When working with a client, it is good practice for a trainer to agree on goals with the client. While it may be easier to give the client goals to aim for, it is better to encourage the client to create their own goals and help guide them with this, as this will make the client feel more accountable for the goals as they feel they created them.
It is good practice to create three different goals for different time frames with the client, these being short-, medium- and long-term goals. These time durations will be agreed upon with the client however normally the short-term goal will be one month, medium term would be three months, and long term goal would either be 6 months or a year depending on the client’s wants/needs. The short term goal would need to be something fairly easily achievable for the client while still encouraging behaviour change, something like the amount of times the client attends the gym. For the medium-term goal, it is good to set this as some form of exercise based goal, whether it is to lift a heavier weight, or to run a 5K in a faster time. The long-term goal is normally the body compositional goal, whether it is weight loss or increase in mass, this tends to be a rollercoaster journey for the average client and therefore setting this as the long-term goal means you can take into account blips and bumps along the way. All three goals should be considered as steps to help to take them to their long-term goal.
These goals should be SMART, which is an acronym for:
Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time Based
And the goals set need to tick each of these to be “SMART”. If we take a weight loss client for as example, for it to be specific, it cannot just be “lose weight” as a goal, it has to be specific amount of weight, or inches lost, say for example 10kg. To make the goal measurable, we must perform some sort of measurement/assessment at the start, in this example a simple reading of the client’s weight from a set of scales. However, we need to make sure that we follow protocols correctly, weighing the client in at the same time of day, using the same scales, etc, to ensure the most accurate reading each time. For the goal to be achievable for the client, we have to ensure that the weight loss is achievable within the time set for the client, so this ties directly into the time-based part of SMART. It must also be something the client is capable of as well as being healthy for them to do. For example, a weight loss of 30kg for a client with a BMI of 20 would likely be unrealistic and unhealthy to do. For the goal to be relevant, it has to be something that is specific to the journey the client is on, so for example if their goal is to increase a deadlift, setting them a goal of being able to run a 5K is not relevant to being able to increase their deadlift. Lastly, time based is the length of time we agree with the client for them to be able to achieve the goal within, so we take the original goal of losing 10kg, and we give the client 6 months to achieve this, that would match in with the ACSM (American College of Sports Medicine) guidelines of losing between 1-2lbs per week.
Now for some warnings of working strictly with the client to predetermined goal framework. Firstly, for the client there are two potential risks, the first being that the client doesn’t hit the predetermined goals. This can lead to the client feeling disappointed and potentially upset at themselves and you that they did not make the goal, this can have a huge negative effect on their motivation and their belief in you as a coach. This is why all goals set must be achievable as well as realistic, and the client must be held accountable to their prescribed programming. The second potential risk is the client actually hitting their goal and feeling a sense of disappointment or a sense of “what now?”. A great example of this is Tyson Fury, his story is a famous warning of the risks of goal setting. Tyson lived his entire life to the goal of becoming the world heavyweight boxing champion, which he completed, but what happened next? Tyson became incredibly depressed as he now didn’t know what else to do with his life, he got extremely overweight and developed an alcohol problem, which eventually lead to him driving his car at over 100mph at a bridge fully intent on ending his life. Tyson did not end his life and instead got professional help as well as from his family and started living his life more for his family than for goals. A similar warning can be shown with Olympic athletes who spend years training for a specific event and once they have achieved this, several of them completely leave their sport and end up feeling lost. Now these are obviously extreme examples, but the meaning is still the same, that training a client specifically to goals can be a negative thing to do if they either achieve or fail to hit the goal. Plus, for you as a trainer from a business point of view, if the client does not hit the goal, they may quit as they feel you have let them down. Or if you focus solely on getting them in shape for a holiday in six months’ time, then come that 6-month time period and they go on their holiday, that’s it, they are done and you have lost a paying client that you now need to go through a sales/marketing process in order to bring in another client.
I would personally recommend training the client more towards the enjoyment of their sessions, and the change in health, wellbeing, confidence, function, etc, as this will lead to longer term training and lifestyle change for the client and client retention for your PT business.
To summarize, goal setting is a very useful tool to help motivate the client but becoming over reliant on them as the main reason for training, can come with risks.
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