When we consider the nature of a personal training business, we see that it’s paramount to have the personal information of your clients. Any business that exists is required to have a level of information about the people you transact business with; your clients. But with a personal training business, you want to have as much information as possible.
Especially data about your client’s personal health, because that’s what you’re dealing with. When you are involved in the personal training business, the core of what you’ll be doing with your client will be their personal health. So that’s one piece of data you need to have if you’re going to be working as a personal trainer with your clients. You need to know the state of their physical health to know how to provide them with the right workout regimen, routines, and meal plans. That’s where the place of a personal training questionnaire comes in.
A personal training client questionnaire helps you get useful information about your client. It is necessary that, as a business, you arm yourself with this information so you’re not in the dark about who and what are your clients. You must get to know your clients as much as you possibly can.
You cannot know too much, every piece of information you will get from questionnaires will help you serve your client better. As a personal training business, you can apply a one size fits all approach to all your clients. Every client is different and should be treated as such. You won’t be able to do that if you don’t even know your clients to begin with. That’s why it is called personal training. Knowing your client helps you put the person in personal training.
Why Are Personal Training Questionnaires Important
Helps You Know your Clients Better
If you want to be considered a great personal trainer, you should focus on getting to know clients as much as you can. That’s what questionnaires help you do. They help you know every client as intimately as you should as their trainer. Remember that your clientele is not a number, but every client is a person and should be treated as such.
Professionalism
Having your clients fill out a training questionnaire shows professionalism in your business. They know that you’re a serious business that is interested in having the relevant information they need to offer the clients the best service. It shows that you take their safety and goals seriously.
Knowing your Client’s Goals
As a personal trainer, you don’t want to just train your clients, hoping that they are getting closer to reaching their personal goals, when you don’t even know what those goals are. It would be unwise to assume all your clients have the same fitness goals. Yes, these goals may be similar, but they can be very personal and specific to each of your clients, and a questionnaire helps you know that. You can’t reach a target you can’t see.
When both you, the trainer, and the client are aware of their goals, you can work together better towards reaching those goals. When you know this, you know how to help the client reach those goals. When these goals are known, you can know when they’ve reached those goals and help them set new ones.
What Are The Factors to Consider When Choosing A Personal Training Questionnaire
The goal here is to have as much information as you possibly can about your clients. This will help you create tailored training services that will help them best reach their goals, and also keep them safe. A personal training questionnaire would also help you screen clients and choose the best ones you can work with as a trainer. The way for your questionnaire to be effective is when you ask the right questions and expect your client to be as honest as they can with the answers they give.
The Right Questions
As established earlier, the effectiveness and success of your training questionnaire depend on the questions you ask. You want to ask the right questions that will give you the information you need about your clients. This information you get from the questionnaire helps you serve your clients better.
Knowing how important asking the right questions is now leads you to another question; What are the right questions to ask in a personal training questionnaire? Let’s look at some of them below.
Medical/PAR-Q Questions
A PAR-Q is a physical assessment readiness questionnaire – and it is used to determine whether or not a client can participate in physical exercise. These questions as well as medical questions give you insight into your client’s physical health and the limits you can push them to in reaching their goals. You don’t want a scenario where you get a client with a heart condition to engage in an exercise that will trigger their heart condition and endanger their health. As a trainer, you are responsible for your client’s safety when they train with you.
What are some of these medical questions?
- Do you feel chest pain when you do physical activity?
- Have you experienced any chest discomfort at rest within the previous month?
- Do you ever go unconscious or lose awareness while trying to balance yourself?
- Do you know of any reason why you should not do physical activity?
- Have you had a recent surgery? If yes, what was the nature of the surgery?
- Are you pregnant or have you been pregnant in the last six months?
These are only a few examples of the type of medical questions you should ask in a personal training questionnaire to ensure you know enough about your client to provide them with the best service as a personal trainer.
Lifestyle Questions
It is important as well that you know the lifestyle of your clients. This will particularly help in choosing a suitable fitness plan for them. Meeting fitness goals is how much work you do in the gym training, as it is outside the gym where you’re faced with the temptations that one’s lifestyle may bring their way. Like are they day drinkers, do they have jobs where they get to be physically active most of the day, or do they sit down in front of a computer screen all day? These lifestyle questions will give you very much-needed insight into who your client is that you apply to their personalized fitness plans, sessions, diet plans, etc.
These are some of the types of questions (medical and lifestyle questions) that you should consider having in your questionnaire as a personal training business looking to know its clients better.
Length of the Questionnaire
As much as you want to know more than enough about your clients, you also want to consider the length of your questionnaire. You don’t want your questionnaire to be too long so that your clients feel overwhelmed by the questionnaire and don’t even answer them all together. As a business looking to get information about its clients through a questionnaire, you want to create one that asks the most important questions, you shouldn’t go asking questions that are unnecessary, as this can discourage your clients from completing the questionnaire.
Research has shown that people do not enjoy taking surveys or answering questionnaires, so you want to make it as short as possible. That’s why you must ask the right questions so that even your clients can see the relevance of their answers.
Digital Questionnaire
Everything is available online these days, and so should your questionnaires. Clients should be able to fill out and submit their questionnaires digitally. People hate to fill out forms, but filling it digitally makes it a less daunting task. Plus this helps save you the stress of printing on paper and asking for it back from clients. You are also able to store their responses digitally and can get them anytime you want. You won’t have to worry about damage to the questionnaire because the client’s answers and results are saved digitally, and you can have them backed up for extra security.
Conclusion
Personal training questionnaires are a very important tool if you want to run an effective personal training business. Without it, you’ll be playing in an unknown field. You would also be putting your clients at risk when you don’t know about any medical challenges they might have and equally putting your business at risk too. It may take some time to carry out but it is well worth it to be an informed trainer.
Having important information about your client is armor for a personal training business, it gives you a lot to work with as a trainer. If you don’t have one you should consider getting one today. As we’ve seen, not just anyone. You must choose a questionnaire that asks the right questions, is not bulky and too long to complete, and one your clients can fill and submit digitally.
