Guaranteeing Results for Your Clients With an Assessment
By Dexter Tenison, CFT

There are confident trainers and fitness professionals that can, without a doubt, say that they can give results to every single client that they face. While the way to do this is to implement a technology that works, a key element that ensures the evidence that success has actually occurred is the assessment. This is one of the most overlooked parts of personal training, and if you fail to assess your client, you are setting yourself and your client up for failure.

Of course, most general clients want to lose fat, speed metabolism, and be healthier. However, we have to be the professionals that we are and help our clients realize when they are receiving results. Your initial assessment should include these factors in order to show and guarantee results:

• a baseline that includes mental assessment and the client’s body measurements,


• a health questionnaire,


• a fitness test that measures strength, endurance, and other things related to that client, and


• photos of the client.

In the first part of the baseline assessment, you should ask the client what their most prevalent obstacles are. You need to find out what, in their opinion, has caused them to fail in the past. This is a great opportunity to find some misinformation that your client has in his/her head as well as get a briefing of the clients past attempts to reach a fitness goal. Knowing these things will give you a chance to prove you are the authority that has the answer towards being fit and healthy. For example, if a client feels that his past attempts failed because he ate too much and didn’t do enough cardiovascular activity, you now have the opportunity to teach him about proper eating, where cardiovascular activity falls into the whole picture and to introduce that person to resistance training.

Next, ask the client their most pressing goal. If a client wants to lose fat and you are talking about how great they’ll feel when they work out, you aren’t pressing the right buttons to get that client motivated. If a woman wants to reduce the size of her hips and you are speaking about gaining muscle, you aren’t hitting the right triggers for this client and you are probably going to scare away this client. As a professional you know what to do, but you need the words from the client’s mouth in order to motivate the client. After, ask the client what changes they’d like to see in the mirror. This is more for you than them because you want to figure out their motivational triggers and use these to help them obtain their goals. You can point out to them when they are looking smaller and show them where you see the changes.

The part that most trainers forget is the most basic part of being a trainer: measuring the client at various places of the body to show results. Get out your tape measure (I recommend Myotape) during the very first session and measure the following areas: the waist, chest, arms, legs, calves, and any other place that is of concern for the client. Measuring body fat is great, but I promise you it doesn’t motivate most people as much as proof that there are reductions of inches. Personally, I do take a pinch using calipers from the triceps for women and then I take their weight to estimate body fat. For men, I only use a formula based of waist measurement and body weight. As body fat measuring isn’t accurate to begin with, I simply try to give an estimate. Also, I measure their resting heart rate as it will go down in time.

The great thing about measuring your client is when your client begins to get frustrated with themselves. When this happens, I pull out the measuring tape. Every single time I do this, my clients always have a reduction somewhere. This always rekindles the fire of my clients to actually see that it is working. If your client doesn’t see a reduction, then you need to re-evaluate what it is that you do because you are failing your client. Don’t blame your client as you are the one that hasn’t given the information to them in a way that they understand and can implement.

A health questionnaire is the usually the portion that trainers do a pretty good job of executing, but make sure you actually read it and use it for considering which exercises to give to your client. If a client has a knee injury, you may have to do modified variations of certain exercises in order to strengthen the knees and prevent further injury. Also, you want to know about heart problems and other things that may limit the client’s performance.

I now do fitness assessments, but I haven’t always. Every client I was dealing with wanted the common goal of losing fat and looking better. However, I decided to implement the assessments to further show proof that they are receiving results. While this is the most fun to administer, it is likely the least important to the general client. However, you can add it as icing on the cake for a client that you have helped lose body fat. Currently, for a fitness assessment I have them do a push-up test, a jumping jack test, and a crunch or sit-up test. I see the importance of a flexibility test as well as a VO2 max test, and I will implement these in the near future.

The reason why I say that the fitness assessment is least important most of the time is because most trainers are not dealing with advanced athletes. If you are like me, you are dealing with the general population. If you are telling your client that they improved in their strength test and the client only cares about getting rid of his gut, you are once again not hitting the right motivational buttons.

Finally, take a photo of your client. Don’t ask, just do it as part of your regular assessment routine, because this is part of what you do and you are the professional. You want the actual proof that they are changing. When a client has gradual results, they have a hard time remembering what they looked like a few months ago and they need the reminder that they were not always where they presently are.

Make sure you reassess at certain points of the training program. I usually do a reassessment once every four to six weeks because I want to keep my clients encouraged that weight training, doing some cardio, and eating right actually works. With this fail-proof assessment, you have multiple angles to show your clients that they are receiving results. When you have all of this in your arsenal, they have no choice but to realize that they are reaching their fitness goals.

Dexter Tenison (www.dextertenisonfitness.com) is an ISSA Certified Fitness Trainer and a master’s candidate for sports studies at The United States Sports Academy. He is the owner and a trainer at Body Transformations in Memphis, TN.