Inspiring People to Work Out

We generally believe in the long term – basically long term anything! Anything that is short-sighted or done for the short term according us does not last and is not healthy. As a fitness consultancy we are here for the long haul.

And for long term success in the health and fitness industry, we believe in making long-term clients – and that means being able to motivate them for months and even years. Every human being is different and what works for one client may not work out for another but there are indeed some very efficient time-honoured strategies for helping keep people motivated about sticking to an exercise routine and hopefully to continue training with our trainers – rather than someone else! Over time we have realised that some workout strategies tend to work with extroverted clients and other are more effective with introverts.

Knowing Your Clients

We believe that the best thing that one can do in order to motivate a particular client is to understand him / her. Understanding the basic nature and personality of a client can go a long way. Is he / she shy or friendly? What is his / her profession? What is the family environment (is she single / married with kids / married without kids / divorced / living with old parents)? What does she do in her spare time? We believe that the more information that we have about our clients and find out what makes her tick, the more our trainer will be able to connect with her. Here are some techniques below that we employ to drive client engagement with our personal trainers.

Contracts

Contracts make people committed to others as well as to a program. They are especially effective with introverted people as the contracts makes them accountable. Ideally both client and trainer must sign a contract in order to show that they are committed to their goals. The contract also acts as a takeaway that the client can show others. A lot of times, we make our contracts very specific and state very explicitly what it is that we expect our clients to do so that there is no question about the client’s expectations later on and so that no misunderstandings can happen.

Rewards and Pacts

Before a client enrolls with us, we often ask them to take advantage of our Pact Program. In this, the client pays us higher than average rates with the knowledge that he / she must complete for example 15 sessions in a month with our trainer. If the client manages to complete the predetermined sessions, he / she gets a cashback of upto 10 % that month. If he / she doesn’t then the money is all ours! This can be a huge motivation for a client to stick to a program and lose weight because as we all know – Money is the greatest motivator of them all! Why not use it to improve your health and save you a fortune in medical fees in the future!

Journaling

A lot of studies have proved that keeping a journal can help people stick to their workout regimens. We encourage clients to keep a book or an online calendar or jot their records on a mobile fitness app. At the end of every month, the client knows how far he / she has come and that acts as a huge incentive to continue the training.

Fitness Tests

Fitness tests can also be a great motivator especially for extroverted personalities. People generally will work out harder if they know there is a test coming. Of course, most goals set are reasonable goals which takes into account the current fitness level of a person. However, Fitness tests cannot be used with every client if they don’t align with the goal and motivations of a person. You cannot do fitness tests for someone practicing Yoga because competitiveness and trying to push against one’s limitations goes against the very ethos of Yoga.

Self Analysis

After clients have trained for a while, our trainers are encouraged to use an evaluation form. The form has questions such as:

• • Why did you originally enrol for our services?
  • What were some of your original motivations?
  • Did you ever feel like quitting? Why ? Why did you carry on?
  • Did you have any ‘aha’ moments? What were they?
  • How can we or your trainer make your experience better?

Answering these questions can help clients learn about what their own motivators which can develop efficiency for workouts.

Surprise

One of the simplest but most effective ways for a trainer to motivate a client is to surprise them. It could be in the form of birthday wishes or it can be in the form of rewards when clients reach their goals. Actually you don’t really need a big occasion to surprise someone. Human Beings love to be surprised and we believe surprises lead to better bonding which in turn leads to better workouts!

In the end we believe that our goal is not only to create fitness programs for our clients but also for them to become more engaged in their workouts. Helping clients enjoy the feeling of a workout – not only the results they achieve from those workouts – is the most effective way to help them become intrinsically motivated, and to help inspire them to reach their goals.