Do your clients have a nagging, or recent, injury that restricts them from returning to train with you?
Learn How To Keep Personal Training Clients Working With You Using These 5 Simple Steps
If you’re a certified personal trainer, you know how all-too-common it is to “lose” a client due to an injury. Not only do you feel bad for the client based on the fact that this will set back their training progress but you also have a new gap in your schedule that you will want to fill quickly.
Even the most dedicated clients often stop seeing their favorite personal trainer anywhere from temporarily to permanently due to unfortunate injuries. Your client might be dealing with anything from a slight back strain from when they miss stepped on the curb to a break or needing surgery from a wreck on the ski slopes but this doesn’t mean that stopping their progress with your program needs to change.
Regardless of what created the tough situation for your client, here are 5 easy personal trainer tools to keep them on track and motivated even when they’re injured:
Show that you care.
One of the biggest turn-offs for a client is to feel like another spoke on your wheel. Successful personal trainers build a relationship with their clients from the beginning – healthy or injured – it is the surest way to gain their trust and loyalty for the long haul. That trust is even more important after an injury and the injury rehab journey!
Your client needs to know that you have their best interests at heart and will help them get healthy and stay healthy.
Assure them (and SHOW THEM) that you can help.
Get creative! Research ways that continued exercise under your careful supervision can help your client maintain their fitness during their healing process. Your client likely isn’t thinking about what they can do, they are likely focused on what they can’t do. It’s your job to remind them what they can do.
Educate them about certain exercises you can do together to help them maintain fitness and expedite their recovery. Take them through a mobility and neuromuscular assessment to see how their recovery is progressing.
Prevent over-compensation.
A common issue with an injury is that it leads to more injuries. Don’t let your client fall into this spiral.
If they start feeling their pelvis out of alignment or back out of alignment then they may be compensating during their injury. Helping them train and strengthen their muscular system appropriately to avoid over-compensation is key to getting them back on track. Simply put, this could be your number one contribution to their recovery!
Help them to avoid future injury.
There isn’t a magic pill to prevent all injuries but once you have helped your client achieve and exceed their previous fitness levels, keep them be prepared for even the most challenging compound movements by working on and ensuring muscular contractile ability in the isolated muscle groups.
Ensuring optimal body movement by having stability in mobility is key in enabling your client to handle the forces that it deals with in and out of supervised exercise.
Don’t give up.
At any phase in this process, a client can potentially be dealt another setback. Most all of us have been injured before. So we know how disheartening it can be. Empathize with their situation but don’t give up on progress. If you give up, they’ll give up. If they tell you about a setback, stay tuned in. Ask them questions about it before and during a session so you can better understand what they’re facing. If they start canceling sessions or missing appointments, find out why! A simple check-up on their health and fitness progress will help their morale and spirit.
That’s it! Common sense but commonly two or more of these elements are missed by even the most successful personal trainers, these simple steps will keep your clients coming back, even after an injury. Don’t give up!
Be your client's solution to injury and learn the tools to get your clients on the road to recovery! Start your journey toward becoming MAT Certified by learning more here.