Posted on September 12, 2014 by Jenny Cromack

This week the motive8 North personal training team are reflecting on our time working as a personal trainer and the experiences we have learned from.

In the last 10 years that I have been a Personal Trainer there one of the main things I have learned is that you have to understand your clients and what they are going through outside of their training so that you can adapt their training if needed and make sure they still achieve their goals. You also have to be understanding that people’s goals may change and what was once important to them may no longer be important at the moment in time, maybe when they have dealt with other stresses in their life then the importance will again be focused on achieving their goals. But equally, why can’t simply maintaining a certain level of fitness, weight , body fat be a goal itself?!

Due to my own mentality of enjoying working hard and finishing each session nice and sweaty, when I first starting personal training I thought that if I didn’t beast my client on each and every workout and if they weren’t hitting their targets then I wasn’t doing a good job. However as you get to know your clients more and understand the other stresses they are facing in life I believe you have to take these into account. For example if I’m putting pressure on my client to lose weight but they are also facing other serious life changing stresses is the pressure I am giving them a step too much, will it push them over the edge so they don’t achieve anything and feel more stressed?! From experience, it’s a fine line of knowing how much you can push your client and still encourage them to achieve their training goals…..the success to this is knowing your personal training clients. It’s about understanding which stresses are genuine reasons for maybe not sticking 100% to their training plan, and then showing your client more effective ways of still fitting in their training, and understanding those reasons which may have been an excuse to have a skive for a few weeks!

I’m a big believer that if you are stressed then exercise is a great stress reliever, it’s some ME time, it’s time to switch off or indeed ponder what is happening without your boss breathing down your neck, without the kids screaming in the background. Some time for YOU!

So, if you are facing stresses in your life which may be impacting your training then here are my top tips to still staying focused with your training.

1. Use exercise as ME time, as busy as you are or as stressed as you feel doing some exercise will make you feel amazing as you will switch off for a bit and forget about everything which is happening. Even if it’s just for 20-30 minutes.

2. Spend some time on a Sunday preparing your meal plan for the week ahead. If you’re already stressed why then add another stress of worrying about what you are going to eat and piling the pounds on by not eating well. Stress is often related to things you feel you can’t control in your life, but your eating habits are something you can certainly control.

3. Be realistic about your goals. If you are going though a stressful period and know you can’t train five times per week like you used to and can only manage 3 times then maybe you have to be realistic about your targets. You don’t want the added stress of unrealistic targets.

4. Be honest with yourself. Whilst you need to be realistic about your goals you also need to make sure you’re not using your stress as an excuse to not put as much effort into your training or eat unhealthily.

5. On the subject above, feeling stressed can often make us feel drained and exhausted. Again be honest with yourself if you feel like this then take an extra rest day, have an early night and wake up the next day raring to go and firing on all cylinders. However, don’t use the fact that you are feeling a little tired to skive a training session. Question yourself why you want to skip a session, would an early night be beneficial or are you just being lazy?

6. Be honest with your personal trainer. Whilst you may not want to tell us the nitty and gritty about what is going on in your life, if you feel that other things may affect your training and reaching your goals you must let us know so we can adapt things where needed. Or we can get the boxing gloves out so you can offload!!!

7. Prioritise your training. If you normally train 5 times per week, but one of those sessions is a knock about at squash with  friend and more of a easy workout then this needs to be at the bottom of the list in priority if hand on heart you can only fit in 3 training sessions but still have a particular goal to achieve. Make sure the first 3 workouts you prioritise are those which focus on your goals. Whilst it’s important to do things you enjoy, it’s also important to prioritise your workouts if you have particular goals you want to enjoy.

8. Be time effective with your training. Often when we are stressed it’s because we have other things going on at work or in our personal life which may take up some of the time we would normal use to exercise. Don’t think just because you only have 20-30 minutes you don’t have time to train. You DO! You could do a really effective 20-30 minute interval or circuit training session in this time. Check out some 20 minute workouts here!

Now, don’t worry, I’m not going soft here, I just think that as a personal trainer you must appreciate that people have other things going on their life and sometimes your sessions need to be adapted to accommodate this. I think I’m a pretty good judge of how much I can push someone both in their sessions and also towards their goals so no fear if I think you need a beasting then you won’t be getting off too easy!