Keep Detailed Records of Your Client’s Training Sessions

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By Sal | May 12, 2010

Keeping accurate records is an important part of a personal trainer’s/strength coach’s job both for administrative purposes and for designing and implementing workouts.  For the sake of brevity the focus of this article is how to keep detailed records of clients’ workouts, an important and valuable function of the job of a fitness professional.  You can read about this subject in more detail in my book, "How to Make More Money As a Personal Trainer."

Personal trainers should plan all workouts ahead of time, and depending on the level of experience this can be anywhere from two-hours to two-minutes before the start of a client’s workout.  The longer the relationship with a client the easier this process becomes.  However, never start a workout with a client without having a pre-determined plan for the session.  Take 30-seconds to jot down the goals for the session and the order of exercises and the training session will go a lot smoother.

I’ve worked with most of my clients for at least eight years and yet on days when I have five or six sessions in a row I take the time before I start training to write down an outline for the workouts in each client’s chart.  With all the other responsibilities of the job it’s a bad idea to leave everything to memory.  Having a chart to refer to, and make notes in, during a session will make you a more efficient and better trainer. Your clients will recognize this as professional behavior, which will help to establish and maintain your credibility. This brings me to another point; keep separate charts for each of your clients.

You must have a separate file for each client, and in it keep a detailed record of your client’s workouts. This file should be an integral part of how you run your business and train your clients.  Even though I stated that the focus of this article is the need to keep detailed record of your clients’ workouts, keeping accurate training records is also an important administrative task, as keeping track of your clients’ sessions is an important part of your billing function.  But that’s a different topic for a different article.

Keeping detailed records of clients’ training sessions is a vital task for a personal trainer and trainers who do not use this kind of file system will encounter problems that are otherwise easy to avoid.

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Topics: Administration, Personal Trainer Coaching, Training Style | No Comments »

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