Stop selling your time in one hour blocks, and use these simple tools to scale your business! These are the first of many key tools that every trainer should be using in order to use their time effectively and ensure success in their career with emphasis on being a trainer and not a salesperson.
Click on the download buttons at the beginning of each section to download your own free templates of the different documents discussed.
Click here to download the assessment template. Note: You'll have to unzip the folder to view it.
To easily create assessment templates and complete them digitally with your clients, try Trainer+ today.
The assessment form is a crucial part of your training business for obvious reasons; without a baseline assessment of a client’s fitness level, you cannot truly tell what kind of progress they are making beyond their own subjective feelings and their weight on the scale. I like to be as objective as possible to make sure that the bottom line of your business is always taken care of, and your clients will certainly appreciate your applied knowledge to all of their objective fitness stats. Taking a few minutes when you’re going through the assessment to explain the science behind how lean mass and fat mass affect their metabolic rate, and the steps that need to be taken to make the appropriate changes to these numbers will go a long way in both validating to your potential client that your knowledge is valuable and worth paying for, and also justify a long term plan working with you.
You can download the assessment document above with three separate sheets: an initial assessment form, a long term progress sheet, and a reassessment form. Although it’s fairly self-explanatory, let’s briefly go through how to fill out each of these parts of the assessment. You may be tempted to print these documents and fill them out by hand, but if you use the excel file provided, then a bunch of the calculations, and copying over from one sheet to another will be done for you, allowing you to focus more on long term planning during the assessment.
1) Initial Assessment Form
This is the first form you will use with your new/potential client during the first assessment. Any initial measurements and calculations will happen here, and will continue to be the baseline for your client moving forward. The most important information to record includes weight, body fat percentage and activity level under the Starting column. The lean mass, BMR and AMR will be automatically calculated based on this information. In the measurements section at the bottom, fill out whatever information is important to you and your specific clientele.
The other key to the initial assessment form that helps with both long term fitness planning and selling your services, is entering your potential client’s goals in terms of weight, body fat percentage, and activity level (under the Goal column). This will help them understand the changes that need to happen in their body in order to reach their goals (i.e. strength training to increase lean mass which will in turn decrease fat mass and increase their BMR/AMR, which will make their caloric deficit greater in the long term for weight loss goals). The Change column will automatically indicate the changes that need to be made in body composition to reach a specific goal. This information also helps guide you in long term planning, and a quick explanation of these body composition numbers will help you communicate these changes to your client.
2) Long Term Progress Sheet
The long term progress sheet automatically pulls the starting measurements from the initial assessment page. Add the updated body composition information and measurements under the Current column, and the Change column will reflect the changes from the initial assessment to date. Doing this with your client will help them understand the changes that are going on in their body that often happen before they even start to see a change in the number on the scale. The more your clients can understand the progress they’re making when working with you, the more value they attach to your services, so the more likely they are to stick with you. If they aren’t seeing progress in these other stats, it’s a clear indicator that something isn’t working, whether that’s their nutrition, the program, etc… so it’s up to you and your client to modify accordingly.
3) Reassessment Form
Reassessments should be done about every 4-6 weeks (definitely no longer than 3 months apart) as a way of checking in and making sure the fitness plan is on track. The reassessment form is something that you should make a copy of and redo for every time they come in for a reassessment. Enter the numbers from their previous assessment under the Last Assessment column, and they’re current numbers under the Today column. The Change column will then show the progress they have made from their last assessment to their current one.
The difference between the Reassessment Form and the Long Term Progress Sheet is subtle but important. The Long Term Progress Sheet shows a client’s progress over a longer period of time, starting from when they first started working with you. Meanwhile the Reassessment Form will show how your client is progressing from one reassessment to another. Both are important perspectives for you and your client to understand. The former addresses their journey with you from beginning to present, while the other addresses the changes that are happening based on the fitness programming you have given them over a period of time (ideally from one phase to the next). With the reassessment form you can look at the direct impact of changes you have made to their programs and how this is affecting their objective fitness stats.
Now, it’s one thing to know how to fill out the assessment sheets, however, your ability to relate the information on these pages back to a custom fitness plan for your client is key to your success as a trainer. For more information on how to use the assessment form effectively for your business, download the free Personal Trainer Toolkit below.
Click the button below to download the workout/program tracking template.
Taking a few minutes to write out a program for your clients goes a long way in showing them you have a plan for their fitness. Tracking their workouts with it just further builds value for their plan, and emphasizes the importance of every workout, including the ones you give them as homework.
This sheet allows you to quickly create customized workouts and track them with some basic calculations. This process is made even faster as you build up libraries of workouts that you can just modify for the next client with similar needs. Whether you use this for the sessions you are working with clients, and/or for assigning homework for in between, it makes it easier for both you and your client to track and get value from the results.
In order to most effectively use the sheet above:
Customize the sheet with your logo, colours, and any other things you might want to track
Save this template in a folder, and also create a folder each for clients and templates
Create a workout by filling out the template, then save it to the client’s file and in your templates file if you wish to use it later. In the future, you will be able to just open a template, modify it accordingly, then save it in the new client’s file.
Give the program to your client and have them track the workouts when they are on their own, while you track the sessions done together. If you and your client track the workout using a smartphone or tablet, you can fill the values in directly to the sheet.
If either of you print the sheet and bring it to the workout, fill it out using pen and just update the values in the sheet when you get back to the computer.
For each subsequent workout, copy the last time the workout was performed and paste it underneath, modifying the values for the upcoming workout.
At the end of a phase, you should have one sheet for each workout, with each time the workout was completed laid out, and easily able to print out or see the whole program together. You can also easily compare some of the metrics around volume and time, in addition to specific exercises, to show improvements from the start of a phase to the end.
Make sure you customize the program sheet by adding the name of your client and the date. This emphasizes that you took time to build a specific workout for them.
Use the exercise list to indicate supersets or provide other instructions for when clients are doing workouts on their own.
This sheet automatically calculates some key workout metrics. If you want to ensure accuracy with these then you should be sure to account for volume in bodyweight exercises as well. The weight is up to your discretion (i.e. dips might be fully bodyweight, a hip bridge might be half of their bodyweight, etc…)
Be sure to indicate whether the exercise is 1 or 2 sided to make sure the calculations are accurate.
By filling out the start and finish times, the sheet can calculate more accurate results such as minutes per set and weight lifted per min.
By either you or your client filling out the notes section on the right, you get a clear indication of what modifications you need to make for the workout next time. This also creates an ongoing record of workouts and feedback on programs.
There are further specific instructions on how to build a workout in the spreadsheet itself.
Click the button below to download the long term follow up template.
Although following up with potential clients and those you have done an assessment or training for should be happening naturally all the time as you see them in the gym, you also need to build in specific follow up for long term check ins. Anytime you have invested your time in doing an assessment and plan for someone who does not buy training initially, or is a client who is leaving your care, there should be a next step. Reassessments have a much higher closing rate but they rarely happen from people who do not buy training, especially because there usually is not another natural follow up point. Making it a habit to always set up a next step with a potential client, take a minute to write it down, then a few minutes to follow up, goes a long way in making sure you see them again.
There are several pipeline management tools, or even email plug ins to manage sales communication and follow up (Streak for GMail is a favourite of ours), but this spreadsheet should do the trick as a simple tool. In order to use it:
Print each monthly sheet and put them in the proper order in a binder
Any time you have an interaction where a future session is not booked (assessment, end of a package, etc), discuss what and when your next follow up step will be. Make sure it is in the context of their fitness plan (i.e. they want to do the next two phases on their own, so follow up in 60 days).
Write the contact details and a quick note about what to follow up about in the future, then write those details into the appropriate date that you’ve agreed to talk again
Put aside some time each week for the different types of follow up and make calls or send emails. The latter is made much easier using some email templates (again Streak for GMail is great) where you just change a few details in the email to personalize the follow up, and this is where the ‘notes’ part of the sheet helps.
It may seem a little tedious, but this process ends up saving a ton of time in looking for new clients, since you have a potential client pool that you have already built some value with. It also means you can keep the conversation with these potential clients entirely about their plan and progress, which are more natural ways for you to follow up and re-engage.
Following up is crucial for maintaining and growing your business. You need to follow up to get clients, and you need clients to have a training business. As soon as you complete any type of assessment, especially one that didn’t lead to an immediate sale, you want to set up a date for a future reassessment or “check-in.” Schedule this date with them before they leave, and immediately put that person’s name and assessment notes down under the appropriate month in this sheet.
Although these pages might be blank at first, eventually they will start filling up. You should have a list of clients that you need to follow up with for each month, as well as a few brief notes on their assessment info (fitness level and goals would be some good information to include in these notes). This literally takes about 30 seconds to do; it not only keeps you organized, but it manages your potential client’s expectations that even though they didn’t buy a training package, this will be a long term relationship and you will be reaching out to them in the future. For example, if they don’t purchase anything in that visit, you can tell them, “I really think I can help, but I understand if you want to try it on your own. How about we book a time to reassess how have done on your own in 6 weeks and talk about the next phase of your fitness plan.” This is also a great way for people to disqualify themselves as leads; if they don’t want a reassessment after you follow up a couple of times, you know that they aren’t ready to re-engage at that point in time. If that’s the case, I recommend sending them one last email or message explaining that you will stop bugging them, but if they want your services in the future, they should feel free to reach out to you.
By doing this sort of long term follow up, you are ensuring that the initial time you spent on the assessment is providing value to both you and your potential client. It also means that you have an ongoing flow of leads that you can always reach out to. This way, you can treat the assessment as a long term sales cycle, instead of a rushed process that often turns potential clients off from your services in the first meeting.
