All right, client forms.
So when you first look at kind of the overview of how the flow is going to
go for a new client or client in general,
we're gonna typically start with our application.
The goals for the application are qualifying the client determining do you
actually, or are you qualified to work with this person?
Are they qualified to work with you? We'll get into that in a minute.
And then what are their, um, objectives or motivation for coaching? So,
you know, what are their goals?
How do you need to structure this for this person, right?
Are they a lifestyle client, they just need help with something. Are they a,
you know, physique competitor? Are they have specific body part goals?
Are they um, some type of performance athlete?
Do they have athletic related goals that we need to consider?
Is that something that's in your skillset or wheelhouse? Next?
Once we approve that, they sign up, we have our intake.
So we're assessing the client, you know, what are their skills,
what are their capabilities, um, you know, training history, what's worked,
what hasn't worked, all those type of things.
And then what do we need to do to accomplish those objectives, right?
As we gather that information.
And then we just have like this recurring loop of check-ins.
We're assessing their progress and is our current approach working to accomplish
the objectives that we're wanting? And how do we adjust, right? So it's,
we get feedback, adjust, reassess, ongoing process.
So the first form, our application form has our two primary goals.
We gotta figure out is this person a good fit to work with you, right?
Obviously when you're a new trainer starting out, you need,
need and want clients, uh, as many as possible as quickly as possible, uh,
to get started. But we also gotta make sure that, um,
the qualifications are met on both ends.
Both are they qualified for you and you for them, right?
So do they have training limitations? Um,
and then what do they want you to help them achieve, right? If they, you know,
have all kinds of, you know,
intense digestive issues or something that seems like they might need an
advanced functional medicine practitioner and that's not you,
then the qualifications don't really match up there.
And maybe we'd be better referring them or maybe we let them know, Hey,
I can handle this part of your training,
but for these things you need to go to someone else. Again,
that's where having that referral network is really valuable.
That could help you still get to work with this person in the capacity that you
are best suited for, but still have their best interest in mind. Of course,
we need basic info, right?
Age training experience and why do they wanna work with you?
But the other goal for the application isn't just figuring out about the client,
it can actually be getting them to, uh, you know,
sell themselves to you in their mind, which can of course, uh,
make the likelihood that they actually sign up depending on, you know,
price range when they see the price, and we'll get into that in a later unit.
Um,
but getting them to qualify themselves and convince themselves that they want to
invest
In themselves with you. So asking them questions about what's their motivation,
why did they apply, apply to work with you specifically and not someone else.
And that can give you some insight as to, um, you know, one,
what your kind of message being spread out there is, right?
If there's a specific thing they came to you for and that's what you're talking
about, great. Um, this is again,
where understanding the avatar that we're aiming for is very important.
And then, like I said, getting them to start selling themselves to you.
So you could even ask them questions like, you know,
why do you think we would work well together? Or something along those lines.
Now you don't want to obviously phrase it in a way that, um,
makes you come off in,
in a negative light or seemingly arrogant or anything like that.
But asking questions that basically get them to uh,
try and promote themselves to you can work well from a psychological perspective
as well.
Cuz then they're obviously more excited when you accept them as a client, um,
because they feel like they're putting in some effort into it.
Once we get to the intake, uh, our three goals are training history,
current struggles and logistics. So training history,
obviously we would like to know what hazard hasn't worked in the past,
so if things have worked, we can take those into consideration,
maybe reuse those things. Haven't,
obviously we can avoid those so we're not just beating our head into a brick
wall and wondering why the thing's happening. And then where they are now,
if they have, um, you know,
a specific training program they've been doing for a while, um,
depending on your knowledge of programming periodization program design,
that can be very helpful to help us pick right away what the best probable
stimulus or program will be based on what they're doing right now. Uh,
what their current nutrition is like.
So that can be a really easy way to find out, you know, for example,
asking them What have you been doing for the last six weeks?
Has it been working? And then what are you currently doing?
And that tells you right away what we're doing right now,
it is or isn't working. We either need a change or we can stay the same.
You know, this is their maintenance calories,
this is a good amount for a deficit.
All these things can be things you can take notes on to, uh,
basically accelerate your, um,
intake and assessment process of this person to be more accurate with your
programming and stuff right out of the gate.
And that obviously looks better on you when they start getting results right
away. Current struggles. Uh,
so it could be lifestyle stuffs like schedule stuff, uh,
which kind of also goes into logistics. Um, do they have a lot of work stress?
Do they travel a lot?
And that limits their training time to certain days or certain times of the
week. Uh, recovery issues, sleep quality, digestion issues. Um, you know,
obviously if again those aren't in your scope or wheelhouse,
maybe just getting a general idea of those things,
not getting too specific with the questions in those areas. Um,
cause obviously as we get more specific with questions,
the client begins to think you have answers for those types of things.
So we don't want to kind of put ourselves, uh, into a ditch logistics.
Um, if you're working online, we need to know what kind of equipment they have,
not just assuming they have everything under the sun.
They could be working out at home, a moderately equipped home gym,
a you know, a small studio gym, like a 24 hour fitness or something.
Or they could be going to life fitness or whatever that has every kind of
equipment under the sun and usually two or three versions of it. Um,
obviously if you're in person, you know exactly what Quest equipment you have,
so not really an issue check in. Uh,
so once we get into that kind of assess and readjust loop, um, our goal,
first goal, what immediate changes have we had either from, you know,
if you're doing it weekly, biweekly, beginning and end of program weights,
measurements, biomarkers, those are really easy things to assess. Um,
biomarkers can kind of go in both, um,
because some might be a quicker change like, hey, their sleep went really, uh,
quickly to, you know, kind of degraded this week.
That could be something to take note of or maybe it's progressively got a little
bit worse, uh, further digestion over the course of this program.
Those are things we can take into account to figure out was the volume of
stimulus too much? Was the nutrition off? Um, those are all things, um,
that we cover in great detail in course three with lots of examples if that's
something you're interested in as well. Um,
so training adaptations obviously are something we need to keep track of with
our trends. Are we progressively overloading in some way, shape, or form?
That's obviously a very important one.
And then goal number three is just general feedback, right?
Are there anything that they're struggling with this week? Like, oh, they're,
you know, their waste and body weight went up and we are in a fat loss phase.
Oh, but you know,
they traveled and they didn't sleep for three days and they were eating takeout
food. Okay, well it wasn't my program, it was life got in the way, right?
So we need to make sure we're staying on top of those things. Uh,
asking them if they think there's any areas for improvement on their end can be
a good one.
It keeps them kind of conscious of what they're doing throughout the week.
If they know, oh,
I have to answer this question of what can I do better that can help them be a
little more mindful, um,
and potentially increase some adherence to a lot of the program stuff you're
gonna do.
When we get into the questions for the check-in stuff, um,
very important.
Obviously we need to ask questions that are relevant for you to use.
Just finding a list of every question you could possibly think of is not
really that helpful. We need to make sure that we actually, you know,
are getting useful information that we can do something with instead of just
essentially wasting the client's time, right?
Asking them questions that aren't kind of useless at, at least at that moment,
right? So don't ask about things you don't know what to do with or, um,
that you can, you know, refer out for that kind of stuff. For example,
don't ask about blood work if you aren't qualified or knowledgeable in reviewing
blood work, right? Sometimes that becomes a popular thing. Someone learns about,
you know, one, uh,
biomarker metric in a blood test and then they want everyone's blood work and
clients are spending, you know, two, three, $400
To get blood work done when they probably didn't need to do that.
The other thing you can ask are what I call red flag questions.
So this is a question that lets you know whether or not something needs to be
investigated more.
So you might ask a very general question about sleep. You know,
ask them on a scale of, you know, one to five or one to three or whatever,
how good was your sleep quality? Are you falling asleep and staying asleep?
Are you having trouble falling asleep? Are you having trouble staying asleep?
Are you uh, not feeling rested when you wake up in the morning?
Those are things that they can mark and if they answer basically anything other
than that first one falling asleep and staying asleep,
I can ask follow up questions to get more specific rather than asking,
you know,
15 questions about sleep that if one of them was off would tell me what I
need to know. But, you know,
90% of the rest of the time it's just taking their time to check boxes,
right?
So you don't have to ask every single question right on the first check-in.
You can kind of have like a decision tree of check-in questions, right?
Maybe you have 10 core questions or eight core questions or whatever.
And then based on if they, depending on how they answer one of those questions,
you follow up with them in an email, say, Hey, tell me more about this, right?
Are you waking up at a specific time of night if you're having trouble staying
asleep? Um, you know, has your, you know, nighttime routine changed at all?
You know, all types of things that you can dig in deeper the more you, you know,
learn about this, uh, these type of topics. So again,
coming back to always work on expanding education can provide you with
more tools. Client tracking. So progress markers, we have the basics,
right? Photos, measurements,
and then we have kind of the other things more subjective.
You could ask for daily energy stuff.
Has their mood been better or worse throughout the day? Um,
obviously we need to kind of overlay that with, you know, lifestyle factors.
If work gets stressful, their mood degrades, that's normal.
But if nothing else changes,
it's just their diet and their training changes and that is to start getting
hangry. Well that's, that's probably a good indicator for us. Biological stuff,
sleep, digestion, we've kind of touched on that.
And then the basic performance stuff, right? Weight reps, R P E R I R is the,
uh, the RPE increasing or the sets seeming harder than they did last week,
but they haven't changed the weight or the reps at all.
Those can be things that maybe were, you know,
need a little bit more nutrition or the volume's too high,
they're under recovering for some reason.
All of stats stuff that we can use in conjunction,
but a lot of these need to be compared to one another
rather than just picking one.
Like only using photos or only U using measurements. Um,
or only looking at performance stuff isn't probably gonna give us the whole
picture. So again,
comes back to ask things that you're good at using and managing. For example,
photo evaluation.
That can be a very tricky one. Um,
it can take time and a lot of experience to actually get good at noticing small
changes. Um, so if that's not you right now,
who's good at looking at those small changes And maybe you have a client who
doesn't like taking photos every week,
probably isn't in the best interest of either of you.
Maybe we just do it at the end of every program or every two weeks or
whatever the case may be for that client. And then of course we have, you know,
knowledge of how these things work, right? Measurements can fluctuate,
like waste measurements can fluctuate daily during the day, right? Um,
and understanding the relationship of those to the other factors, um,
rather than just, you know, that once weekly measurement, oh it went up,
you know, half an inch this week. Are we gaining body fat? Like,
well either that or they ate something that didn't agree with them the night
before and they're a little bit bloated, that's why their waist went up.
They didn't actually get fatter. They've got more water in their abdomen, right?
Uh, sleep and digestion again can be tricky ones.
So those are some that tend to take a little bit more, um,
knowledge and expertise to assess cuz there's a lot of conflicting factors in
there. Um, and this is again,
where I'll kind of put another plug in there for the, uh,
the cor the assessment course where we'll look at some of these things and how
the training and nutrition specifically can affect those in multiple ways.
So that's a, uh, overview of kind of the different forms,
questions and things that we'll want to consider. Um,
I'll have some examples of some of these in the resources below.
If you want some examples of, you know,
how I would structure maybe an intake form or an application form, uh,
with some of the principles of the questions that we talked about.
And then of course,
definitely go ahead and customize those to benefit or to suit
you in the most efficient way possible.