This post is part of an ongoing series about my learning process as I train to become a personal trainer. In this post, I’m reviewing what my course materials say about screening clients. Then I’m going on to review the additional points that I consider to be an important part of the screening and interviewing process.
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The basics
My course notes detail several areas of questioning for personal trainers to cover the basics with their clients. The questioning usually takes the form of a written questionnaire, covering the following areas:
- Health and medical status – assessing the health and medical consent of a client is typically covered with a template Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire (PAR-Q). You can find plenty of examples of template PAR-Q’s on the internet and they aren’t particularly sophisticated. The basic PAR-Q is essentially a “red flag” questionnaire that is designed to stop you inadvertantly hurting someone. I get the impression that most above-average trainers put quite a bit more into their standard questionnaires than these, however.
- Exercise history – assessing the exercise history of clients is key to programming for them and understanding their capabilities.
- Exercise preferences - asking about the exercise preferences of clients is also helpful for programming.
- Motives and goals – central to what your client is coming to you for is help with certain goals. Asking about these is a good start. My course notes follow the modern trend of recommending making SMART goals, where S = specific, M = measurable, A = achievable, R = realistic and T = timely. While I am a huge supporter of making goals specific and measurable, I am not so bothered about whether goals are considered achievable or realistic. I think that many people vastly underestimate what can be achieved with the proper application of consistency and determination. Sometimes this can be mitigated against by reference to expert guidance but that isn’t always valid. The human being is a remarkably versatile, surprising and adaptable organism and I believe we would do well to avoid self-limiting thoughts and behaviours. On the other hand, setting the goal of being able to fly over tall buildings by Christmas probably isn’t sensible…
Of course, the above points are what you might expect of an enthusiastic, motivated and helpful personal trainer in a commercial gym. But I am a big proponent of raising the bar in this industry.
For a questionnaire that has been properly thought through, check out this version from Turbulence Training.
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#1: Posture and movement quality
Assessing a client posture and movement quality has been given a lot of air time in recent years, with people like Eric Cressey, Bill Hartman and Mike Robertson leading the charge. Here are a few resources on that:
- Assess and Correct - Eric Cressey, Mike Robertson and Bill Hartman’s resource for personal trainers is a valuable tool. Based on Eric’s experience, you perform two separate evaluations of the client. The first is postural and is carried out with the client in a stationary position. The second is for movement and involves observing the client perform certain key activities.
- Functional Movement Screen - Gray Cook’s screen is regarded by many as the gold standard in the industry and has many influential supporters.
- Bret Conteras and Keats Snideman – in this post on Bret’s Blog, Keats takes Bret through a number of assessments and shows that there is much more to screening that one set of tests.
- Joe DeFranco - in this article, Joe gives the key observations that trainers can make during a client’s first session without taking the time out to do a complete assessment.
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#2: Strength standards
In line with my beliefs about the importance of strength for health and longevity, which are largely encapsulated by Biomarkers, I have to put strength standards in my assessment. That doesn’t mean I’m going to start testing everyone’s 1RM but I have a fair idea of what people can lift when I see them manipulating lighter weights for reps. There are a number of resources on strength standards around:
- Rippetoe and Kilgore - this is where everyone seems to end up when they’re looking for strength standards and for good reason. Rippetoe and Kilgore provide an extensive set of tables showing weights for a range of bodyweights for men and women, categorised as untrained, novice, intermediate, advanced and elite. The lifts covered are the press, bench press, squat and deadlift.
- Tim Henriques - Tim has a lot of experience in training people and training trainers. He gives his thoughts on where lifts should be in this article on T-Nation. Tim just gives three categories, being “decent”, “good” and “great”. Tim’s article addresses a couple of additional lifts on top of the ones addressed by Rippetoe and Kilgore. Tim adds the leg press, press ups, the bent over row, dips, pull ups, EZ bar curl, skull crusher and the plank to the list. The criticism here, obviously, is that Tim uses repetition maxes for the bodyweight exercises, which is a measurement of muscular endurance rather than muscular strength. I am not a fan of this methodology as I know from personal experience that you can take your 1RM chin from about 30kg to 70kg without changing your maximum number of chins…
- Mike Boyle – Mike needs no introduction. Mike presents his thoughts on strength standards as part of this article and focuses on what he considers to be the lifts that mark functional strength. Mike picks the bench press, clean, front squat, one-leg squat and weighted chin up. I think it’s important to note that Mike’s standards are for athletes and not for strength athletes. Therefore, his guidelines are on the low side.
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#3: Diet
From my own experience and from discussions with a select few other people who I know have lost fat and kept it off, I feel quite strongly that changes in body composition occur fastest and most easily from changes in diet. I think there may be a few exceptions to that rule and I imagine that they tend to be strong people with very high work capacities, little external stress in their lives and plenty of time on their hands.
To that end, therefore, I intend to provide my clients with a dietary questionaire. I’m not suggesting that I will be looking to provide complex dietary advice but I can work to a couple of basic rules:
- More calories = strength and muscle gain
- Fewer calories = fat loss
- Processed foods containing lots of sugar = poor recovery, poor mood and insulin spikes
- Real foods = good recovery, better mood and fewer insulin spikes
So if my questionaire comes back showing that my prospective client lives on chips and beer then I might make having that conversation a priority…
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There is always the danger of collecting information and not being equipped to process it to its full potential. But, on the other hand, not collecting the information means that you don’t even have the chance to fail…
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