Fitness Testing Clients

We have recently had a couple of personal training clients restart training with us. They had finished some time ago when they moved to a different part of the country. It’s always great getting a client back, especially when they’re great clients. These particular clients in mention have continued personal training with different trainers whilst they where away.

Now, like most people, I’m incredibly nosey, especially when it comes to training methods, approaches and planning. My clients all had access to their own training programs and assessments via drobox (some dating back years and years) and I made sure that they provided these to their new trainers, if nothing else to give the new trainer a detailed background to their training history, strength levels, aerobic fitness and body composition.

After the clients returned, bearing in mind they had been away for the best part of 15 months, I was expecting them to come back with at least a regular assessment of their body composition. Nothing came, no programs, no assessments, nothing. I have always wondered how personal trainers progress clients when they keep no record of their fitness characteristics or training programs. Fitness testing should be a fundamental component that is completed at least every 12 weeks, ideally less.

I think the term fitness testing has negative connotations with personal trainers; they have flash backs to the school years and running around a running track against time. Fitness testing is so much more than that, and whilst there is probably going to be some form of maximal aerobic test with a lot of clients, there are several other characteristics of fitness that we need to examine. Here are the key characteristics we should be testing.

• Functional Movement:

  You don’t have to seek training in some programmes initially, although eventually I highly recommend gaining CPD in some form of training. To start with, score your client using a traffic light system, red is poor, amber is some errors, and green is perfect. You need to look at all the fundamental movement patterns, this includes the squat, lunge, hinge, press and pull. This assessment can be completed during a warm up. If you work with a physio, have a sit down with them and devise a movement syllabus.

• Strength:

  Once again, we all know the merits of strength testing but few commonly employ this in my experience. It doesn’t have to be a 1, 3 or 5 rep max, although they are more accurate; you could work off an 8 rep max and plug the data into a formula. Time is always an issue for us, but providing a client with, dare I say, 15 minutes over the allotted hour so they can gain sufficient rest periods and time to warm up correctly for testing, not only gives us the opportunity to gain accurate valuable data, but is generally hugely appreciated by the client.

• Body Composition:

  Weight, girths and skinfolds are essential. If you haven’t used skinfolds, and use some other method, seek CPD in them as soon as possible. They provide us with  excellent information that is reasonably accurate, especially with significant experience.

• Aerobic/ Anaerobic Conditioning:

  I would argue that most clients at least need to undergo regular aerobic testing, at least once every 6 months. If the goal is weight loss, running, or sport performance it has some merit.

There are other elements that require attention however these form the core components. Keep your clients on track – record those numbers.