What To Expect From a Personal Training Session
For me, a good personal training session should be as unique as the client. Going back 15 years when the health and wellbeing industry was beginning to really pick up, a cookie-cutter approach to personal training would be classed as the norm. Today the fitness industry is massive and only growing and it seems that everyone wants to be a coach or personal trainer, so the standards have risen quite dramatically. Although having said that you will still find lazy, uninspiring trainers all over the UK, often they won’t last in the job more than a few months and only the best have a fulfilling career from it.
For me, a personal training session is more than just exercise and that’s why I like to call them coaching sessions. I have one, sometimes two hours, each week with someone to help them as much as possible and making them sweat hard for that hour when in-between personal training sessions they’re eating and lifestyle habits suck is not a good way to spend the time. And so in my coaching sessions we might exercise, we might stretch, I might do some sports massage, we might set goals, we might reflect on success and failures and plan for the week ahead, we might even just talk rubbish for an hour!
Coaching sessions with me last anywhere between 30-60 minutes as sometimes you don’t need 60 minutes to have a great session that accomplished everything you set out to achieve. Would you be happier if you got the same great haircut but in less time? Exactly. Providing my client has left their session feeling it was the best, most productive time spent on their goals and needs, it was a success.
I gauge what the most productive things to do with our time together by asking a question. After greeting a client, the first thing I ask is “what would you like to get out of today’s session with me?” And we do just that. Sometimes I will ask to offer my opinion and make some suggestions that I feel would best suit their needs and so the session might be made up of both the wants but also the needs of the client.
I think it is vital to start a session with a blank canvas, no preconceived perceptions, or judgements whatsoever. Approaching the session like I’ve never met the person before and know nothing about them. Because what I’ve learned in the last 15 years is that people’s wants change from day-to-day.
We end the session with a couple of powerful questions; “what was your biggest lesson or take home from today’s session?” which is a great question to help my client leave with the key point of the session firmly in the forefront of their mind and secondly “if we were to do it again what would we do differently?” Only by asking this question will I know how to make their session even better next time.
Matt Jordan – the Energy Coach