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Training Strategies For The Five Kinds of Clients

Most fitness professionals tailor their programming
to five kinds of clients, who have five distinct training goals.

Reviewing the client types and their specific workout needs is helpful because it
illustrates a divergence between what most trainers like to do and what
most clients actually want. If we’re honest with ourselves as an industry,
it’s probably true that we most readily identify with athletes,
bodybuilders and people trying to lose weight, while our clients are most
likely regular folks who want to be more fit and healthy.

To become more successful, we have to focus more on what the majority of our clients
want.

Most fitness professionals’ clients
fit into one of five categories based on why they’re exercising:
physique, performance, physique + performance hybrid, fat loss, and
general fitness and health. (This, of course, leaves out special
populations such as people struggling with obesity or those going
through postrehabilitation training.)

PHYSIQUE CLIENTS

  • Create a training environment that
    triggers the three mechanisms of hypertrophy: mechanical tension, muscle damage and metabolic stress (Schoenfeld 2010). To create this environment, use a mix of set/rep ranges by working with different loads.
  • Dedicate more weekly work volume to bringing up less-developed muscle groups.
  • Do standard sets and paired sets.
  • Use body-part weekly training splits or
    total-body workouts.

PERFORMANCE CLIENTS

  • In the offseason, use a more traditional
    linear periodization training approach: hypertrophy/base, strength, power and power endurance. The final power-endurance phase “peaks” the athlete so he or she is conditioned at the start of preseason and can focus on skill training.
  • During the competition season, use a concurrent model with a mixture of power training, strength training and hypertrophy training.
  • Do tri-sets and quad-sets.
  • Use total-body workouts to minimize
    fatigue in specific muscle groups.

PHYSIQUE + PERFORMANCE HYBRID CLIENTS

  • Use a concurrent model with a mixture of power training, strength training and
    hypertrophy training.
  • Use a mix of set/rep ranges by working
    with different loads.
  • Do paired sets and tri-sets.
  • Use a push/pull/lower-body training split
    or total-body workouts.

FAT LOSS CLIENTS

  • Emphasize achieving a caloric deficit primarily through dietary habits.
  • Emphasize the 3 C’s of metabolic
    strength training—complexes, circuits and combinations. They create a high metabolic demand because they require more extended, high-intensity, total-body efforts than traditional strength training methods do (Tumminello 2014).
  • Maintain consistency with basic lifts, to monitor any potential loss in muscle and strength, but continually add some movement variety to keep things fun and interesting.
  • Use total-body workouts.

GENERAL FITNESS AND HEALTH CLIENTS

  • Integrate power training, strength train-
    ing, bodybuilding, 3D movement training
    and body weight applications.
  • Use a wide spectrum of sets and reps,
    along with a variety of training tools, from basic free weights and cables to bands and balls.
  • Maintain consistency with basic lifts, to gauge progress, but continually add some movement variety to keep things interesting and enjoyable.
  • Use tri-sets and quad-sets.
  • Use total-body workouts.

To read in more depth about how to tailor your programs to these five types of clients, please see “Training the 5 Types of Fitness Clients” in the online IDEA Library or in the October 2015 print issue of IDEA Fitness Journal. If you cannot access the full article and would like to, please contact the IDEA Inspired Service Team at (800) 999-4332, ext. 7.

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