I reckon I must have one of the best jobs in the world. Well, from my point of view it certainly is. I’m sure if your say, a banker, and you love your job, then that job feels like the best. Or any profession that you cherish I guess.

What do I love about it? It’s the people you meet and the profound effect you can have on their lives that’s the best part. Over the 9 years that I’ve been doing this, the cross-section of characters I’ve had as clients has been astounding. People from all walks of life and every age, every ability and every vision of where they want to be. It’s not just a learning experience for my clients, it’s also about me perfecting my skills to handle this cross-section. Training and tailoring the experience for an 18 year old client is obviously TOTALLY different to a 40 year old one, for example. There’s sometimes a lot of contraindications to take on board before you even think about planning training. You really never stop learning in this game!

The ‘Post PT Effect’

One thing I see very often is something I call the ‘Post PT Effect’, it’s what all real personal trainers want for their ex-clients. It’s basically when clients stop training with you for whatever reason, and with your guidance (if they want it!) move onto training on their own. The goal of any PT worth their salt, is to give every client the tools and belief that they can maintain their own fitness themselves when they are ready to. The ‘Post PT Effect’ is when this self-belief really pays off long term, and for years after you stopped training certain clients, you hear off them telling you how well they are doing. You see them out running or in pics taking on triathlons for example. Taking on you as a PT was the spark that lit the fire, THATS the ‘Post PT Effect’!

In the next paragraph I’ll tell you what I mean…

A ‘Post PT Effect’ case study

Back when I began this job, I took on a client in his mid 30s, let’s call him Andy. He was slightly overweight and I guess you could say struggled mentally with this fact. On a weekly basis we would meet and he’d give himself such a hard time about how bad his diet and health was. It was hard to ‘break the code’, just how was I going to help him overcome his dietary and mental barriers? I figured out pretty quickly that weekly weigh-ins would be a bad move, over analysing his weight would just makes things worse. It was time to go old school with good old fashion training and fitness challenges.

Interestingly, I have found out over years of experience that many clients don’t respond well to constant weigh-ins and check ups. I’ve always seen better results when I act as their ‘performance coach’, setting physical targets rather than weight ones. It’s this approach that I used with Andy. We factored in a standard 1.5 mile best effort run into his training as one of his wishes was to become a faster runner anyway. This challenge was done fortnightly and do you know what? As well as running times and his weight coming down, he began to get inspired to enter 5K runs. Within a short few months he’d cancelled training with me and gone solo, entering running events and taking accountability for himself. It’s been almost 9 YEARS since Andy trained with me, to this day I’ll see him out and about running, telling me how well he is doing!

Set them loose

The job of any PT is to set their clients loose and give them their responsibility back. As we’ve seen, done correctly it can be empowering long term. The difference having a coach can make is huge, and ultimately, it’s about training for free and not paying someone to help you! Remember this is about loving your job, in my field it’s helping people exercise, therefore, surely the gift of self-motivation is the highest accolade I can pass on to my clients. That’s the ‘Post PT Effect!’ If your a PT reading this, let me know your thoughts, does seeing ex-clients training solo give you the same buzz it gives me? Inspire your people, it will take them far.

Enjoying my blogs? Comment below with your feedback, it really does help me know what I’m doing right and wrong! As usual, if your interested in finding out more about my online personal training as it exists now due to Covid-19, get in touch!