Coach's Chat
Coach's Chat
Helping Clients Appreciate The Results They Can't See
As trainers we understand the wide variety of benefits that come with consistent resistance training. And some of the best results are actually the absence of something (no more back pain, not feeling winded any more) but that can be tricky to quantify and even harder for a client to notice. In this episode, I offer suggestions for helping clients recognize and appreciate these really important quality of life wins.
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Hey, hey, this is Coaches Chat. I'm your host, Betsy Foster, personal trainer for over 12 years. I started on a completely different career path and headed into personal training with just a piece of paper that said I could do it. I learned along the way, building a successful personal training career in commercial gyms, privately and remotely. And now I'm here to help you. Whether you're a new grad, a career changer or somebody who's already a pro just looking to get better. I'm sharing what I know, the stuff the textbooks didn't teach you, and bringing on other colleagues to share their experiences, and I'm doing it with compassion, big smiles and a lot less bravado than you've come to know in the fitness industry. I'm happy you're here. Let's get going. Hello, hello, welcome back to another episode of Coaches Chat.
Speaker 1:I just got back from vacation. It was delightful I don't know the last time that I took the whole week, like Monday through Friday, off, with the weekends around the end. My usual way to do it is like I'll work Monday through Wednesday and then I'll do Thursday through Tuesday, so that I can always have sessions on either side, and I have tried in the last few years to break myself from that so that there's really time away. Now, the thing I didn't anticipate was setting up some work tasks that ended up needing my attention while I was gone. But that is okay, because we just learn from those kinds of things. But I'm coming back from vacation. This is also probably the first time since I don't know a year and a half ago that I took a full week off of training. I probably have taken maybe that when I was sick, but it was not by choice, and that might have been one time within that year and a half. Other than that, i have not missed more than maybe three days in a row, which I say that not to go like oh look at me. It's just so routine for me And it's something that I really crave, that sometimes creating that opportunity for taking a break is something I have to schedule for myself, and so I wrote my own program that ended before my vacation started. I've had a few trips out of town recently where I have worked out this one.
Speaker 1:I knew I was going to be walking a bit and then it would be very. You know there would be movement involved. I usually need some movement, but it was significantly different than my training sessions, and I have to say that I came back to my workout on what day was it? And it was so exciting to get back into the gym, and part of that was just because I really let myself be done. I didn't do any of these half-assed workouts that are just like checking a box.
Speaker 1:I really took the week for rest. Now, what happens sometimes with coming back from rest is that things are a little harder. Sometimes things are fresher. A few things I was feeling like, oh, this feels really good, but a lot of it is just like, oh, okay, you got to get back into the swing of things. But I say all this to one tell you a little bit about me. But also to say that in what was it So?
Speaker 1:uh, i started having some like neck and shoulder discomfort. Now I would call it pain, and now I would say that it's partially related to my ear, so there might be something else going on, but my sinuses feel fine. I don't know. That inspired the idea for this episode. So what I think we could do better as trainers is to highlight what training does to maintain our quality of life, what training does to keep things at a status quo that we really enjoy and we don't realize it is supporting that until it is gone. Why do I say that?
Speaker 1:Most of the week I was like taking care of the kids a lot. I was holding my youngest daughter a lot. She tends to be um. I tended to hold her more on the right side, um, and that's where I'm feeling that sort of neck and shoulder discomfort. Now I will say that that's probably a lot more than I did regularly, like I didn't really hold her all the time on that side, um, just because there aren't when we're home, there aren't that many reasons, but we were like walking around and um, and she was just like delightfully clingy Um, but I was holding her a lot on that right side, and so I'm feeling this like neck and shoulder discomfort, and what I thought about in that was, like you know what, i don't feel a lot of aches and pains in my day to day. I really don't. I feel like comfortable, i feel strong, i feel capable. I typically can pick most things up that are pretty heavy. I don't have to ask for help on a lot of like carrying things, but if I do, i I can, you know, hold my end, um, there aren't too many times a day where, like I'm going oh, my back aches or my neck aches or whatever, that is because of training And it's something that you can't see, because you can't measure it without the absence of it. Similarly, like, while I I think that both are contributors to my neck and shoulder discomfort, or the fact that I was holding her more and that I wasn't training consistently, because even in that week of training, i'm typically getting some work on stability, i'm getting some work on balancing some things out, and it all adds to how I feel in my body day to day.
Speaker 1:This notion that our strength training supports so much of how our bodies feel and how our bodies feel good, or the absence of our bodies feeling bad, is so key to getting people to buy into training, particularly the the largest group of people who will have the available income to train, who have an interest to train, individuals who are in, you know, later years of their career, maybe retirement years, maybe they're noticing their body age and they're feeling aches and pains. I think there's such an emphasis on this idea that we need to provide body transformation all the time. We are providing body transformation and it might not be what you see in a picture. Instead, that body transformation is the absence of increasing aches and pains. It's the absence of I took a step one way and now I like I I didn't, you know, measure my step very well and I fell. You know, fall prevention is a big part of resistance training I just like turned a little bit and now I'm now my back is in pain.
Speaker 1:I noticed this with so many clients. We we as people, don't really realize something has changed if we don't have something to truly like grasp onto. So for many people who are suffering from consistent, you know, day to day, like back pain, neck pain, hip pain, knee pain, any of these things, when it's gone there, there may not be as many fireworks or celebrations because it so seamlessly sort of disappears and you almost don't notice how much better you feel. And what we need to help our clients understand is that is that our training is not just about looking different, losing weight, changing body composition. Some of our greatest training achievements are the absence of things, the absence of exhaustion at the end of the day, the absence of difficulty sleeping, the absence of persistent low back pain, and this is a hard concept to communicate. So what I want to encourage you to do as a trainer is to really start talking about that, talking about what?
Speaker 1:this and we always say quality of life. Quality of life, quality of life. I think that's a great umbrella term, but we got to get more specific about it. What is it about your quality of life? When is the last time you felt like you needed to take Tylenol or Advil, for you know nagging aches and pains? When is the last time you felt like it was a real effort to get up out of the chair? When is the last time you felt like you couldn't keep up with, like you know, the activities that you want to be doing? When's the last time you felt out of breath doing this thing? We don't always have them check in on those benchmarks. So that's an important thing Helping clients realize that some of the biggest wins that we take away from training are actually the absence of the stuff that we didn't like in our day-to-day.
Speaker 1:Our bodies feel a little less stiff. Our bodies feel a little bit more capable. The things that we do in our day-to-day life, like picking something up, don't feel as difficult. So here are some ways that you can help your clients sort of cue into that. One is you bringing it up yourself. So asking about you know how is that low back to discomfort for you? How has it changed over the last month, two months? What was it like when we first started training? Tell me about the difficulty of these three exercises. Sometimes it's the absence of difficulty with things that used to be difficult. Then I want you to encourage your clients also to make notes of these sort of like absence thoughts in their day-to-day. So when they take a walk, they get through the walk and they realize that at no point in the walk did they feel like they had to stop. Tell them to mark that down on the calendar or in their notes app on their phone. Again, it is not as flashy as a huge weight loss goal on a scale. It's not as flashy as new or smaller clothes, if that's what you desire. I'm putting big air quotes because some people don't want to get smaller, some people want to get bigger. Again, we're not giving morality to one or the other. We're saying that those things tend to be celebrated and easier to quantify than the absence of things. Encourage your clients to make notes of this, checking in with them. We want to help them develop a language around what quality of life relative to their training is.
Speaker 1:I think that as trainers we forget that we understand how these things contribute to how your body feels better or how your body doesn't feel these other things anymore. It feels like it has more energy, you're not as sluggish, you move faster, you are moving in less pain. We forget that our clients sometimes don't connect what parts of their training have contributed to that. It's easy to get in our own world and start to see where it all connects. It's really important for us to help our clients see that. It is something that may feel like obvious to us, but the more opportunities you can draw those conclusions and help people get from point A to point B of oh, i can see how doing this two times a week for the last six months is the biggest thing that I've taken on in my life and I notice that I no longer feel constant knee pain. Now it's duller and it's only later in the day. Then, six months from then, it's different and it's less.
Speaker 1:Again, the absence of things are hard to quantify, but for so many people, particularly those who are aging, particularly those who are looking for the feel better element that comes with training, we have to do a better job. We have to be a little bit more explicit in our language and we have to think about what elements of their improvement that they may not be keying into or queuing into. We have to say, oh, i don't think. When I'm hearing them talk about like, oh, it's not going well, or I'm not lifting any heavier or whatever, i need to be able to hear that and go. I hear that you're frustrated about the weight loss, or I hear that you're frustrated that this exercise is still hard. When I highlight A, b and C as a way of showing you that those things are no longer challenges for you or you no longer feel that way, that can be so helpful in again reinforcing that buy-in, but also for helping to continue that encouragement along the way.
Speaker 1:We don't want to leave so much time between people hearing what their wins are. I mentioned it all the time we need little wins all the time. Some of those wins are the absence of pain, are the absence of difficulty, are the absence of lack of confidence or vulnerability when it comes to the gym. That's a big one. I help my clients understand that they used to be afraid to do that on their own and now they go on their own. Now they do those exercises and they don't need me in the same way, they feel confident enough to do it. That's what is tricky that the absence of something is a harder thing to communicate. It's a harder thing to sell. Even trying to communicate it in this podcast, i've been like is this clear? Is this clear? It's harder to do, but it's really important. It's a big, big part of what many of our training clients if you work with general population, especially an older population are going to be experiencing and need help understanding.
Speaker 1:All right, that's it for today. Thank you, as always, for listening. I'm happy to be back. My schedule is such that the goal here is two episodes a week. This episode will come out on Tuesday and then there'll be a fast Friday. We're just trucking along. If you have any questions or episode ideas or you just want to chat, you can always find me on Instagram at foster underscore strength, or you can email me, betsy, at be the letter B, foster strongcom. Again, thank you so much for listening. Until next time, go do amazing things. Bye.