If you walk into any gym or studio, you see the same thing over and over.
What's everyone focused on? They try to lift heavier, run longer, push harder, and break PRs. You measure success in pounds and sweat, and the clients? They happily buy into this narrative because they can see the product of their work. Is it hard work? Sure. Does it feel productive? Absolutely yes.
If you're a fitness professional, you can see one glaringly obvious blind spot, and that's the fact that this plan ignores true recovery. And we're not talking about a foam roller or a blank day on the calendar, which is how most clients see rest days. To them, it's the side dish, never the main course. And yet, rest is where the magic happens.
Are you after physical adaptation? Here's where that happens.
You're doing half the job if all you teach your clients is how to do more. The fact is, unless you educate them on how to let their body take a break, they won't progress.
They'll just burn out.
Recovery isn't doing nothing; It's What Keeps the Body Working
Getting your client in the gym is huge.
People spend so much time working, and they're usually exhausted when they come home, so it's an actual success when they decide to spend some of their free time working out. But it's not until they're done with the workout that the real magic happens, and you're probably well aware of this.
After the workout, the body starts repairing itself, and for anyone who thinks this is a passive time-out, think again.
This is a super active process, you just don't see it. Fresh blood needs to circulate to carry the fuel to the muscles and carry away waste. At the same time, tiny micro-tears in the tissue (you know, the good kind that you want to have) need to be stitched back together stronger than before. And the nervous system that got jacked up needs to calm down. This is recovery, and it's anything but lazy.
This is what makes progress possible.
Unfortunately, this repair work has an enemy, and it's called pressure. The constant kind that doesn't change.
Think about a tough squat session – it applies a lot of pressure, but then it's over. The body gets a signal to heal. But there's also a different kind of pressure, the one that happens when you sit at your desk for 6 hours straight. This doesn't build strength; what happens here is that blood flow and oxygen to the tissues are cut off. It's pretty much the same as if you left a heavyweight in one spot. But permanently. Imagine that for a second...
The damage won't make a loud BANG; it'll be quiet. An ache in the lower back, the shoulders that can't seem to relax.
It's a slow, steady creep towards less movement and more nagging pain. That doesn't seem SO dramatic, but it can be. If you take it to an extreme, you can see why pressure can actually be dangerous.
Look up stage 4 bed sore symptoms and treatment, that'll give you a clearer (and graphic) picture of what happens when you don't take pressure seriously. You'll probably also get nightmares, but we won't talk about that.
And you could say that this has nothing to do with you because your clients aren't in that situation, but they're on the same spectrum nevertheless. Every hour they spend without moving is an hour their body can't spend recovering properly. That means that, when you teach them about recovery, you can't stop at protein and sleep.
You have to teach them to get up from that desk here and there, shift their weight, or take a 5-minute walk.
How Education on Recovery Builds Better Relationships with Clients
Who's the best trainer you ever had? They're not someone who yelled at you or gave you the most butt-kicking workout ever, right?
They're the ones who asked how you were and told you to take a day off when they saw you needed it. You were more than a set of numbers to them, and that's why you remember them.
So take a page from their book and shift the conversation from just performance to how they're feeling. How do they sleep, are they stressed, do they feel aches from their desk job, etc? To the client, this will show that you see them as more than simply another project.
They'll feel understood and protected, which is how a good trainer should make them feel.
That trust will make them want to stay because clients want to stay with coaches who look out for their well-being in general, not only muscle mass. In the end, this is what will build you a lasting practice.
Anyone with a brain can make the client tired, but it takes a real professional to teach them how to train sustainably for years.
Conclusion
It's pretty cool when you get to see your client lift twice the weight they did when they first came in. But it's even cooler to see them have more energy and less pain. When you see the amount of confidence they gained and how much better their life became, that's the best result any trainer could ask for.
This doesn't come from the 60 minutes they spent with you, but from the 10 to 20 minutes in between.
So teach them how important that time is.