Dealing With Failure
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By Sal | October 28, 2009
[caption id="attachment_552" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Personal training client performing hang clean"]
[/caption]Despite being well intentioned and knowledgeable there will be times when clients will not respond to exercise sessions. If you take your responsibilities seriously this failure – whether it concerns performance of a certain exercise or the over-all program – will bother you.
So the question is, faced with this situation, what should you do? What I do, and I must say I feel much better for doing it, is to totally blame the client for their shortcomings and failures. For instance, I’ll say, “Hey, it’s not my problem. I can do pull-ups.”
Aha, gotcha! Just kidding. I wanted to see if you were paying attention. I never blame the clients. Seriously.
Over the years I have had the occasion to doubt myself, and my methods, in the face of a clients’ lack of success/progress. If you care about the job it’s natural to question yourself in response to failure. In some cases, especially early in your career, you will find an area of your program that you can improve. After all, nobody’s perfect.
The best thing to do is to stay positive with your client regardless of how frustrated they might be with their lack of progress. Our job is to accentuate the positive, especially in a situation where a client is legitimately trying their best. Don't let them know that you’re also frustrated, but still empathize with them.
Having a system that features a learning progression, like the one in my book, makes it easier to re-trace your steps and find areas where you could have done things differently. If you refer back to the client’s file you can review the specifics of the workouts and make the necessary adjustments.
Recently, I experienced a situation with a client who was having an awful time performing pull-ups. I followed my progression to a “T” and yet could not figure out how to break my client out of the slump. What really stumped me was the fact that I had 4 other clients during this same period who went from not being able to do 1 pull-up to being able to do 3. This was the most trouble that I ever had getting someone to do pull-ups.
Having a track record of success – both recent and over 20 years – and a system to follow has helped to keep me positive and has helped me stay positive with my client. Experience told me there was not a physical reason for the client's struggles. The system allows me to be meticulous in my analysis of the problem, and as a result I knew – and my client knew – that we would solve the problem. Pull-ups are in my clients’ present.
Stay positive, stick to the system and be confident in your abilities and you will solve whatever problem, or short-term failure, you are faced with.
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