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Metrics: The Ultimate Money-Maker For Personal Trainers
Metrics are the ultimate money-maker when training and keeping clients. Here’s why and how to better take advantage of metrics and the process to build your coaching business.
When motivating your clients to work out and keep working out, metrics are one of the most powerful tools. It’s simple; humans want to see their progress. This is why ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos are so compelling. And while everyone loves to see a timeline of their body looking better, that doesn’t mean all clients define their success and progress similarly. If you have a variety of clients, they may all want to focus on different goals and metrics to track their improvement.
Ensuring your metrics are aligned with your client’s goals is one of the best ways to help your client feel like they’re succeeding and improving. Additionally, it helps build the relationship between the trainer and the client. If the client can see how you, as a trainer, are focusing on their metrics and goals they want to accomplish, they’ll want to stick with you for the long run.
Simply put, metrics are a money maker.
Here are a few of the best metrics you should be tracking:
PROGRESS PHOTOS AND BODY MEASUREMENTS
Visual before and after photos are the most helpful way to track a client’s progress. Seeing is believing, so be sure your software includes a timeline of Progress Pictures to show off clients’ improvements over days, weeks and months.
Additionally, weight and size are significant reasons for hiring a coach or personal trainer. So naturally, weight, chest, body fat percentage, bicep, and thighs are where most clients want to start. With each metric you add, you can place the current and target metrics to see each client’s +/- progress. This is the best way for a client to see how well you perform as their trainer. If you can show them that the numbers are moving, your clients will be convinced to keep working with you.
CONDITIONING
While body measurements are a great sign of progress, endurance and distance can often be a much better metric of a client’s health and ability. These metrics often improve much faster than body composition. Especially for deconditioned clients, these metrics can change drastically and quickly, helping motivate clients to keep pushing even when they don’t see a powerful change in the body. Add metrics that reflect the client’s interests, like a 5km run, a 10km run, a 1km row, etc. Measured by time, athletes can see their endurance and speed increase with every timed program.
sleep
A healthier lifestyle doesn’t stop at exercise, sleep is essential to creating a body that feels as good as it looks. Personal trainers know this and will want their clients to be able to get at least eight hours of sleep a night. Don’t be afraid to move into lifestyle metrics to help keep them on track.
functional
Functional measurements are another great way to help encourage and motivate clients, especially if they don’t see a big difference in their body after the first few months. Your Max Heart Rate (and Functional Movement Screens are a great way to track improvements, especially during injuries that hinder ability.
strength
Many clients can become frustrated when their body measurements don’t improve. They don’t believe they’re stronger when they don’t see their bicep becoming bigger. But measuring strength is a lot easier when tracking every exercise and the current weight used. When clients see they increased the weight of a bench press by 25 per cent, they’ll be proud of their progress.
nutrition
Setting nutritional goals for your clients is often just as important as the programs they accomplish every week. You’ve probably heard the saying, “you can’t out-train a bad diet,” and it’s true. A proper diet is imperative to a healthier lifestyle. Another useful saying is “what gets measured gets managed”. Having clients document their eating habits for your review is a great way to influence behaviour changes. The use of software like MyFitnessPal ad others can be a great way to enable clients to track their food and calorie intake, thus making it easier to keep on track with their nutrition plan.
The bottom line is, long-term retention of your clients requires metrics, which are also the simplest way to keep your clients coming back week after week to work with you. If they can see their progress through a visual timeline, weight and size changes, or their ability to run faster for longer, then they will believe in you and remain with you.
Toni Rennie
Toni is the Senior Product Marketing Manager – Coach at Xplor Technologies, which offers a global, cloud-based payments processing platform, as well as innovative software solutions such as the innovative metric-tracker, TrueCoach. If you’re a coach or personal trainer looking to track the metrics of your clients, with better accuracy and ease. Sign up for FREE 14-day trial at https://app.truecoach.co/sign-up
