How to keep your fitness clients motivated

Whether you are starting out in the fitness industry or you have an established personal training business, it’s important to keep your clients happy and motivated. If you don’t, you risk them questioning the value in your sessions, or worse still, moving to another trainer who will keep them interested.

We’ve put together some key steps to keep your clients keen and motivated to want to continue working with you.

Build trust with your client

Your clients are trusting you with one of their most important and valuable assets, their health. So, you need to make sure you are dependable and reliable and that you provide a safe environment that helps them achieve their goals. You have to provide expert advice that they can trust. You also have to ensure that any activity you ask them to perform is safe and does not put them at risk of injury or ongoing physical pain. Yes, it is your job to work them hard and that will mean some pain while they are training, but the pain should never be due to an exercise that is too difficult for their ability or that puts them at risk of injury.

Get to know your client

Knowing your client well should help you to identify their primary goal and motivation to keep working out. Perhaps they may wish to lose a few kilos when they first start, but once they’ve achieved that goal, how do you keep them coming back? Maybe they are seeing the positive signs of their newfound fitness like more energy or clothes that are fitting better, but you’ll only know how they are feeling if you ask them.

While you don’t need to know the ins and outs of their personal life, knowing a bit about their situation will help you to keep their motivation up. Perhaps they struggle after weekends or maybe they aren’t early risers. If those excuses stop them from attending sessions, you’ll need to change their schedule so you have the best chance of them turning up on time and ready to work hard. It isn’t good for either of you if they skip sessions, so you need to know their pain points in order to set them up for success.

Ask for client feedback

Do not fear client feedback, as it is always better to hear about problems directly and early rather than when it’s too late and they have decided to move to another personal trainer. When you seek feedback, it is not only to ask what they think of your sessions, but it’s also to check in on how they feel they are progressing. While your client might be showing up and doing what you ask, unless you seek feedback, you may not know if they are truly happy with their sessions and their progress.

We think it is a great idea to start each session with some feedback on their previous week and how they think they are tracking. You should be monitoring their progress through their changing weight, fitness levels, and possibly their BMI. Programs like Scheduliser can help track their progress as it keeps a record of each client and displays their progress over time.

Make it fun for your client

Working out does not have to be dull. Yes, it’s likely to hurt them a bit if you’re working your client hard, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. Add some music if you can. Change up the exercise. It doesn’t have to be all medicine balls and free weights. Even a fitness fanatic will become bored if they’re faced with the same program every session. Why not throw in some rollerblading or hiking somewhere beautiful? Really the sky’s the limit, and if you can schedule the session at a time your client is not in a hurry, you’ll both benefit from the change of tempo.

The point is to keep your client engaged and the routine interesting so mix it up and add some fun new locations if you have time. Be creative and it will make it more fun for you as well.

Celebrate your client milestones

It’s a given that setting goals are a critical component of being a personal trainer, but what is often overlooked is the opportunity to set interim goals and celebrate along the way. Most people respond to positive feedback and achieving their set goals will help keep your client motivated to continue, no matter how many sacrifices they feel they have given. Set the goal, celebrate the win, and give them the opportunity to share their success. Whether this is through social media or a personal message to your client, positive feedback is important, and celebrating success is key to a great and lasting client relationship.

Provide client incentives

When you think of incentives, you may think about money. Loyalty programs offer incentives like a percentage off or free sessions but there are other incentives that work just as well. How about you offer a more relaxed session once a week, where you concentrate on massage and stretching. Or possibly you might offer one of the fun sessions we mentioned above as a reward for reaching milestones. It might even be a gift to celebrate losing kilos. Whatever motivates your client should be used to help incentivise them to achieve their objective and these ‘gifts’ will help you to keep a happy client and a growing business.

For more information on managing clients or growing your personal training business see the Scheduliser app.

Scheduliser helps you manage your PT clients in an easy-to-use platform with unlimited client capacity, auto appointment reminders, and cancelation notices, and in-built business insights to help you increase your return, grow your business and save valuable time and money.