Client Centered Training: A Trainer and Coach’s Guide to Motivating Clients

All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author.

Copyright © 2014 Dr Roy Sugarman

With Rodney Corn and commentary by Robert Cappuccio

Previous Editions:

Engaging and retaining clients in healthy behavior change 2011

Motivation for personal trainers and coaches: engaging and retaining people in positive behavioral change 2nd Edition 2013

Published by Level 7 Psychology in association with PTA Global 2014

All rights reserved by the author.

eBook ISBN: 978-0-9873134-6-1

Printed Book ISBN: 978-0-9873134-7-8

Introduction to the special PTA Global edition

I first met with the founders of PTAG about 5 years ago via an introduction through a colleague, Paul Taylor. In an industry such as personal training, at the time and even now searching for a new path to follow to differentiate itself philosophically from a failing expert-client model, and coming from a tradition that could be equated with physical fitness and frankly, body-building, it was refreshing to find such pioneers. What were the elements emerging? Firstly, the idea of movement as a vitally important part of training; secondly that fascia more than muscle could be a target to focus on; thirdly, that something was inherently adversarial in the trainer-client model current then. Finally, in everyone’s mind there was an emerging question: what of the brain in the body brain equation, and equally, how do we engage clients in healthy change? Integrating body and brain is a challenge in itself for reasons I address later on. More difficult even is the task of changing the focus from the trainer’s supposed expertise to the client’s motivators. What, I wondered, was the inherent difference between what was in the trainer’s mind, and what was in the client’s mind at each twist and turn in this adversarial relationship? Over the years, my collaboration, at a distance, with PTA Global has seen my production of several editions of this book, colored by and coloring in turn my relationship with PTA Global. The result is that the faculty at PTA Global have integrated my science into an applied approach to engaging and retaining clients in healthy behavior change, as well as taught their approach and its applications to thousands of trainers worldwide. It is high praise when such maestro’s of training take your ideas and improve on them by applying them in unique and useful ways.

All PTA Global and I set out to do was enhance the lives of others. This Special Edition in 2014 adds two elements to the Second Edition (2013). Firstly, the current head of PTA Global, Rodney Corn, adds a chapter with his thoughts and commentary on how PTAG have applied their solutions to my philosophies, and secondly, our brilliant collaborator, Robert ‘Bobby’ Cappuccio has added his anecdotes and enhancements to each chapter. In this way, PTAG have placed my work in perspective, demonstrating how science becomes applied science.

Knowledge in itself and of itself is not power, but applied knowledge is the royal road to successful engagement with a client that supports behavioral change. PTAG have shown how motivational science combines with humanistic approaches to create the first successful client-centric personal training, the paradigm shift that I have called for over the last decade.

It is hoped, by combining my voice, and theirs, that we can scaffold and enhance this client-centred approach to personal training so that the people who hire us to transform their bodies and brains can demonstrate grit, the stick-to-it-ness that defines successful people worldwide.

This book now becomes about grit. About supporting change in those who need it most, the people that come to us and ask us the question: After so many tries without lasting advancement, where my resolve is now lagging, how are you to become my agent of change?

About this book: 

Coaching Emotion

When coaches and professional trainers work with their clients or athletes, they tend to focus exclusively on the mechanics of what they do. In this way, they target basic skills and motor activity, things they can see, rather than the more abstract but vital mindset aspects of their player’s or client’s performance. Even in so doing, most will still readily acknowledge that mindset is the major factor influencing failure or success no matter how fine-tuned the muscles or ball or bat skills are. Coaches ask for longer hours in batting practice, one touch passing, throwing, hauling sleds, isolating muscles with bench press, catching and passing, all things that are essentially good. There is however another level of peak performance, the level most trainers today will acknowledge is vital, and that is: the coaching of the emotion involved in competitive sport and daily living.

Most coaches and trainers in the past have come to rely on seemingly logical assumptions about what might drive a clients’ future success. These include telling, showing, pushing, and cajoling them, demanding all the discipline they expect to see, whilst at the same time expecting that willing sacrifice will come naturally to the interaction. These assumptions include an underlying belief that the trainee will spontaneously demonstrate an iron will to succeed that is present at the start, remains resolute across training, and continues despite setbacks and injury. We however will all agree as coaches that this is seldom the case.

This reality notwithstanding, coaches have always gone about their business this way, and with good results in most people who are well motivated. But when people are not driven to succeed, or motivation flags in the face of adversity, this traditional approach rapidly demonstrates that it flies in the face of established behavioral science. When this approach does fail, instead of examining their own approach, coaches tend to make assumptions which are often unhelpful and they direct attributions of blame at the trainee.

The behavioral science I draw on here has emerged in both the fields of motivation and self-determination as well as the neuroscience of how the brain deals with novel challenge. As a scientific approach, it has reviewed attempts by others to ‘scaffold’ the process of dealing with the challenging aspects of change and positive growth. The results of such work demonstrated for the first time an inherent drawback in the traditional approach to training, namely the potential for adversarial attitudes to infest the coaching relationship.

These attitudes often result in a silent war of sorts, which puzzles both parties involved, and resistance to change emerges with the trainee failing to achieve full potential.

The traditional approach creates a problem of compliance where clients fail to easily adapt to the behavioral changes demanded by the coach, thereby frustrating their trainers and failing to reach their performance goals in the process.

There has to be a better way to address this approach if the entire industry of coaching and training is to move forward and grow: the challenge here is to engage and retain its clientele in a less adversarial, challenging way and thus support positive change. Secondly, such an approach has to acknowledge the crucial reciprocal role between coach and client which implies that the way the coach thinks about behavior strongly influences client outcomes, that pushback against the coach is common, and within the coach’s ambit to change. The focus of coaching needs to turn in on itself, as well as consider both the coaching impact on the client and the nature of the expert-client role as a source of conflict and failure to thrive.

In this book a collaborative, client-centered paradigm is proposed which confronts most of what coaches still take for granted. In this model, drawing on communication and general systems theory, it becomes easier to see how adversarial coaching relationships develop in which trainers do not accept that there is more to coaching than just the mechanical training of motor skills, fitness or muscle volume, as well as the perils of assuming an expert role vis-à-vis a client.

Secondly, I will advocate here that coaching emotion is the key to success and as a process this has to occur early on in a training relationship. If emotion is so vital to peak performance outcomes, how can coaching emotion not be a vital part of every training relationship?

This book is therefore about coaching emotion through building a strong, warm and supportive relationship in which the client, the person being trained, finds their own resolve, indeed, a valid and highly emotionally charged resolve, which will drive meaningful and lasting change toward more positive and productive behavior.

Positive change, in that context, is any behavior which leads to peak performance. This book describes how you, as trainer or coach, can scaffold this process whether working with average people, or peak performers alike.

Throughout the book, I will use the words trainer and coach interchangeably, and the target of coaching will be termed trainee, client, or athlete depending on the context.

About the author:

Dr Roy Sugarman is one of the most inspiring and understanding people I have encountered in my professional career. He has enabled me to find my inner strength both mentally and physically and managed to integrate the two to help me be at peak performance in all aspects of life. He is a true master of his craft and I am grateful to him.

Aleks Maric:  

Australian Olympic Basketball Player London 2012; 

Center with Lokomotiv Kuban, 2012 –

Dr Roy Sugarman works as a peak performance coach, and trained as a clinical psychologist and clinical neuropsychologist, being accredited in both disciplines. With a long history of working initially in rehabilitation settings with brain and spinal injury as well as psychiatric inpatient units, he is uniquely poised to help both damaged and undamaged individuals achieve their optimal performance, applying an integrated approach to movement, nutrition, mindset and recovery based in the best scientific evidence available.

This approach has resonated with his consultancy as Director of Applied Neuroscience with Athletes Performance (now ‘Exos’ see http://www.teamexos.com), Core Performance, and Tactical Performance in Arizona as a member of their Performance Innovation Team, arguably the world’s premier provider of cutting edge performance science to sporting, corporate and military entities. He has also worked with high level sporting clubs and teams, such as the US National Men’s soccer squad under Juergen Klinsmann, and the younger USA National teams under Claudio Reyna and Javier Perez on behalf of Athletes’ Performance; his clients include elite coaches and athletes across the world, as well as the leaders of large corporate entities and many college sport athletes in the USA, and those entering the draft for professional careers.

Acknowledged as an authority in how brain and body interact to repair and grow themselves, Dr Sugarman’s focus has been to examine the complex relationships between coach and athlete, personal trainer and client, finding answers from science that inform on ways to avoid the adversarial relationship that characterises so many ‘boot camp’ mentalities. With his time in the South African Air Force and Medical Corps and various Australian government agencies still influencing his approach, Dr Sugarman approaches his peak performer clients with a respectful, client-centered philosophy that acknowledges the power differential in those relationships. He draws on communication theory, motivational and self-determination science to inform on the subtle dynamics of positive change in those interactions.

Dr Sugarman is also the author of the highly successful first edition of this book Engaging and retaining clients in healthy behavior change in 2011, as well as his second book "Saving your life one day at a time", subtitled Seven ways to survive the modern world published by Heart Space Publications in Melbourne in 2013.

Dr Sugarman lives and works in Sydney Australia, and is the founder of Level 7 Psychology. For further information see www.roysugarman.com or email dr@roysugarman.com.au

About the contributors:

Rodney Corn

Rodney Corn is a co-founder and the COO of PTA Global. With over 20 years in the fitness industry, Rodney has developed and implemented some of the most cutting edge and practical curricula in the Fitness Industry. He travels the globe presenting at numerous international conferences, sharing his extensive scientific and practical experience in human movement, programming, and a client-centered approach to personal training. He is an adjunct faculty member at the University of San Francisco and California University of Pennsylvania. Rodney holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and masters degree in biomechanics.

Bobby Cappuccio

Bobby Cappuccio is regarded as one of the leading educators, presenters and performance enhancement coaches in the area of fitness, leadership and the dynamics of personal growth.

Having faced and overcome enormous challenges in his own life, Bobby has spent many years helping others to transform their lives by helping them transcend any limiting perception of who they are, and create a vision of immeasurable possibilities.

As a result, he has spent over a decade mastering the ability to stimulate minds and hearts, earning him a reputation for his ability to inspire people to channel their aspirations into higher levels of achievement.

Bobby Cappuccio has achieved extraordinary heights in his own industry through the various leadership positions he has held.

He is the former Director of Professional Development for the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM), content manager for PTontheNET and a cofounder of the fitness leadership and development company PTA Global.

Bobby has written countless articles that have appeared in numerous fitness publications. He has also been featured in various trainer development videos. He is a contributing author of some of the most widely referenced and highly regarded textbooks in his industry.

Due to his provocative, dynamic and highly effective style, Bobby is highly sought after to speak on subjects including business development, sales, exercise science, communication skills and personal development for many of the most successful and reputable companies in his industry as well as leading industry conferences world.

Introduction to the second edition

The first edition was a testing ground for the opinions of people I value most, and much feedback has been received and incorporated into the second edition and this special PTA Global edition. I have expanded on several themes whilst still maintaining the core values of the first edition. More subtly, I have ramped up the level of abstraction of the language and concepts, to make it more challenging for those who read the first book, and in an attempt to address more controversial issues for a wider audience.

Many trainers and coaches have given their feedback openly, thankfully mostly positive, and they have noted how much the first book helped their work and furthered the financial value of their practices, for which I am grateful and humbled. Personally, my sole motivation as I write these books is for the field to prosper and hopefully to collaborate with Ian O’Dwyer and others at PTA Global in driving a new paradigm in training and coaching settings.

I am inspired by the work of those trainers and coaches who stick to their professions but still incorporate new ideas that will advance their often precarious industry and vulnerable tenure. In the competitive peak performance industry, getting results is what counts, not good intentions. Like any other business, it is all about managing people and attempting the optimisation of human capital in society.

In my discussions with leaders in the industry, it seemed no new information is coming into the coaching industry that is likely to drive growth into the future, not even the arrival of brilliant instruments such as the ViPR or TRX cables.

Therefore, many coaches and trainers, myself included are trying to develop a new paradigm, namely, one I have termed client-centered training. This will help drive growth in the industry, where twenty-four hour gyms, Zumba and other recent eventualities are challenging the traditional views and trainer roles with good effect, and making it fun and easy.

The science of coaching advances one funeral at a time, and so hopefully the younger coaches will take on meaningful innovation and avoid the current faddish and try-anything approach that leads to player confusion, as well as the loss of clients to competitors, including those in other industries outside of our own.

Introduction:  

Change is hard for anyone,  

peak athletes included

By ‘healthy’ or positive behavior change, I mean any behavior that is desirable for the person or for their career at the peak level, and which creates emotional drivers for long-lasting growth so that clients can exceed their own, self-imposed limitations.

As a coach or even a physical trainer or acupuncturist or doctor, you will know that clients do not always forge ahead and blindly do what you say without ever pushing back. Even though they come to you as an authority, or you are placed over them as a leader, you will find that some of them will lack what has come to be known as ‘coachability’. This is a term loosely related to what we as change experts refer to as compliance. Compliance means obeying the rules that you set for them, as an authority over their training behavior. Pretty much you are expecting blind obedience, a passive psychological stance that is not optimal. You are asking them to share your vision, rather than a collaborative effort on their vision for their future drawing on what they define as important.

Surely the use of this term ‘compliant’ implies they will follow someone else’s inner drivers, not their own? How does this make sense? It doesn’t, and yet we carry on our work each day as if it did and for some reason, and question other’s motives when they are not following our explicit direction. Pushback can be active or passive in this way.

When they fail to follow the letter of your law, it is common to make certain attributions about their motivation or personality levels. These attributions will lead you to believe that something ‘inside them’ is not cooperating. As a coach, this may lead you to boot them off a team, or dress them down, chew them out and so on. Not surprisingly, if these are paying clients, in the face of such an implied judgement of them they may wander off somewhere else, even if this costs them a large amount in money or stalled careers. In short, you are asking them to comply with your wishes and aspirations, not theirs necessarily, and this easily results in them feeling wimpish and out of control of their future.

When they fight back to preserve their autonomy, you attribute this to a bad attitude. Although it certainly may make your job harder or impossible, such behavior is often not inherent in the athlete: it may very well be YOUR problem – your approach. Even if it was not a flaw in your approach, if you take responsibility for this failure it places the cure in your hands: this book is how to do just that. If you assert that it is the client’s problem, this leaves you without an avenue to solve the problem. Take it on your shoulders and then do something reasonable to fix it, rather than endure frustration at the client’s seeming refusal.

The reality is that there may be issues in the environment in which a client or athlete finds themselves, with no control over them, that may be causing the failure of compliant behavior. Examples could be depression, stage of life or career, pain, social issues related to sacrifice of their time and life, burnout, boredom, ambivalence, relationship or financial issues, or something else. Or it could be the following: your behavior as a coach. This is the argument followed in this book, which switches from coach-centered training to client-centered.

In reality, any instruction you give them will involve change management. The trainee will have to adapt and comply with what you are saying they should be doing. This means you have to rely on trust, respect, obedience, timing, and a whole host of issues that can get in the way of a more fluid outcome rather than enforcement. These refusals are not necessarily issues around their personality, but whether from ‘inside’ them or not, they can impact on your client’s motivation to comply with your expert direction, and this can happen repeatedly and get worse across the timeline of the relationship.

When compliance is driven by external factors, i.e. extrinsic factors, such as being ordered to comply, or paid to comply, motivation is likely to be forced and impure in the long run. When compliance is driven by internal factors, e.g. wanting to do this new stuff or enjoying it, or trusting you as the source and other favourably interpersonally engineered issues, then compliance becomes adoption and change happens smoothly.

Adopting change, for the sheer intrinsic benefit of it, not because they have to comply, implies a good source of motivation for any peak performer.

Motivating a client ‘from the outside’ is not really a good way to secure the adoption of constantly changing, healthier or more positive behaviors. Stirring the emotional pot, lighting their internal fires, letting them make the argument for change, all of this leads to adoption and growth, with increasing resilience to the demands of further change.

Adoption means, or rather implies, that you as trainer become a trusted source of support within a warm relationship in which they feel a rising sense of their own motivation, seeking and finding reasons within themselves to do what you suggest when the going gets tough.

It isn’t necessarily about inspirational coaching:

Your inspirational speeches are not likely to achieve such heights without first forming this warm relationship, in which they encounter the driving force to change, namely their own resolve to change, for their own reasons, on their own terms.

That is precisely what this book is hoping to demonstrate, namely, that there is a compelling way to hook people into adopting your rules. However, they do so now on their own terms, with you prompting their own internal arguments for adopting the new ways of being, ways that you put forward to them in a respectful way.

Your well-educated, experienced or compelling words alone are not enough to ensure adoption. Even when your target audience is listening, there is a huge gap between them knowing what they ought to be doing, or accepting what they ought to be doing, and then actually getting on and doing what you advise. This can mean a loss of cohesion between the training room and the outside world or sporting arena, thereby enhancing your frustration and stalling their progress towards their desired goals.

Even when they know that they should be doing what you say to improve, there is a huge gap between their intended behavior and their actual behavior, no matter what they accepted as the target goal when in your presence. It depends on how change sits with them and how they deal with change outside of your immediate influence in the gaps between sessions.

Look at New Year’s resolutions for example: these are aspirations, intended ideas, but not actual, well-formulated cherished goals, certainly not ‘resolutions’ which would imply we have found a true resolve to change. People can be swayed into promising all sorts of change. These are most often driven by the emotion (and alcohol) of the moment – the idea of renewal, of turning over a new leaf. They are good intentions that are transient and short-lived because they are unformed. These are not rigid, driven, and emotionally salient and inspired long term goals. Even if they seem to be at the time, they are usually not well thought out as being imperative or vital to them. Only 8% of us manage to achieve these New Year aspirations. This effect is greatest early on in the coaching relationship, but it may turn around soon enough as time progresses and the athlete or client remains unable to actively occupy the driving seat when it comes to addressing necessary changes.

Being told versus being spontaneous

Being told what they should do is not the same as a planned, substantial change on their own accord. Being urged to cut down on this, or change that, or to derive long-term motivation from some pithy phrase, e.g. win one for the Gipper talk, does not work either.

Inspired speech from another person, or especially from an expert such as you, might lead clients to comply for a while, perhaps days, but this compliance is not the same as them freely adopting a new lifestyle or approach to their game or life, based on a deep thought-through evaluation of their unique emotional drivers, their resolve.

Further, the more they have failed to maintain lasting, meaningful change, the more failed attempts in the past and again now, the less likely they are to listen to you. In fact, research has shown that the mere act of you urging them on can derail their motivation to continue, rather than enhance it. This may seem paradoxical, but it has proven to be the case in decades of research on compliance.

I had this idea of what I wanted to accomplish when joining the club. The coach was particularly arrogant though, and set out for me a whole list of his goals and the club’s intended plan for me. I should have been happy with that, as their goals and his goals and my goals were all pretty much aligned, but, and it is a big BUT: just the act of them telling me what to do, even in sync with what I wanted… I just felt a sense of rebellion and didn’t want what I wanted anymore… so peculiar… I guess I hate being told what to do… they could have asked me at first what I wanted, and then said, right-ho, that is what we want too. But no: his way or the highway.

Failure to adopt change by your clients, failure to thrive and grow, might directly emanate from your actions, and not from their failed attempts. People do not like being told to change. In this way, your encouragement can paradoxically be considered evidence of an adversarial relationship.

"I was really feeling betwixt and between, when the coach called me into his office. He seemed to rant and rave at me about how I was letting huge opportunities go by, how I was in a great place and could go on to amazing things, how awesome it would be if I just made an effort. He really gave it his best gung-ho motivational speech, and in the process made me so miserable I could’ve just given up there and then. He seemed to have no clue where I was in time and space, how much my family was hurting, how cramped my life and relationships had become. What world did he think I was living in? I know he meant well, but he was just telling me, talking at me, and not asking where my head was. But even though the content of what he was saying was ostensibly good, it still sounded like chewing me out for being a thoughtless, stupid, unmotivated bad, bad boy. Given the lack of connection with him, I felt completely isolated from