Tips to Keep Fitness Clients Motivated

As a fitness business owner, you know that keeping clients motivated is crucial for their success and your business's growth.

Motivated clients are more likely to achieve their goals, enjoy their fitness journey, and continue using your services. And, happy clients are more likely to refer you to their friends, helping you boost your referrals.

Managing your clients fitness motivation can be done either as a one-to-one personal fitness trainer, or as part of managing a gym or fitness studio.

Whether you're offering personal training, or you manage a gym where you don't really interact with many of your clients, there are plenty of ways to keep clients focused. In this blog we'll examine how you can improve your clients fitness motivation in two parts.

In part one, we'll look at the one-to-one methods, for personal trainers or sports coaches.

And in part two, we'll look at more general methods to help your clients hit those fitness goals.

Part 1: Personal One-to-One Methods for Fitness Motivation

When working with a personal client, you will have obviously assessed their fitness levels, physical capacity and time commitments. You know they're exercising regularly, but now you just need to help them get the best results from their workouts.

These steps will help you keep on top of your clients fitness goals and keep them focused.

1. Goal Setting

Setting clear and specific goals is the foundation of fitness motivation. Encourage your clients to set SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) goals. These goals provide a clear direction and purpose, making it easier for clients to stay focused and motivated.

For example, a SMART goal might be: "I want to lose 10 pounds and decrease my body fat percentage by 3% in the next three months." This goal is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant to the client's fitness journey, and has a set timeframe.

2. Regular Progress Assessments

Tracking progress is essential for maintaining motivation. You should regularly assess your clients' progress through body measurements, fitness tests or weigh-ins, and provide feedback on their improvements. Celebrating milestones and fitness achievements is a great way to boost clients' motivation and help them stay committed to their goals.

For example, you can schedule monthly progress assessments to measure body composition changes, strength gains, or improvements in cardiovascular fitness. Share these results with your clients and congratulate them on their progress.

3. Personalized Programs

Clients are more likely to stay motivated if their workout plans are tailored to their goals, preferences, and abilities. Design customized workout programs that consider clients' individual needs and interests. Continuously adapt these programs as clients progress to keep them engaged and challenged.

For example, if a client enjoys outdoor workouts, incorporate outdoor exercises into their program. If they have a specific goal, such as running a 5K, design a plan that focuses on improving their running endurance and speed.

4. Positive Reinforcement

Encouragement and praise can significantly boost clients' motivation. Provide positive reinforcement by celebrating their efforts and achievements, both big and small. This helps build clients' confidence and self-esteem, making them more likely to continue working hard towards their goals.

For example, congratulate a client for setting a new personal record in a strength exercise or praise them for consistently attending their workouts. These small gestures can have a significant impact on their motivation.

5. Building Rapport

Establishing trust and loyalty with your clients is crucial for maintaining their motivation and keeping them as clients.

This means showing genuine interest in their lives and goals, and actively listening to their concerns and feedback. Building strong client relationships can lead to long-term commitment on their part, which also means a better chance of success.

We don't need to tell you how to build rapport. But when you have a good relationship with someone, they're more likely to take your suggestions seriously. Yes, even if they are paying you.

6. Variety and Fun

Preventing boredom and burnout is essential for keeping clients motivated, and ensuring they stay with your program until the end. Keep workouts fun and varied by trying new exercises, incorporating games, or changing workout environments. This can help clients stay engaged and excited about their fitness journey.

It can also be a great way to develop your personal rapport and even help them get out of their comfort zone.

Some suggestions to keep it fun might be to introduce a new exercise or piece of equipment each week. You might also find a fun way to do a workout you know that they don't like, or do things like use music or even a one-on-one challenge (them vs you in a sit ups challenge for example).

7. Understanding Failure

We all have lives to live, and so there is only so much a fitness trainer can do to keep their clients focused. While you might hope they stick to a healthy lifestyle outside of their classes with you, they might have a lapse day (a big birthday night out with too much drink and sweet treats for example). Or they might find that stress at work is impacting their focus and positive energy.

And that's OK.

This might not affect this person's determination to succeed overall, but you can help them in controlling failure by being understanding and even adapting to setbacks.

Again, this is where the building rapport is important. We're all different, we all have bad days, we all have real-life challenges beyond whatever fitness goal we're working towards.

Have a plan for setbacks and don't make them feel like they failed, but that this is simply a bridge to cross. Help them push past mistakes and they'll appreciate your efforts even more.

Part 2: Online Methods for Fitness Motivation

While we'd all like to help out fitness clients smash those goals, if you're running a bigger fitness center that just isn't a reality. At least not on a personal level. However, that doesn't mean you can't offer plenty of fitness motivation as a business owner.

These tips are designed for people running gyms, online fitness classes or other less direct fitness businesses.

1. Online Community

Creating an online community for your clients can foster a sense of camaraderie and accountability, motivating them to stay focused on their goals. This might mean using social media platforms such as a Facebook or Whatsapp group, or maybe a channel such as Slack or Discord.

It could also be your own website or app. So long as there is a dedicated forum where clients can share their experiences, progress, and support each other.

Having peer support can be a great way to help people focus and feel like they're not alone in their fitness journey.

2. Virtual Challenges

Keep clients engaged and motivated by offering virtual challenges that they can sign up for. These challenges can include step challenges, workout streaks, or weight loss competitions.

Virtual challenges can create a sense of friendly competition and motivate clients to push themselves harder in their workouts. Again, if there is a forum, this can also encourage them to compete with their peers or even keep each other accountable and motivated.

Make sure to promote your challenge clearly in advance and build a buzz before you get started. When managing a list of fitness clients with gym management software such as Arbox, you can send out email bulletins or create a landing page for signups.

You should also use social media to build the buzz about your upcoming virtual challenge to ensure the best attendance or take up.

3. Educational Content

Providing educational content can help clients stay committed to their goals by equipping them with new knowledge and ideas. The best way to do this is with informative blog articles, videos, webinars or social media content.

Identify what your clients need to know and deliver regular content about relevant fitness topics, such as nutrition, exercise technique, or even mental health.

A good example is to share a weekly blog about how to get in shape, or even to share fitness motivation quotes with a video guide.

Make this content clear, useful and easy to access on your website or social media.

4. Success Stories

Showcasing client success stories can be great motivation for other clients to stay focused on their fitness goals. Sharing these stories on your website or social media platforms, can be both a boost for the client and your own social following.

You could create a "Success Stories" section on your website where you feature clients who have achieved significant milestones. With their permission you could also share these details in your weekly newsletter or email communications.

Before-and-after photos, testimonials, or even a video interview can all be great ways to highlight your clients successes.

5. Online Personal Training

Offering online personal training sessions can help clients maintain their fitness routine and stay accountable to their goals, even if they cannot attend in-person sessions. This flexibility can be especially valuable for clients with busy schedules or those who travel frequently.

There are plenty of tools for hosting online personal training sessions such as Zoom, Teams and Google Meet.

You can either offer online classes as part of the service, or charge as an additional add-on. Make sure to manage online classes with Arbox gym management software. This means your attendees can easily sign up, you can also send reminder emails and follow ups. And if you need to take payment, Arbox seamlessly integrates with your website or allows you to create a landing page for the specific event.

6. Regular Communication

Maintaining regular communication with your clients is essential for keeping them engaged with your fitness business. A good way to do this is with regular scheduled newsletters, for example weekly or twice a week.

This fitness email marketing helps clients feel connected to your business and motivated to continue their fitness journey.

Fitness motivation doesn't necessarily mean sending emails telling them it's time to get sweating. It might be fitness quotes, testimonials, diet ideas to help them eat healthy, special offers or challenges - all of the things we've mentioned in this post so far!

7. Show Them Progress

Giving people access to data about their progress is also a good way to encourage them and get them to exercise regularly. For example, if you provide a BMI assessment, or track their weight from week to week, this can be one of the strongest motivators.

Whether you do this using an in-house tool, such as BMI scales, or you ask them to input their details online, being able to see the data and hopefully also the physical change can help people stay focused.

Communication is Key

Keeping clients motivated is essential for their success and the growth of your fitness business. And a key part of keeping the momentum going is communicating with your clients.

While it's relatively simple to do this as a personal fitness trainer, keeping in touch and not being too spammy can be tricky for fitness business owners.

Gym management software like Arbox helps you to manage your communications and schedules for your clients.

Sign up for free and help your clients on their journey to a healthy body.