Sometimes it’s hard to keep your online personal training clients motivated. What have you done lately to increase motivation and give your online clients a little push? When was the last time you took a look and reviewed their initial goal setting? Maybe it’s time to check in with their short and long term goals–are they on track to meet these goals? Are they struggling to get over a specific obstacle?
Are all the initial goals set out for your clients revolved around aesthetics (i.e. dropping body fat, increasing muscle mass, or weight loss etc.)? Perhaps it’s time to add in a few more goals based around performance/training.
When trying to lose body fat, it is easy to get frustrated when not seeing constant progress because progress comes in waves; however, to avoid that downward spiral of frustration and decreased motivation, challenge your clients in another way to take their minds off those aesthetic goals for a little bit.
Here are some examples of how challenges can get your clients to strive for progress and remain motivated. Challenge clients in a way that kind of distracts their focus from their long-term weight-loss goals:
1. Fitness related Challenge
This could be something in their program that they have found difficult, such as push ups or squats, for example. If you have a client who has had difficulty performing push ups off their toes then challenge them to this: offer some kind of incentive if they take a video of themselves performing 5 push ups off of their toes. Make sure you tell them to track their challenge in Trainerize so you can monitor and follow their progress. If they have trouble getting low enough with good form in their squats, give them directions on how to improve their squat technique and then ask for a video as proof once they are able to do it properly.
2. Food Challenge
Challenge your clients to track their food (macronutrient) intake everyday for a month in one of many food tracker smartphone apps (like MyFitnessPal) based on the specific macronutrient goals you have set out for them. If they hit their “macros” six days a week, offer an incentive. You could also challenge them to create one new clean recipe each week, and send you a picture of their creation for a month or two.
3. Building Their Support System
Challenge your clients to build their social support system by trying to get one new person each week to perform one of their workouts, or any type physical activity with them, for a whole month (i.e. walk with a friend, yoga, fitness class, or their own prescribed strength workouts).
These challenges should be different and more client-specific than the challenges you send out to all of your online training clients, as this will help your client feel more individually motivated and feel you actually care about their success in your program.
Try out it out to keep your client’s motivated, because remember: increased client motivation = increased results = increased client retention & referral = increased income for you!