Does your passion for fitness inspire your workout routine? Do you love showing your friends your new discoveries in the gym, or your latest progression with your fitness goal? Are you a fitness encyclopedia with endless knowledge in the exercise science department?

If so, you still could very well easily make crappy personal trainer.

For the past two years, I’ve been working as a personal trainer, doing well over 1,000 personal sessions, as well as several group fitness classes between my time at three different gyms.

Despite my lifelong passion for exercise, I never imagined being someone’s trainer, or even a fitness coach – I am an introvert. For the majority of my 28 years of life, I’ve shied away from social interaction, meeting new people and being out of my social comfort zone – all things trainers engage in on a daily basis.

Going through college and graduate school in my early 20’s, I made it a point to change. I was tired of being afraid of not being the first one to say hello. This is not to say I grew into a beautiful social butterfly, but I stopped being scared of talking to people – a huge part of ‘walking the floor’ as a trainer.

1. Walking The Floor

Walking around a gym floor while trying to engage with members in the middle of their working set can be uncomfortable. If you’re like me, in your first few attempts, you’re going to stutter, feel awkward and sound silly to yourself. All you can do at that point is brush it off and talk to the next person. After a while, you will get comfortable, and you’ll realize that mostly everyone is open to a conversation, even during their workout. Why? People love to talk about themselves, so just ask!

Great floor questions to break the ice are, “What are you working on today?” or “Hey, I’ve seen you around and you really kill it, what’s your split like?” If you are able to radiate positive energy on the gym floor and get people talking about themselves, you’ll make a lot of friends,  and friends turn into clients.

2. Being a Professional

Alright, so you built rapport with that member you met on the floor, now it’s time to showcase your trainer skills in the client’s assessment or first session.

First things first, nobody is going to hire someone that doesn’t take them or their job seriously, so show them that you do by wearing your coach shirt, have good hygiene, be on time, and clearly articulate what you’ll be working on for that day before the assessment or session begins. Once the member likes you, and now realizes you’re a true professional, they’ll be more than happy to invest into your services.

3. Closing a Client

In all walks of life if we want something worth having, we have to sell ourselves or a product accordingly. In the case of personal training, you’re mainly selling yourself as a trainer and you’re also selling your programming.

When in the process of selling a training package, make sure that you clearly articulate what the client will be expecting throughout their training with you. This includes phases of training, when check-ins will happen, how often they should train with you, how often they should train on their own, and the results that they should expect each month. Practice makes progress, so make sure to schedule time with your manager, and other trainers, to practice your closing skills after that client’s first assessment.

4. Having a Solid Fitness Assessment

A fitness assessment is a client’s first unofficial training session with you. This should be a time where you sit down with the client and introduce yourself with a 30 second elevator pitch on your background and certifications. Next, you should tell the client what to expect during the assessment. After that, you should have a list of questions prepared to ask the client, questions revolving around the client’s exercise history, fitness goals, motivation, current diet, and current sleep habits.

That will lead you into what should be the physical part of the assessment, where you take the client through a series of movements testing their flexibility, balance, coordination and range of motion, to ensure they don’t have any glaring deficiencies.

Finally, you should ask the client if they’re planning on working out, or if they already have. Depending on their answer, offer to give them a stretch for either their upper body or lower body, that should take no longer than 10 minutes.

The stretch is a good opportunity to tell the client what you’d recommend as far as a training package. They’re in a state of feeling good at this point, so there’s a higher chance they’ll be receptive, and might even agree, to any suggestions that you’d have. After stretching, take the client back to the desk that you started the assessment to close their training package deal.

5. Holding Clients Accountable

All of the above are great at helping get your client into their first training session with you. But if you want to keep your client and have them buy your services again, holding them accountable is key.

If you allow them to get away with missing sessions with you, not only will they not see results when you have your check-in, but they’ll think that they can walk all over you, and nobody is going to continue to pay a soft trainer.

There’s a reason they hired you – it’s because they can’t do it on their own and they need to be held accountable. Holding your clients accountable means asking how their diet, sleep, and workouts on their own are going. It’s also telling them that they’ll need to makeup the workout or session with you that they missed.

Lastly, and maybe most importantly, it’s telling them why they aren’t seeing results at the end of the month. More often, it’s the fact they didn’t do the workouts you gave them, they didn’t follow your dietary recommendations, or they missed a few sessions with you.

Conclusion

If you made it through this entire article, you might just have yourself a promising career in personal training. At this point, I know that I certainly do, thanks to a few good mentors and managers that I was lucky to have who gave me this free game I’m giving to you.

Now, at this point in my coaching career, I have lifelong friends from my clientele, and people who will follow me wherever I go so that they can continue to train with me. It’s been a beautiful journey – a journey that wouldn’t have been possible if not for my understanding of the above.

To all my fellow trainers and aspiring ones to be, I wish you nothing but fruitful relationships, self-growth, knowledge, and clients who see results. Let’s keep putting that gospel out there.

Author: Colby Marshall