vision is that part of your vision that allows you to notice MOVEMENT. It’s that aspect of seeing that allows you to notice when a mouse is moving in the corner of the room you’re sitting in. When you’re training your client, you want to pick a spot on your client body to focus in on, and then gradually allow yourself to notice the movements of their body. Your peripheral vision is extremely sensitive and can pick up the slightest movements. You might be surprised when you discover that you can actually see a clients’ blood pulsing through their veins as your taking their pulse!!! Believe me, I was shocked when I first noticed it, but was no longer a mystery when I learned about the sensitivity of our peripheral Vision. When you learn to rely on your peripheral vision more and more during a session, you’ll start to notice the slightest changes in a clients’ posture as they perform an exercise. Are you aware of the fact that our conscious minds are only able to notice only about 7 bits or chunks of information at a time? The rest of the information is noticed by your subconscious mind

Know your client’s personality: This seems like a no brainer, but it becomes very important when you’re in the middle of a training session and your client starts to lose focus and starts talking about… non related session stuff to be polite.

First of all, you have to know what is motivating your client to train with you in the first place. What are the reasons your client is spending a couple of hours a week with you? In a way, you have to know their reasons as if they are your own. Make it a habit to write down their goals (which you should be doing if you’re a detailed personal trainer).

Make sure you understand your clients Motivation Sort. Are they training with you to avoid a certain state of being or are they training to attain a certain level of health. The distinction is very important. Many people are either motivated by what they want to avoid – Away From- and many people are motivated by what they want to achieve – Towards.

With a person who is motivated “Towards” something, their focus is on what they do Want.

With a person that is motivated “Away From” (or someone), their focus on what they don’t want.


When you listen to your clients speak, you’ll notice what their Motivation Sort is. The ones that “Don’t want to be fat” or “don’t want to look like that” are those who have an “Away from” Motivation sort.

In order to motivate those Away from clients, you have to remind them of what it is that they DON’T want. Once you have them focused on that, then you remind them of the actual fitness goal ie to run easier, to add more definition to their abs and legs, etc.

In order to Motivate those Towards clients, you remind them of what it is they DO want. It helps to have your client notes handy so that you can easily look at their information and remember what their motivation is in the first place.

Now…

You want to discover whether or not you’re client is Proactive or Reactive. Does your client call you and tell you they’re on the way – or do you have to call your client?

Again, understand this distinction is very important because once you become aware of your clients meta-programs, you can predict their actions, ie you can determine how they will react during training.

Please be aware that these Motivational traits are contextual – ie. Your client make be proactive in exercising with you, but they may be reactive in a work or conflict situation. The other contexts are not important. The important thing for you to realize here is that you must focus on their behavior within the training context. Makes sense?



Another important factor in the Trainer-Client relationship is the Training Environment and the affect it has on the client- and your own - ability to focus and have an productive workout.

Some people are able to focus on the task at hand no matter how much commotion is going on in the surroundings. The people are called “screeners”. They have the ability to “screen out” all stimuli that is not connected to the task at hand and get the task done. These are the people you see studying in loud and noisy places.

There are clients who may actually be distracted by all the stimuli and action in the surroundings to a high degree, to the point where they lose their focus. These people are called “Non screeners”. They absolutely have to have peace and quiet in order to get the task done.

Your task is to determine which one of the types your client is. You can determine their type by simply asking them what type of place they prefer to train in. If your clients prefer to train in quiet surroundings, and yet you have no way to provide such an environment, then you have to consistently bring their focus from the environment back to yourself. You can easily do this by directing them to look at a specific point or pay attention to a specific sound in the environment. You can even suggest to them the natural phenomenon of all the sounds in the background fading away to silence as they focus on the task at hand. The simplest approach is to keep them busy – Keep your clients body active and their mind will stay active. Make use of active recovery periods so that although their muscles are resting from the previous set, they are still engaged in some purposeful activity. Remember this always – You can only focus your attention on ONE thing at a time.

Now….

Being a Personal Trainer, I realize that you might have an easier time working with a certain client or a certain “Type” of client. That’s fine. That’s even natural. Isn’t their a certain type of person that you tend to like to hang out with? Isn’t their a certain type of person that you tend to avoid? What do you do when you’re training a client that you can’t stand? Remember, a client is just a person that you instructing in exercises to become more fit. In a situation like this, you want to develop rapport with your client. You want to gain some insight into your client so you can understand them.

Have you ever really hated someone you didn’t really know too well, but when you took the time to get to know them and UNDERSTAND, you started to like them more and more to the point where you actually became good friends?

Become curious about your clients. When you start to become curious about them, you’ll discover that you’ll understand them more and more. Being curious is the key. That rapport that you steadily develop allows you and your client to have very productive sessions.


Sincerely,

Amir Campbell