Counting During Personal Training Sessions
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By Sal | May 6, 2009
[caption id="attachment_476" align="alignnone" width="300" caption=""]
[/caption]Personal trainers and strength coaches must keep track of their clients' repetitions, and should not let clients count for themselves.
Personal trainers who lose track of repetitions aren't necessarily guilty of totally not paying attention to their client. Quite the contrary, as many experienced and inexperienced trainers lose track of their client's reps precisely because they are paying a lot of attention to their client, watching technique and keeping up with their conversation. The reality is that during training sessions personal trainers and their clients engage in conversations that at times can distract both parties from the task at hand.
Frequently, trainers will be making corrections, giving encouragement and/or providing verbal cues to help clients properly perform an exercise. And sometimes clients will be in a talkative mood that requires you to engage in conversation on top of all of the other, in-session responsibilities.
So what do you do?
The short answer is that you have to concentrate on the task at hand and practice the skill - that's right, skill - of counting during your sessions. I can keep track of repetitions while I'm talking and listening to my clients. I use a combination of counting silently and keeping track with my fingers - no wisecracks - and I update my client throughout the set. I tell my client when they're on a given rep and/or how many they have to do before they are done with the set, and this helps me to stay on track. Try not to always count off every rep out loud during a set, as this will get old really fast for both you and clients.
I have an old professional trick that can help you out of any "lost-count situation." Send me an email at sal@PersonalTrainerCoach.com if you want to learn it.
If you've yet to conduct a session you probably haven't thought much about this aspect of training style, but it is an important element of your sessions. Being able to consistently and accurately count repetitions during sessions is a reflection of competency and professionalism, and is a skill that every personal trainer and strength coach needs to work on.
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