Getting your clients to push themselves.
There are some clients that I work with who work hard but not as hard as I know that they can. Do you have any tips/tricks that work for getting that client to push themselves harder to reach their full potential? (For example I really want this client to work harder but since we work in a pool I often feel like she isn’t working as hard as she should be). Any suggestions would be great.
Two things I would add are:
1. What is the purpose of the workout? what physiological adaptations are you trying to achieve? If it is for the aerobic system or heart conditioning for example, you can use the talk test to determine if it is aerobic or not. You want to use the least stressful stimuli necessary to cause the body to adapt. It serves no purpose to workout harder then necessary as aerobic capacity is based on volume not intensity.
2. You also need to look at psychological adaptations. If your client is not working as hard as they can maybe you could focus on the mental side of exercising. Just like physiological training psychological training and pushing one self should happen gradually over time it is not something that you can just push someone into.
Ultimately it comes down to the clients goals and what they are trying to achieve/gain if they are happy or still improving there really is no point in them pushing themselves harder.