The Human Factor: Personal Training as a Customer Service Industry

Personal training is a customer service industry. Success relies on your ability to connect, communicate, and build trust with clients beyond exercise expertise. This means that you need to be able to understand your clients’ needs and goals, and then provide them with the support and motivation they need to achieve their fitness goals.

Key Strategies for Challenging Clients

There are a number of strategies that you can use to help you work with challenging clients. Here are a few of the most important:

• Set clear expectations. Help clients define realistic, SMART goals and set achievable benchmarks for success. This will help to keep them motivated and on track.
• Challenge negativity. Encourage positivity and address inner critical voices that may hinder progress. This can be done by helping clients to identify their negative thoughts and then replace them with more positive ones.
• Emphasize accountability. Foster an open, compassionate dialogue about setbacks and strategies for improvement. This will help clients to take responsibility for their own fitness journey and make the necessary changes to achieve their goals.
• Coachability is essential. Evaluate whether clients are ready to embrace changes and commit to the process. Not all clients are worth the effort if they are unwilling to engage with your guidance.
• Focus on empathy and emotional IQ. Beyond knowledge of fitness, emotional intelligence and compassion are crucial for supporting clients through difficult journeys and retaining them long-term.

Advance Your Expertise

If you want to be a successful personal trainer, it is important to continue to learn and grow. One way to do this is to take the ISSA’s Transformation Specialist course. This course will provide you with the tools you need to help coach challenging clients, develop healthier habits, and make lasting transformations. Our audience gets a deeply discounted rate on this and many other Specialization programs here: https://go.issaonline.com/pp/self-made-training/offers​.