How to Create Engaging At-Home Workouts for Your Clients

Training

Jan 19, 2022

By Tim Saye



Home workouts have become widely popular in the past two years. When people couldn't go to their favourite gym and were limited on the time they could spend outside the house, the only way they could meet their recommended activity levels was to work out in their living room, garden, garage or wherever they could find enough space for it.

It's only natural that the whole fitness industry, including gyms, personal trainers and fitness influencers, shifted their focus at least temporarily, so now the internet is inundated with free workout videos anybody can do anywhere, anytime. This makes it challenging for a personal trainer to stand out from the crowd, so finding out what type of workouts your ideal clients seek is important if you want to grab their attention.

If you create workouts for people to complete at home, you might want to choose strategies that will make your clients' life easy when it comes to their home workouts. Here are 5 things you can do to achieve just that.


#1. Find out your clients' preferences

Most people have preferences when it comes to their workouts. While some clients might be more into strength training and weight lifting, others prefer high-intensity cardio sessions or low-intensity stretching. Many of them will likely select a combination as well.

The key here is to find what gets your audience going then add on what they also need. If you're programming workouts for 1:1 coaching clients, you can ask them their favourite exercises or what they don't like. We appreciate you want to ensure they do everything they need to work towards their goals, but there are multiple ways to achieve the same effect. Adding in their favourite exercises and finding alternatives for those disliked movements will go a long way to keeping your clients happy.


#2. Keep them short and focused

Another aspect to consider before creating at-home workouts for your personal training clients is some might not find it easy to get into the same workout spirit at home as in the gym. 

They could have kids or other family members distracting them. Women especially might constantly be thinking about what needs to be sorted around the house and cannot stay focused for too long. People working from home might struggle to be efficient in time management and miss workouts because they get sucked into work the whole day.

Keeping those home workouts short will increase your clients' chances of making exercise happen for themselves. They can be as quick as 5-10 minute bursts performed multiple times in the day for time-short professionals and parents. 20-30 min circuits with some warm-up and cool down is a sweet spot to hit for those who would only exercise once a day, but we wouldn't recommend programming above 45 minutes unless someone has a home gym set-up and prefers explicitly working out at home.


#3. Be creative and get some equipment

There's no denying there's more than enough bodyweight exercises to keep someone busy for a long time. However, many people might not find it engaging in the long term. I want to refer back to point #1 on preferences. 

So, if you'd like to make the home workouts fun, you can suggest your clients use objects around the house and that they get some training kit to open up their options. Think of a stair workout if they live in a multi-storey building, or using old tires, wood logs etc.. You can make workouts more challenging by using rugs or kitchen towels as gliders. You can also encourage clients to buy specific equipment to help them progress towards their goals, setting up a shopping basket on something like Amazon can make ordering the correct equipment easy for your clients. This provides a great service and opens up a huge number of options around the house.

Make sure you also guide clients on health and safety, so they don't hurt themselves while using their home based kit.


#4. Keep it varied

Personal trainers know that too much variety might not always be the best option to make progress, especially with strength development. In many cases, a well-designed, periodised training plan is what's needed. However, it's essential to understand your clients and create workouts that suit them.

When it comes to home workouts, only a fraction of clients will have the commitment and dedication to get it done on days they don't feel like it because they have their eyes on the prize. However, most people have all sorts of things happening in their lives that can be a distraction. If they only have the same workouts to look forward to, they may let life win.

So, if your clients are among the latter, you might want to provide options they can pick from on days where training feels tough. Because when it comes to getting people fitter and healthier, doing something is almost always better than doing nothing. 

You can create fun interval sessions or activity based exercise for those who need cardio development but struggle to go for a run, a cycle ride or a swim. You can also create several circuits for conditioning and strength with various exercises to achieve the same result but let clients choose which one they feel like doing on any given day. Get creative and have fun with the options you make available for your clients.


#5. Offer live sessions or calls

Having an appointment in the diary or having agreed to attend an event "virtually in-person" might provide that extra level of accountability some clients need to make an extra effort to complete their workouts.

You can choose whether you offer 1:1 or a group session via Zoom or via one of these options. If you do live training sessions and record these you can also add them to your PT Distinction app and keep it as a workout your clients re-visit whenever they want to. If you do one of these each week, you'll have 50+ videos by the end of the year. That can make good additional material for any online personal or group training service.


Conclusion

You will have clients who'll do whatever you tell them and achieve great results whether they work out at home, outdoors or in a gym. You might also have clients who need regular reminders or a different approach to keep them engaged. Understanding your clients will help you create home workouts that they want to do and genuinely enjoy.

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