Five Ways Personal Trainers Can Help New Exercisers Succeed

By: Christin Everson, MS

Personal Trainers are often the first point of contact for new exercisers and can significantly influence their perceptions of fitness spaces. To be effective, trainers must consider their approach to this unique group to help them achieve success and, ultimately, exercise adherence.

New exercisers are not just beginners who need more information to be successful. They need a thoughtful and considerate experience that provides safety (physical and emotional), guidance, validation, personalized support, and education. I define a new exerciser as someone who has not participated in a traditional gym or fitness setting before or hasn’t done so with any regularity. Regardless of their participation experience, a new exerciser can also be someone who may feel intimidated, uncomfortable, or a lack of belonging in fitness spaces.  

In 2020, the CDC estimated that only 24.5% of US adults aged 18 and over met the physical activity guidelines for aerobic and muscle strengthening exercise (CDC, 2022). That’s over 70% of Americans who still need support in engaging regularly in physical activity, which demonstrates how much more work the fitness industry must do to support this unique client. This requires us to look more critically at the fitness experiences we provide new exercisers to ensure our effectiveness.

The overall goal in working with new exercisers is to make it easy for them to succeed.

Here are Five Ways to Help New Exercisers Succeed

1. Check Yourself

As a fitness professional, it’s likely been a while since you were new to exercise. This means it’s easy to forget how intimidating fitness environments can be and how exclusive fitness cultures can feel. Your body understands movement and how to complete it, and you may forget (or have never known) what it’s like to be unsure of what your body can safely do.

Simply put, you know too much to accurately identify with a new exerciser entering your facility for the first time. That gets in the way of you creating spaces and services that facilitate new exercisers' belonging. So, the first step is to check yourself. Check your knowledge, check your comfort, and check your expectations of others. Challenge yourself to look outside of your experience and expertise and work hard to understand new exercisers' unique challenges and perspectives. Do this every day.

2. Skip Traditional Fitness Assessments

For most new exercisers, traditional fitness assessments are unnecessary, shame-inducing, and a barrier to seeking personal training services. It’s not that fitness assessments can’t be a valuable source of information, but the risk they impose is too great. The information they provide is not worth the risk of the client never returning due to embarrassment. New exercisers are already unsure, self-conscious, and nervous, among other feelings, and the last thing they need is to spend a considerable amount of time being told by an educated stranger how “out of shape” they are (while I know this is not how Personal Trainers will speak to their clients, this is usually the clients perceived takeaway). The self-efficacy model calls this a stress arousal, and it does not support behavior change.

If you have a new exerciser in front of you, it’s because they are ready for change, which likely took them weeks or months of thinking about it before they arrived at your facility. Instead of leading with assessments and using biometric data as the entry point of their experience, focus on listening. Ask meaningful questions and listen to understand what’s important to them, what brought them in, and what’s motivating them. Focus on the behaviors and actions. Focus on creating exceptional experiences that leave them feeling capable, strong, and successful.

You might be thinking: “How am I supposed to program if I don’t know where they are starting?” If you ask detailed questions, you’ll know exactly where they are starting. You don’t need quantitative data to program for this client; you need qualitative data. With the information they have shared with you, you can create a basic, easy-to-complete program.

Now the next question you may be asking “How do I demonstrate their progress without quantitative data?” Check out this article for more suggestions on what to do instead of traditional biometric assessments.

*To note: This is with an understanding that the client is healthy and/or has received physician clearance to participate in physical activity.

3. Ask Direct Questions

Our standard inquiry questions usually target the physical elements of exercise information, such as past exercise history, health history, injuries, and exercise preferences. Extending our line of questioning to understand their feelings about exercise will provide a more meaningful discussion that helps us better support their entire experience.

Ask direct questions about their comfort level in gym settings. We need to understand their feelings about exercise and exercise environments: do they have anxieties around using equipment, concerns for their physical safety, fear of being judged by fellow members, etc.

Outside of understanding their feelings about the exercise experiences, we also need to identify their level of self-efficacy related to physical activity in a traditional gym environment. Ask direct questions that help you determine their level of self-efficacy, such as, “Using a 1-10 scale, how comfortable would you feel coming in to workout on your own without a personal trainer?”.

Knowing these details will help you proactively create an exercise experience that helps them feel successful.

4. Program for Success

As stated above, the most important consideration for working with a new exerciser is that they perceive the experience to be successful. The self-efficacy theory calls this mastery experiences: when clients experience success when accomplishing a new skill or task, their self-efficacy increases, and they are more likely to stay engaged in healthy behaviors. When clients experience a perceived failure, their self-efficacy declines, and they are not as likely to continue with that action.

When working with a new exerciser, it’s essential to create an exercise program that we know the client will succeed in.

At times, fitness culture communicates more of a threat of fitness: how intense the workout will be, how sore the client will be, etc. This does not support the adherence of new exercisers. Self-efficacy theory also demonstrates that an increase in stress arousal is associated with a decrease in self-efficacy. When creating programming for someone new to exercise, focus on providing them with a program that will have low-stress arousal and perceived success each time.

Remove the pressure of achieving a specific intensity or learning specific skills. Instead, create basic, easy-to-succeed programming that will increase the client's self-efficacy.

5. Prioritize Comfort

Yes, comfort matters when helping folks adopt a habit like exercise. If we want new exercisers to return to fitness spaces, we need to make it easy and provide them comfort over all else. Intensity and challenge can come later when they are still showing up and have increased their self-efficacy enough to be excited to try more.

So, focus on their physical and emotional comfort instead of achieving specific intensity levels. Allow them to push themselves when they want to. Let the goal be about showing up and doing what feels good, not what feels hard or what they’re “supposed” to do. Make it easy. Make it comfortable.

The number one goal for helping new exercisers adhere to physical activity is to keep them feeling successful so they can increase their self-efficacy and, likely, adherence. Check your own comfort and how that gets in the way of creating spaces for others. Ask direct questions, keep it simple, and celebrate their attendance over everything else.

REFERENCES:

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-Efficacy: The exercise of control. New York, NY: W. H. Freeman.

For more information on this topic and ACE CECs, check out my ACE-approved course, 10 Ways to Support the Adherence of New and Returning Exercisers.

Want to know if the clients are feeling successful in their sessions? Use my Personal Training Survey: This survey provides a comprehensive series of questions to gather quantitative and qualitative data about your client's experience working with a Personal Trainer.