As personal trainers and coaches, we can consider ourselves in the “behavior change business”. We often encounter clients who struggle with consistency, who possess the image of a goal yet lack the drive to achieve it. In this article, we will examine the various reasons clients may fight change/progress, as well as the real-life situations that can easily derail their consistency. Adherence can occur once we understand ways in which we can better provide motivation, intrinsic rewards, and a new, open-minded approach to help clients conquer their challenges and stay with a program that leads to success.
The Struggle to Remain Consistent
When dealing with client consistency issues, we need to realize that the problem may not lie with the client and their lack of action; perhaps the coaching format/process/approach needs reassessing. When our clients fail to remain consistent, what thoughts or resentments might lurk in their minds?
- Too challenging
- Not something I can achieve
- I lack the energy/skill set/resources
- Fear of failure
- (ironically) Fear of success
Shift the focus by using Motivational Interviewing (MI) at the first encounter with a potential client. Listen to their story, unique background, and history with exercise. Try starting a conversation with open-ended questions that necessitate more than a simple “yes” or “no” response. Such conversations often begin with the words “why”, “how”, or “tell me about…”. In this manner, we can slowly extract the underlying concerns and approach our training sessions based upon the client’s needs, not the agenda of the trainer.
How to Build Consistency
Contrary to popular belief, consistency differs greatly from willpower. It also incorporates behavioral patterns, habits, and mindsets. Below, we offer some of the most common reasons clients struggle with consistency/adherence to exercise:
- All-or-nothing thinking: This encompasses and ultimately embodies the view that the lack of perfection means one simply cannot move forward. Extreme dieting can lead to binge eating, which leads to guilt and quitting. Similarly, strict and intense workouts will lead to exhaustion/injury, which in turn fosters giving up.
- Lacking clear and achievable goals: In the absence of specific and measurable goals, many clients will struggle to remain motivated.
- An overwhelming feeling from attempting to change too much at once.
- Lacking a significant “why?”: Clients who do not possess a deep-seated reason for making changes will fail to stay motivated.
- Lack of accountability.
Trainers can approach their relationship with the client by utilizing a few key strategies:
- Encourage clients to adopt the 80/20 rule; this encourages them to strive for consistency rather than perfection
- Help the client create micro-habits or engage in habit-stacking that will build their own momentum as time goes on
- Encourage self-accountability by suggesting clients keep a journal of progress, wins, and setbacks
Understanding a Client’s Mindset
According to Carol Dweck, a Stanford University psychologist who studies the ways in which individuals view their abilities and how those views impact performance, most people fall into one of two categories.
Those who possess a fixed mindset believe that intelligence, skills, and potential get created and fixed at birth. Those with a growth mindset believe that they can cultivate abilities, learn new skills, and achieve limitless potential with hard work and dedicated effort.
As personal trainers, we do more than simply provide information and create workout regimens; we must also help clients develop the mindset, systems, and accountability they need to follow through with program adherence.
Strengthening the Ambivalent Client
Ambivalence refers to having mixed feelings about a task or commitment. Most individuals experience such conflict to a certain degree each day. When working with clients, trainers can help them visualize this very natural issue and then help them work through it.
Trainers might consider unraveling and exposing a client’s answers to the following:
- benefits of remaining in their current state
- underlying worries and challenges of changing
- benefits of changing
- downside of staying the same
- hope/optimism for changing
- how do they visualize what change might look like
The last two hold great potential. When a trainer knows what the client feels capable of doing, what they envision as possible, and how they believe changes will look, they can begin to understand (and ultimately convey back to the client) that the client truly does hold all the answers.
Walking clients through these steps normalizes the change process and allows clients to work through their ambivalence until they reach a place where the benefits of change outweigh the negatives of staying the same. Trust in a client-trainer relationship begins when the client knows their trainer has their back, regardless of their apparent readiness to change. This simple trust bond comfortably affords them the ability to decide if they want to change, or if they feel okay about their health/physique’s status quo. In this manner, the client always feels in control.
Why Clients May Lack Motivation
As coaches, we need to identify the root causes of a client’s lack of motivation before we can help them overcome it. Without knowing the cause of their struggles, we cannot help them achieve their goals. Below, we list many common emotions that often thwart motivation:
- Negative self-talk
- Lack of clear goals
- Fear of failure
- Lack of support
- Burnout
- Lack of interest
- Feeling overwhelmed
- Lack of autonomy/control
Most trainers know that a person’s motivation remains highest when they participate in something they find interesting and fun. Intrinsic motivation comes from internal reasons such as self-satisfaction, challenges, and pure enjoyment/entertainment. In contrast, external motivation hails from forces on the outside: a desire to look better, lose weight, or improve health. Both forms can work well depending upon the individual; a trainer will come to decipher which works best by having ongoing open dialogues with the client.
Motivation can be fleeting, but consistency creates real change. When clients can approach achieving better health from this mindset, it stops being about a temporary fix and becomes about creating a sustainable routine.
Assess the Client’s Starting Point When Setting Goals
Before a trainer can even begin writing a new client’s program, they must first determine the client’s starting point. Every individual comes to a gym with differing levels of fitness, motivation, and lifestyle factors that will influence their reality in terms of exercise adherence.
The initial assessment offers a chance to understand a potential client’s fitness history, current activity levels, health status, and even whether he feels mentally ready to commit to new fitness habits. The trainer might consider including the following questions:
- Can you tell me about your experience with fitness?
- Do you have any health conditions or injuries that may impact your training?
- How much time do you realistically picture yourself dedicating to your fitness goals?
Armed with this understanding, the trainer can begin to set personal training goals for their client. The SMART approach proves very helpful here. The acronym SMART encompasses the following:
- Specific: Aim for a clear and well-defined goal.
- Measurable: Ensure progress is such that the client can track it, either through body measurements, fitness benchmarks, or strength/endurance metrics.
- Achievable: Establish challenging yet attainable goals.
- Relevant: Goals should align with the client’s specific objectives.
- Time-bound: Having a deadline helps provide a client with a clear target towards which to work, thereby building in consistency.
SMART goals ensure that the client’s experience of personal training encourages progress without overwhelming the client.
Adherence
Ideally, every trainer and coach strives to make fitness not just something to do on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 9:00 am, but rather to have it evolve into a daily habit. Below, we list some tips to help clients foster this lifestyle:
- Bits and pieces: Rather than trying to cram all of the day’s workout in a single session, many individuals opt for breaking it up throughout the day. Ten minutes of exercise spaced throughout the morning, afternoon, and evening can offer as much benefit as 30 minutes done all at once.
- Buddy up: Having a dedicated workout partner can help keep clients motivated and on track.
- Pick up the pace: When walking anywhere, make it a brisk movement, rather than a stroll.
- Try a pedometer: Step-counters can provide an easy, inexpensive way to motivate a client. Give them a goal of working up to 10,000 steps per day.
- Limit screen time: Cutting back on television and smartphones helps to minimize sedentary behavior. Move around instead, by visiting the gym or cleaning the house.
- Do it while you sit: If a client cannot budge on their TV time, suggest they incorporate exercise moves into their time on the sofa. They can do push-ups and crunches during commercial breaks, or pause a movie to run up and down the stairs 3 a few times.
- Plan exercise into the daily schedule: Set aside a specific time to exercise, and write it in a planner or set an alarm on the smartphone.
- Establish a reward system: Suggest a client set short-term goals and follow through by rewarding themselves for achieving them.
Plan For Potential Obstacles
Sometimes, the best-laid plan for fitting a fitness activity into one’s limited “free time” will encounter barriers. Time figures prominently in such situations. One must take into account not only the time at the fitness center, but also the time involved in preparation and transportation to the gym. If, for example, a client relies on public transportation to get to their training sessions, any number of circumstances can lead to a time crunch.
Another commonly described barrier to regular physical activity includes perceived stress. Despite the fact that regular exercise typically leaves an individual feeling more energized, many individuals report feeling “too tired” for activity once they get home from a stressful day at work.
Environmental limitations represent another significant barrier to adherence to physical activity. For those individuals who prefer outdoor exercise, accessing places to engage in such activity can prove challenging; many neighborhoods lack adequate sidewalks, public parks, bike paths, or other recreational facilities. These barriers can compound, as individuals who believe that they have little time for activity would likely find themselves even more discouraged if they have to travel far distances to access adequate facilities.
Contingency plans built on an if/then statement prove incredibly helpful; they create a clear path for action and reduce decision-making stress in the moment. Building this into a client’s life can give the client more power; they will know what action to take in unexpected situations, linking triggers to desired actions to build new, healthier habits and improve self-control. Encourage clients to come up with their own if/then statements to address recurring situations.
Trainers may want to embrace the following coaching tips:
- Identify potential obstacles: Ask the client what challenges might get in the way of consistency and adherence.
- Create a backup plan: Talk to the client about how they might adjust their routine when life gets busy.
- Normalize setbacks: Thinking about what the trainer might say to themselves if they had a rough week can help them guide a client through such situations when they arise.
Accountability
The notion of accountability, or holding to one’s commitments to exercise, tends to encourage performance. However, it transcends mere productivity when it evolves into a support system, a structure that helps to anchor one’s goals within the framework of daily life.
A personal trainer understands that finding the right method of accountability may take some trial and error. The accountability system should contain self-motivation as well as the help of people who motivate the client without adding undue stress or pressure. Ask the client how they feel about having regular check-ins, sharing milestones (with their trainer or on Facebook/Instagram), and even making social commitments tied to their goals (entering a local 5K walk/run with friends from the gym). Remind them that these ideas can help them remain on track.
Capitalize on the Compound Effect
The concept of the compound effect explains that daily, consistent effort will outweigh short bursts of activity in the long run. Small actions, repeated over time, will lead to significant results. We can think of this as accepting the premise of “doing enough”: enough to get going each day, enough to see progress, enough to remain committed to one’s goals.
Trainers and clients must try not to downplay the progress made in daily efforts. Some clients consider themselves “adrenaline junkies”, thriving on super-challenging workouts every day at the gym. To these clients, accepting the compound effect into their psyches can seem daunting. Trusting this process means letting go of perfectionism and celebrating each step forward, no matter how small. Help clients find the balance; every step represents an action that moves one closer to their end goal.
The Positive Mindset and Internal Dialogue
Another way trainers can help clients remain compliant is by guiding the conversations clients have with others, and especially with themselves.
In all of its marvelous grace, the human brain simply cannot differentiate between fact and fiction when it comes to internal dialogue. Negative self-talk will erode one’s confidence and derail their progress. It will pull the client down.
If we instead try to encourage the client to embrace their progress and speak kindly to themselves, particularly when facing frustrations in the gym, they will, over time, develop a positive mindset, which works wonders for maintaining motivation.
Final Thoughts
By telling clients what to do, rather than meeting them where they currently stand, we take the change process out of their hands. Similarly, if we too quickly offer alternatives and new strategies, we begin to take on responsibility for their success, instead of empowering them to feel successful.
In order for consistency and adherence to thrive amid life’s busy schedules and inevitable barriers/conflicts, trainers must focus less on performance and more on competency. This will build confidence in a client, encouraging them to take stewardship of their own fitness and health.
References
https://appliedsportpsych.org/resources/health-fitness-resources/exercise-adherence-tips/
https://www.totalcoaching.com/blog/exercise-adherence/
https://stayfitmom.com/how-to-stay-consistent-when-life-isnt-cooperating/
https://www.dtcperspectives.com/impact-behavioral-coaching-adherence/
https://www.muriellemarie.com/blog/how-to-stay-focused-on-your-goals-when-life-gets-busy
https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/2013/11/04/making-exercise-a-daily-habit-10-tips/
https://quizlet.com/488878635/ace-chapter-three-quiz-review-flash-cards/
https://www.bizlibrary.com/blog/leadership/7-coaching-tips-managers-leaders/
https://www.girlsgonestrong.com/blog/articles/how-to-help-a-client-who-struggles-with-consistency/
