"Push"

Being a PT is a lot more involved of a job than I originally imagined it to be. There's no quick getting in and out.. at least not if you want to be a good one.

I quickly found that in addition to playing the trainer role, I also have to fill the roles of: conscience, teacher, nutritionist, psychologist, organizer/planner and motivator.

From my perspective, the teacher role is the most important and truly effective. "Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, but teach him to fish and he will eat for a lifetime." If you can teach someone to exercise and diet effectively and correctly, then they'll be able to make changes in their lives independently. They'll be able to build on their progress indefinitely. I think that's the #1 problem with the fad diets and workouts (you'd be surprised at some of the newfangled workouts people are pushing nowadays); there's no teaching element to illustrate why they are working. The process is more like "Dang, this workout 360XYZ was working great last month, and now I'm getting nothing out of it!" If they had learned about it, then they would know exactly why it was becoming less effective and how to modify it to work again. But then again, that may or may not be on purpose.

From the client perspective, I think the motivator role is the most important... probably because it is the most salient. I can imagine that having someone watching you the whole time, paying for PT and not wanting to let someone down are pretty powerful motivators.

There are verbal motivators that work differently for everyone, but one that I've found that's pretty universal is "Push yourself!" Without fail, I can say that and they will suddenly give a renewed 110% effort at whatever they're doing. A few more reps, 10 more seconds, 6 more jabs. The reaction is almost as if I just challenged their very identity - their sense of determination, discipline and all those related traits. I don't think anyone thinks themselves below average in those areas, so there we go: A key to good motivation is challenging something that people identify with so they aren't only motivated to prove it to you, but to themselves as well.