What is the most challenging obstacle you face in starting a fitness routine? Maybe it’s more than one. If the seed of a commitment mindset is already planted, then the next step is figuring out how to surround yourself with a support system that’ll keep you going through ongoing obstacles. There are three primary areas where an effective personal trainer can help beginner or novice clients to achieve long-term success in overcoming them.
1) Helping a client overcome gym intimidation. This is a pretty simple and straightforward reason to hire a qualified coach who can accurately show you how to move your body, perform lifts, and learn when to know to push the effort harder and when to dial it back.
Similarly, gym-goers can experience confusion about exercise selection, especially in regards to what is most effective and safe for their own bodies. Too often people will be overly conservative when it comes to effort-level and taking on the challenges of learning more advanced exercises and lifts when they are working out alone. Where I come into the picture is to teach a novice client proper technique and form resulting in creating skills which in turn boost confidence. If you are someone who finds themselves asking “what am I going to do today?” when walking into your gym, or feel like the weight-room is outside your comfort-zone, then try hiring a guide to show you the ropes (that’s me by the way).
2) The psychology of pain – It’s extremely common to have worries about doing certain things in day to day life for fear of pain response and also hesitancy to do certain things in the gym. According to the NCBI, around 80% of people will experience low back pain at some point in their life. Almost 30% have low back pain at any given time, as well as 14% have neck pain. But pain is obviously not limited to chronic back and neck pain, other highly common physical pain and discomfort not necessarily related to gym workouts can include shoulder pain (usually related to rotator cuff damage), wrist pain like carpal tunnel, and chronic knee and hip issues while walking and going up and down steps.
The first step towards changing the mindset around chronic pain or coming back from an injury is to figure out what sort of modifications result in the most progress with the least amount of pain and worry. Then, together, client and the trainer work on “movement tolerance” with slow but progressive overload.
3) The Expectation vs Reality gap. In my own personal experience in the gym, as well as my experience working with clients over the last 8+ years, there is one main reason that stands out to me as to why people generally fail to accomplish their fitness goals relating to their grand vision for themselves: is the Expectation vs Reality gap. I explain this as “to have a realistic approach, you must be willing and able to commit at a level that matches your vision. For example, most people these days have limited time resources, as work demands and family obligations can take up the majority of your ongoing time and energy. This situation can lead to the “all or nothing” trap, whereby someone may feel like if they don’t have the amount of time necessary for a full gym workout, then they might as well not do it all or put it off until “they do have time”. Unfortunately this scenario pretty much always ends in “nothing”.
With all this considered, my responsibility to a client for overcoming this as an obstacle for long-term success is to come up with an agreement with the client to find an indefinitely sustainable approach that results in a level of progress that promotes feelings of achievement without causing unnecessary burden or sacrifices on time and energy spent on work, family and leisure. If you are reading this and identify with any or all of these issues related to your fitness goals and challenges, I’d love to hear from you!
