All, great trainers and coaches know that measuring progress and maintaining momentum towards their clients’ goals is one of, if not the most important, parts of your client’s long-term success. After all, if we can’t see improvement for our hard work, effort and dedication, what’s the point? If you’re putting in all this effort, missing out and sacrificing certain things, but yet you’re not getting closer to where you want to be then at some point you’re going to lose motivation.

So, to combat this, and to show our clients that they are making progress even in times when it may be hard for them to see, we create ways of demonstrating this. We all have measuring sticks, but these are often different depending on goals. For example, some people are all about being a certain weight; maybe prebaby weight or it’s an athlete that needs to compete at a certain weight division, for others it’s size (fitting into a size 10 or 12 as an example), others it can be measurements or body fat percentage and the list goes on.

Often as trainers we use multiple methods to show our clients that they are making progress – weight may not be changing but measurement or lean muscle mass may be. Maybe it’s a skin fold change in a certain area and even when a client can’t see it, we can show them they are losing weight in a certain area. This keeps motivation because the one thing we all crave is progress. As Tony Robbins, the world’s leading performance coach, has put forth, progress is one of the 6 human needs and growth, and progress leads and contributes to happiness. Makes sense when we feel as though we are achieving, we’re generally pretty happy and motivated. But what happens when we’re not, or we can’t see it?

The especially applies to us as Personal Trainers and Coaches. What’s your measuring stick for growth and progress?? Do you feel motivated and driven or do you feel as though you’ve lost some of that?

My first question is how are you measuring this? Is it number of sessions you’re carrying out each week, packages that your selling, programs your writing or is it income that your basing it on?

The key to a really great PT or Coach is understanding where you need to grow and develop and then how. Your income may not be growing but internally you’re developing and implementing systems to grow and scale. Maybe you’re focusing on a certain part of the business: Marketing and branding, your audience or followers are growing, maybe you’re focusing on finances where you are implementing your bookkeeping and accounting – know that these are the components to have structured as you may have personal finance or wealth creation goals like owning property.

If you’re feeling flat, demotivated or feel like you’re not achieving, look at your goals and define your measuring stick to monitor growth and progress. There will lie your answers.
If you don’t know how to define your goals, what they should be based on your current position, or you’re unsure how to implement systems or ways to measure progress, your first goal should be to find a coach or mentor that can help establish your next steps and strategies. This will allow you to gain focus with a precise and specific strategy and help you start achieving and making progress towards getting to the next level that most of us fitness entrepreneurs are always striving for!