For any personal or professional relationship, effective communication is the key to success.
For the success of your personal training business, as a fitness coach, you must connect with your clients at every touchpoint.
While it's easier to engage with the clients you have been training for some time, it might get tricky to establish a rapport with the new clients. In this regard, a set of specific questions will help you understand your clients better and chart out their workout program accordingly.
But why should you have a set of specific questions or an onboarding questionnaire?
It is so you can get to know your client, understand their background, fitness goals, etc., and develop a fitness plan or nutrition and workout schedule tailored to their needs.
Asking questions, therefore, creates a powerful shift in the coach-client relationship.
Five questions that will completely change your client onboarding process as a personal trainer
"What is your fitness goal?"
A fundamental question every personal trainer should ask to understand about their client is what is that goal that they want to achieve.
It could be to lose weight, get more flexible, adopt a plant-based diet, gain more muscle, health concerns, disease control, or any other personal reason.
To effectively design a fitness program and implement your professional recommendations, you have to know what the client wants and needs to feel successful in their mission.
Setting long-term and short-term goals ensure you're on the right track and on your way to health and wellness. It helps you and your client make progress in a timely and focused manner.
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This is another significant question to ask right at the start to assess if you have the qualifications to take up that client’s case and assist them in their fitness journey.
Recent or past medical conditions or injuries affect the fitness schedule. It is because a client suffering from a particular injury may not be able to follow what others are doing. Or, following the same workout as others may cause them more harm than good.
For instance, a client who has been recommended to not lift heavy weights may damage a particular muscle group if they do so. Therefore, it's best to personalize the fitness schedule to match client requirements. And thus, as a personal trainer, you must be aware of your clients medical history.
This question not only clarifies your client's capacity to complete specific workouts but also helps you figure out what will work best for them.
"What is your daily diet like?"
As a fitness trainer, your job is to assist every client in determining the best nutrition plan for them, whether it is a Keto, Paleo, High carb or low carb diet.
To do so, you'll need to evaluate your client's eating habits, as only then can you create a diet plan tailored to their needs and goals set at the first step.
The most suitable diet plan will be the one that aligns well with your client's body type, weight goals, health benefit, exercise of training requirements, etc., and that they enjoy enough to follow religiously to stick to it in the long term. After all, success will be achieved if your clients follow your fitness program with focus.
"What is your schedule or pattern?"
While this may seem like a silly question but the fact is sleep can have a major impact on achieving fitness results. A healthy adult needs between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night to function at their peak and to allow their bodies to repair and rebuild.
You'll need to know your client's sleeping habits to identify the approaches and strategies that will help a client to sleep better.
Remember one thing, that no amount of drugs, coffee, or technology can match the benefits of natural sleep and rest for our body.
Bonus Tip: Suggest your clients to disconnect from electronic devices like mobile phones and laptops for a half-hour or more before bed, as it will assist them in falling asleep faster and in sleeping deeply.
Read more about the importance of sleep here.
"What does your daily routine or lifestyle look like?"
A person’s lifestyle says a lot about how active they are. As a personal trainer, knowing about your clients lifestyle choices will help you determine the habits they must drop or adopt.
For you to optimize the results of your client’s new program, you must know your client's daily activities which will help you determine overall caloric intake, meal timing, exercise regime, and possible lifestyle modification recommendations.
The more questions you ask, the more you will know about your client, and the more you know about your clients’ lives, the easier it is to coach them to success.
All set to onboard more personal training clients?
These are just a few questions to ask your potential client that can help you to not only assist them better but also build your relationship with them.
If you get answers to these questions, you’ll have a great starting point to develop a game-changing fitness plan for your client.
But wait, what else can we do for you to engage better with your clients?
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