As Personal Trainer's, we all want to work with elite athletes. Fitness models and bodybuilders. Strength athletes of all types.

The irony of this is, these are very rarely the clients we will actually be working with and these are not the clients we should be focused on. Even though working with these type of clients sounds glamorous, competition is high and they generally do not have the disposable income to work with us. Another thing often not considered is it takes  years to be considered an expert in these fields and have clients knocking down your doors to train with you. 

Where most of us would be best served is making sure we are ready to service the needs of general population clients: they are the ones who can afford us, they have the desire to see a personal trainer and most importantly of all, they need our help the most. 

The mistake most trainers make is treating these clients like the client types mentioned above: giving a 42 year old father of three working 60 hours a week with lower back pain a program designed for a bodybuilder and strict macro tracking and expecting success. This is straight up insanity, yet happens in commercial gyms and private training facilities every single day.

What we need to do is identify our client levels and apply the appropriate strategies based on that. In a previous article I did just that. In this article, we will dive into each strategy a little bit deeper. Lets get rolling.

Training

For level 1 clients there are only a few things we MUST do with them. 

1. We must make exercise enjoyable.

For many people, exercise is a chore. This is especially true for level 1 clients, as many of them will equate exercise with physical pain and suffering, or may have a distorted view of exercise due to negative experiences in their past. Making exercise an enjoyable activity is the best thing we can do 

2. We need to change movements based on their pain and movement aptitude.

We need to individualise the exercises used so the clients can feel confident and have a sense of achievement after each and every session. I once saw a video on Instagram of a client showing their level 1 clients small improvement in walking lunges over 3 weeks. What a better use of time would have been would to prescribe an exercise with less variables to manage (a split squat would have been perfect) so the client is put into a place to succeed.

A screening process should also be used to avoid movements that cause pain. This is something that many exercise professionals fail to do, simply because they believe a workout program has to include an arbitrary number of movements (hinge, squat, push etc) rather than what the client can actually do well. I will have a future article about this. 

3. We can and SHOULD use templates to save time.

Although we preach individualisation, the truth about individualisation is it takes time to occur. We need to watch and observe how clients respond to training, their unique recovery needs and rate of progress. When we consider this, it is essential we use templates for beginners so we can objectively measure how people respond. We need to consider that beginners will respond to any form of stimulus so by using a template system, we can focus on better coaching outcomes and also more time objectively evaluating the client and learning more about them.

Nutrition

Nutrition is the hardest part of the entire transformation process for level 1 clients. They have a ton of confusion around food and rightfully so: there is a ton of misinformation out there. Here are the best tools to use with level 1 clients to help with their nutrition.

1. A food journal.

Beginner clients will often benefit the most from simple awareness of how they eat. Once something is written down and seen but the person, a powerful realisation often occurs about shortcomings in their nutrition approach. This "A-Ha!" moment often holds far more leverage than simply pointing out to a client that they don't eat enough protein or drink too many calories. We want to use a food journal as a tool for self discovery, developing autonomy and mastery and as a future springboard for building a healthier relationship with food and stress management strategies. 

2. Basic habit guidelines.

Macros and calories are awesome. However awesome they may be, they create more confusion for level 1 clients and stress they simply do not need. What would benefit level 1 clients the most is a selection of basic habits they can improve on to improve their body composition and health. Here are some samples: please note that this is not exhaustive and there is no right answers here. These can be decided by you as part of the coaching process.

- Protein at every meal

- Veggies with 2/3 meals a day.

- 2-3 litres of water daily

- Sleep by 10pm

3. Awareness of portions

Portion control strategies are vital for body composition. Simply learning the sizes of each macro and food group is a fantastic tool for awareness. 

Mindset 

This is a tricky area for level 1 clients, as they are super excited about the transformation process, yet are extremely vulnerable to setbacks becoming disasters very quickly. Here is what to focus on with them:

1. Learning the difference between a growth and a fixed mindset.

Many clients come to us with a fixed mindset, meaning they believe their abilities, physique and body composition is fixed and they do not have the power to change it. A growth mindset is that all qualities and abilities are subject to improvement if diligent effort and application occurs.

2. Learn self compassion.

Self compassion is a fantastic skill for level 1 clients to learn as it gives them a framework to deal with for if and when they go off the rails. It is made up of three components:

A) Self Kindness vs Self Judgement

Every client ever will screw up on a diet vs a training program. How we speak to ourselves in these moments will determine to an extent what we will do next. Self-compassionate people recognize that being imperfect, failing, and experiencing life difficulties is inevitable, so they tend to be gentle with themselves when confronted with painful experiences rather than getting angry when life falls short of set ideals. This allows them to not beat themselves up, but rather accept what is and move on to the next decision from a place of reason rather than frustration. 

B) Common Humanity vs Isolation

Frustration at not having things exactly as we want is often accompanied by an irrational but pervasive sense of isolation – as if “I” were the only person suffering or making mistakes. This is when clients think they are the only ones who have binged on food when stressed. Realising others have had and are having the same experiences makes it all a little more manageable. 

C) Mindfulness vs Over-Identification

Mindfulness is a non-judgmental, receptive mind state in which one observes thoughts and feelings as they are, without trying to suppress or deny them. We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time.  At the same time, mindfulness requires that we not be “over-identified” with thoughts and feelings, so that we are caught up and swept away by negative reactivity. This allows clients to recognise what they are going through and begin to react appropriately, before going down a dark path. 

3. Focus.

This is more a skill set developed in the gym. There are so many distractions all vying fro our attention every single day, that simply training with intent is a fantastic opportunity to allow us to build our ability to focus, which carries over to every other aspect of life. 

Accountability

This is where we can shine with level 1 clients. Here are my favourite strategies. 

1. Verbal communication and in person consulting.

So many coaches like to automate everything. I love automation as much as the next coach, but when a client is uncertain and needs help, nothing is better than real life communication. This allows us to provide a safe place, understanding, empathy and an opportunity to connect, leading to higher levels of trust and rapport. 

2. Zoom calls.

These are the next best option. Rather than keeping communication non-verbal, any time we have the option to connect with people, this will facilitate faster trust. 

3. Email communication - personal and sequences. 

I am a strong believer in automated emails. This can save a ton of time with basic information you need (food journals etc), but personal emails are needed to answer questions in detail. This is where the time you spend with a client in the early stages will pay off in the form of long term retention and a productive training relationship. 

If we can implement the following with our clients, not only we will get better results, we will get higher amounts of enjoyment and satisfaction from our jobs. Stay tuned for upcoming posts where we go over how to deal with both level 2 and 3 clients.