Not enough trainers have the coach’s eye – what do we mean by this?
It means that they simply don’t truly see what’s happening when they’re training their clients. They don’t watch for clues to see when their client should be regressing or progressing. They don’t see when exercises aren’t right and often hope that what they are doing will be fixed over time.
Take a barbell exercise for example. This is a strong indicator whether your client is ready to progress. We see so many personal trainers standing aside watching their client knock out 12 reps of an exercise, and they don’t even take into account the momentum and tempo of the exercise or what there should progress to in say a month’s time.
Just because your client is in their 50’s, doesn’t mean they can’t do a heavy weighted deadlift. If they’re strong, stable and their technique is good crank it up. If not doing so, you’re holding your client back from achieving better results. We never see age as a limiting factor for our clients, their body and initial assessment tells us everything we need to know. They all do exercises that they never thought they could do, and this is because they’ve all been progressed slowly at the right pace, taking into account all the coaching variables.
A lot of trainers spend too much time reading and following fancy weight loss diets and training systems, and they forget that the most successful coaches have spent many years learning and experiencing helping clients about mobility, posture and flexibility.
We see so many trainers who watch their clients execute exercises poorly, yet they don’t seem to spot what is actually going on. They don’t have what is known as the coach’s eye.
Now fair enough, this does come over time. Now I’ll be the first to admit I’ve spent a long time learning from coaches I respect in the industry along with also being critiqued myself. But if you’re a trainer who has not studied bio-mechanics, anatomy, posture, stability, you’ll struggle to spot these things.
If you haven’t spent time around top coaches and have not taken the admit to learn from them, you’ll never advance from your current position. So those who wonder why your client has not progressed for some time on your training system, it’s because noticed that they are not necessarily ready for it yet or they may need to be pushed harder in the right way that’s right for them.
The fitness industry periodically goes through many trends and is pushed widely through the use of social media. There are many personal trainers now moving forward in the body composition field. This is great for the rising obesity levels in this country, but too many trainers are missing vital aspects of coaching.
Fat loss isn’t about just giving somebody a diet to follow, supplements and helping someone to workout. It’s about taking someone who may have not trained before or for a very long time, assessing them and their current lifestyle and guiding them through the most effective programme for them, and then taking that person through all the progressions to achieve the end result.
We pride ourselves on the fact that our personal training clients don’t just look great, they move well, learn along the way and are so much stronger than they were before. I like to say that they’ve been coached, as opposed to simply being helped to train.
Would you like to know the training methods we use and the type of results we help our clients get into great shape and move better? Follow us on our social media channels below and keep an eye on our blog for more info.
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