Clients can’t be trusted to measure their own results. How many members have you witnessed who come into the club three to four times a week, but never seem to get anywhere? There’s likely at least a few.
Fortunately, personal training provides a great opportunity to help members measure their fitness results. So, do your trainers measure the progress of their clients? If they don’t, they need to begin now.
Here are the top 5 reasons why they should measure results:
- Trainers can prove their clients are getting results. Sometimes clients do not see the changes in their body. They do not see the changes in their strength. They do not feel how much more work they can do. So, it becomes a motivating factor for clients to get tested and see in black and white how much progress they are making.
- It will help clients that lacks motivation. By giving the client a deadline of when their progress will next get tested, this can be a motivating factor to get extra time in the gym or eat better because they have to prepare for the next test.
- It will give clients accountability. If a client knows they are getting tested in two weeks, they may be more inclined to eat better and stay on the workout plan you have created.
- It’s a selling point for more training. Now this sounds self-serving, but the more times the client is in front of you, the more you know what they have done. Testing is a great way to motivate them to do small group training with you or another session.
- Results tracking gives the trainer undisputed data to show clients. This can be a powerful tool to changing what the client does outside the gym. If they tell you they are doing everything you have programmed or suggested and their body fat goes up, something is not adding up and this proves it.
By no means track just body composition. It can be any test that is important to the client. This could involve endurance, strength or body circumference measurements. Testing should occur at minimum every quarter, or at most often, every four weeks.
