Miles in my shoes

By Kelli Calabrese

Background: A small, but growing demographic is comprised of obese and sedentary clients who are turning to certified personal trainers as a professional resource in their battle for a healthier lifestyle. For this special category, making the initial contact is a step that may have taken years to build up to.

From that first timid call, it’s important that trainers respond with compassion, empathy and the highest levels of professionalism. The client’s act of courage will be fruitful if that first session is an empowering experience. That first exposure to the world of personal training should equip them with pertinent knowledge, help them set realistic goals and establish a shared commitment to their success. The client should come away from that session with a realistic, well laid out plan.

But your success in getting the client to the second workout is more about your understanding of their challenge than their understanding of your ability to help them succeed.

Seven months into a series of personal training sessions with one of my clients, I interviewed him regarding what led him to decide to seek out a personal trainer as well as his perceptions about those first few sessions. I learned that he had found me through the ACE professional locator service and was interviewing several trainers in his demographic area. He explained he was looking for a trainer to come to his home a few times a week.

During that first phone conversation, we set up a consultation at my home and he agreed to a workout at my home gym. During the consultation we reviewed his health, medical, and exercise history, goals, expectations, preferences, food intake and lifestyle information. Next was a modified fitness assessment followed by an abbreviated exercise session.

Here’s how he described his feelings prior to our initial phone conversation:

Five things every sedentary client wished their personal trainer knew before the first session:

"You were not my first choice. Nothing personal, but the last ten ideas I tried were failures".
1. No sedentary or overweight person decides to work with a personal trainer as a first choice for becoming healthy and fit. Dieting is so much easier, more private, less embarrassing and less painful. It’s also usually a quicker, albeit temporary, path to results.
2. Seeing a personal trainer can be more of an admission of defeat than a commitment to permanent change. Fortunately, I finally convinced myself that using outside help was more of a brilliant idea than an admission of failure.
You have never walked a mile in my shoes. I know this because I can’t walk a mile in my shoes.
1. If you’re smart, you’ll let your client know you understand what it took to take the leap of calling you. It was a gigantic effort and should be acknowledged. Reassure them that it was the hardest part of their transformation. Let them know about all the positive changes they can expect over the next twelve weeks.
2. If you really want to understand this client, live a week or even a day in a fat suit. Let them know you understand how hard it is to be them, to be discriminated against, to not fit into a chair, to have limited clothing to choose from, to be exhausted climbing a flight of stairs.
3. You should know that during your client’s first aerobic walk with you, no matter how short you make it, he’ll experience a range of feelings that could only be compared to a fit person running their first marathon. The pain is the same; the only thing different is the time it took to get there.
During the first visit when you’re taking measurements, know that when you use words like “evaluation,” “assessment” and “baseline,” your client is experiencing words like “failure,” “awkwardness” and “embarrassment.”
1. Have you ever not been able to do even two pushups, much less thirty? Or looked at a measuring tape and wondered if it was long enough? Have you ever been on the pinching end of a body fat caliper when your BMI was over twenty-five?
2. Ask permission… promise their privacy… and let them know you have seen tougher challenges … even if it’s a lie. They’ll know that, but will forgive and thank you.
3. When talking about goals, go beyond the traditional measures like waist size, weight and blood pressure and look for more meaningful quality of life measures, like being able to play soccer with the kids without getting short of breadth, or wearing that piece of clothing buried in the back of the closet that stopped fitting four years ago, or fitting comfortably into the airplane seat on the next vacation.
Practice “guerilla listening” techniques. That means that during the first session, there may be a lot of things you want to ask but don’t…. and a lot of things you should say but don’t go into in detail. Active listening gets the client’s attention early on.
1. After ensuring a pulse and normal but labored breathing, use reflective listening to gauge how your sedentary client is coping with the first visit. Listen to what your client is saying and repeat it back to them as a question to confirm your understanding. For example, you might say, “So what you are telling me is that immediately following your exercise session you feel a boost in energy that lasts for several hours and you start craving healthy foods?”
2. A follow-up call or email of encouragement is the single most important thing a personal trainer can do after the first visit to ensure a return trip and successful relationship between trainer and client. Ask things like: how they are feeling; whether they are sore; what their favorite part of the session was; if they have any preferences for their next visit. Ask about specific action items discussed in the session, i.e.: ”Have you bought that new pair of sneakers yet?
You may know the progress I can make in twelve weeks but I do not have a clue.
1. To get to the second visit and be able to continue your client’s journey to health and permanent change you need too be able to communicate the value with staying the course. Let them know what changes they can expect, week by week. Those small subtle changes will give them hope and something to look forward to.
2. Becoming a trusted advisor to your client is your own best goal to reach the end of the first visit. Get a commitment for three weeks of effort to reach three measurable short-term goals and you have a client for life with a chance at a life of health.

As you reflect upon my client’s suggestions, ask yourself how many of your new clients didn’t make it past the first session, whether it was free or paid. How many made it past the first month?

As personal trainers, we know we are the best option for long-term fat loss, firing up metabolism and reshaping bodies, but to our clients, we are often the last ditch option, especially as the media touts every quick, easy, magical solution. Due in part to the lack of regulations in this industry and poor practices by some less than scrupulous trainers, we face an uphill battle.

Less than 14 percent of Americans exercise regularly enough to see any fitness benefits, and of that number, less than 10 percent exercise with a personal trainer. And of that 10 percent, a very slim percentage are obese. If our commitment is to help people get healthy, we need to understand the special needs of those who need it most, and provide the highest levels of service, empathy, follow-through and compassion.

If we want to retain the clients who do have the courage to reach out for us, and if we want to be able to command the same fees as other health and business professionals, we need to acquire high levels of training in exercise science, business practices, coaching and the psychology of weight management.

I sincerely hope this insight from one frank and honest client account about his frustrations, expectations and experiences with personal training will lead you to a greater understanding of a non-exerciser’s perspective, and, if the shoe fits, modify your professional approach accordingly.

Stay tuned for my clients ultimate success as a result of working with a personal trainer. We’re simply waiting for his body to catch up to the rest of him.