Introduction
Designing workout programmes is the foundation of personal training, whether it’s for clients in a gym, rehabbing an injury or coaching high performing athletes in sport. Being able to create a well designed workout programme will ensure your clients, whoever they are, stay engaged, motivated, and on the path to success. In this article, we’ll go over the three basic rules of programme design that you must get right in order for a programme to be successful.
Have a Starting Point
Every successful programme requires you to understand where your client is currency. You must meet your client where they currently are, with a thorough assessment in order to get an understanding of what they’re capable of, their limitations, and their goals. Here are the main things to focus on to find a starting point
Movement Assessment: You need to start with an assessment of their physical state, how they move and how strong they are. This will give you an understanding of the areas that must be improved.
The Client’s Goals: You must communicate with the client, and get an understanding of what they want; whether it is to improve performance, lose weight or recover from injury. Once you know the client’s goals, you need to make your programme specific to them, avoiding blanket programmes applied to a whole range of clients.
Prioritise
Once you have made an assessment of your client, the next step is to focus on what actually matters the most. Finding clarity on priorities will ensure that you both remain focused on the short term goals, which ultimately lead to the longer term goals.
Choose just 2-4 focus areas to work on, and don’t try and improve everything at once. Select the most impactful goals based on the assessment you made at the beginning. From here, you can build a phased approach to address priorities in turn. For example, you may want to start with mobility in order to build a foundation of great execution in exercise form, before you move on to heavier strength training.
Remember, all priorities should reflect the clients’ lifestyle and goals. You may want to reduce the number of priorities if the client is training less, or increase slightly if they have more time to train in the week.
Communicate
Effective programme design requires two way communication with your client. As well as you communicating the programme to them, you must listen back, in order to know if they understand and are invested in the programme. Good communication will help build a better coach to client relationship, which in turn will increase your client retention rate and help the client reach their long term goals.
Some good basic rules for communicating with clients include sharing the rationale behind what you are doing. Explain how what you’re doing will feed into their short term and longer term goal. Gather feedback from your clients, and ask for their input. Do they enjoy the programme? Is it manageable for their schedule? Make sure you use their feedback to make adjustments. An unhappy client is unlikely to stick around for very long. By collaborating with your client on the programme, you give them a sense of ownership of it, helping them stay committed to it over time.
Applying these rules in your Personal Training
In order to implement these basic rules into your practice, here are some of the things you should remember and prioritise.
- Remember that customisation of programmes is what leads to results. They must be specific to the client.
- Limit your focus to a few priorities and make progress both achievable and measurable.
- Design the programme with the client’s input to reflect their personal goals, schedule and preferences.
- Educate your client by sharing the why behind sessions.
- Constantly refine the programme based on feedback and progress made.
Conclusion
The design of your programme for clients is ultimately what will get them results, and getting results is ultimately what will keep them working with you. Make sure you follow the three basic rules we’ve gone over in this article in order to get programme design right. If you’re not yet a personal trainer, then make sure you check out our level 3 personal trainer course. If you’re already a trainer looking to upgrade your knowledge and skill set, then be sure to take a look at all of our personal training courses.