Tips for Personal Trainers to Keep Clients Motivated

Here are handy tips for personal trainers to keep their clients motivated. I'm a certified personal trainer, and we all sooner or later end up with a client who is very hard to keep motivated.

Go outside. One of the most effective ways that a personal trainer can rekindle a client's motivation is to have that person do some workouts outside. The club that I once was a personal trainer at had a rather steep hill of grass off to the side, and I had my clients doing high intensity interval training up this hill.

Depending on their fitness level, they only walked up the hill. Others charged up as fast as possible. I had some clients doing walking lunges up the hill, and then backwards-walking lunges down the hill. I had some going up and down sideways. Before they knew it, 30 minutes had passed. Personal trainers can take de-motivated clients outside for simple warm-ups or cool-downs.

Document progress. Another way to motivate clients is for the personal trainer to time them or make written recordings of what they are doing, such as amount of weight lifted or number of repetitions.

This kind of feedback will motivate the sagging client. If she knows that last week she bench pressed 55 pounds, then this week she'll have extra motivation to push her hardest to lift 60 pounds. To keep motivation flowing, the personal trainer should keep the client informed regarding amount of weight lifted, reps, distances, speeds, and other various settings.

Ask the client about what motivates him, or what takes away motivation. Perhaps your client doesn't like all the funky routines you've been giving him lately. Maybe it's time to ditch the one-leg-on-a-BOSU-board rowing routines for standard seated rows.

Unexpected routines. Another way for frustrated personal trainers to fire up an unmotivated client is to have her don some boxing gloves and start pounding at focus mitts or heavy bags. But make sure she throws the techniques correctly instead of wildly flaying her arms about. Explain how proper punching techniques will recruit muscles from the core and thus, create an abdominal workout.

If your client lacks motivation, have you considered having him do some classic compound movements like deadlifts, clean-and-presses, hang cleans, chin-ups and free barbell squats? For many people, these kinds of routines are totally new territory, and the focus that they demand will create a new kind of motivation in your clients.

The personal trainer must make sure that he knows what his clients' goals are, and should freely discuss those goals with the client to keep him or her motivated.