(upbeat music) You're listening to the Human Kinetics Podcast, the leader in physical activity and sports publishing, providing authoritative coaching resources for over 50 years, featuring educational and engaging conversations on the most relevant topics in fitness, strength and conditioning, and sports performance. Enjoy the show. - My name is Aaron, and as you can see, joining me today is a familiar face and voice who actually had the pleasure of speaking to, I guess it was a little over a year ago now, for an episode of author talk for his book, strength training for all body types. Now, a lot of you are familiar with Lee from his writings from various fitness and training related publications, as well as his book that I just held up there, strength training for all body types. But today we are actually going to talk about something a little different, and we're going to jump into the discussion of soft skills. So again, thanks again Lee for jumping on, I really appreciate it. I know just from kind of following your social media that you'll have a lot of input on this topic here today. - Yeah, no, I'm glad to be here. And I look forward to a really solid chat about this. It is something that is important, especially for trainers who are maybe on the beginning side of getting into the industry, and people who are younger in their careers, the importance of developing skills that are transcending the theoretical textbook-based information, or even the demonstrative and practical side of things from a training perspective. I think that it's important for people to go over this stuff because these can be the missing links between, you know, bridging the gap between having a client that sticks around for a long time, or a client that doesn't really feel the need to stay with you. - Right, and when I was thinking about this topic, I was going back to maybe some of my earlier dealings with clients and whatnot. I know, like growing up, I was a fairly shy individual, I was a fairly shy person, like enjoyed being around people, but didn't always talk a whole lot. Now, when I got into training, I realized that that was something that was obviously gonna be pretty important. It's important to be able to communicate with people. And that's gonna make your job so much easier. Now, I know that the ability to be able to communicate with your clients is going to go a long way in, you know, kind of helping them show that you can relate to them in a certain way that you're able to communicate and get across certain messages. I'll let you kind of go from there. What have your experience has been? Maybe some unfortunate situations where maybe, I don't know if you've ever had this issue where you had trouble communicating or relating to people on that sense, but kind of your experiences of the importance of soft skills in those communications. - Earlier on, I definitely had a little bit more difficulty in terms of communicating with clients and so on and being able to speak the right language for them, so to speak. And, you know, when you start thinking about everybody's walk of life being slightly different than the next person's and what even fitness or training in the exercise might represent for them, what the gym represents for them might be very different. And, you know, in different talks that I've given around the place, I've definitely used this line a lot of times, which is the reason why I'm on the treadmill next to somebody. It might not be the same reason the person's on the treadmill next to me, right? And so what, especially ones who start considering things like mental health and all of that, why people will get into the gym, why people will train and what exercise or fitness or any of this stuff really represents for them. You might get very different answers across the board for some it might be completely aesthetic, some might be completely performance, some might be a no mental clarity or a distress and all kinds of stuff. Or it could be a combination of all of those things, right? So if we can meet the client where they're at by understanding that why first and foremost, it could be easier to find topics of conversation that will speak to them and hot button topics that are going to resonate with them better. And that's what my goal has always been with working with clients, especially today, compared to let's say when I was in my first third or fifth year when I was a lot less mature in these aspects. And I've been happy to say that I can find better connections with clients because of that. And I could wear the right hat that is still a branch of my own personality when I work with a client that sort of appeases them or that sort of speaks to them a little bit better. - What are some of those ways that you've been able to do it? I know the majority of the clients that I work with are kind of, you know, in that range like junior high, high school age athletes. So it's a little different than, you know, talking to someone like yourself, you know, who is in the industry and obviously has a lot of life experience. So I kind of have to look at things from their perspective a little more. So what has that kind of been like for you in kind of just trying to find that common ground to relate to that? - Yeah, well, I think that, and this is going to sound like I'm really taking a huge segue away from it. But I think that the main thing is making sure that your basis, your breadth of information that you're taking in transcends only training and personal training information and that fitness information. I think that if you can take in an eclectic mix of info, whether it's getting an interest in different hobbies or the arts or different, whatever it is, right? If you can have a little bit more of a rounded kind of experience to life rather than simply, you know, going to the gym, focusing on your PRs, focusing on your, you won't have too many things that you can actually level with a client about because the most general population clients, the truth of the matter is this luxury that they're paying for two or three times per week. This might be the only two or three times per week when they're actually putting serious thought into what they're doing, which are most of their fitness health, right? We don't want it to be that way, but it's the reality for a lot of people in the general population. They've got busy lives, if they've got different kinds of jobs, if they've got families, all that stuff. So with that being said, if we only have fitness stuff to sort of align with the base song, then it's going to be really difficult to actually find some kind of a connection. However, you know, I just try to think about, you know, when I learn about a client, even in my intake, when I'm asking questions to them, when I'm talking to them in between sets and so on, you know, figure out what they're into. What kind of stuff they like to do? What are your hobbies? What kinds of stuff, you know, I like to watch this TV show and you like this TV, do you like movies? That's my thing, right? And you find areas of common ground that you end up, you know, for me, I'm all over the place when it comes to that sort of thing. So it's, I'll find something that we end up kind of like, you know, we can have a discussion about, have a discourse of bread. And that could be something like sports. And I love different sports, different sports, different sports teams. Maybe it's that, maybe it's movies, maybe it's music, maybe it's TV series, maybe it's it's something, right? And, you know, we just go from there. I've got interest in a lot of other things that have nothing to do with fitness. And so it's, just makes it easier to make that hat that you wear with that person be the right branch of your personality without being disingenuous or anything like that. So it is still some version of yourself that you're projecting and it's going to a curry favor and it's going to build rapport. And it's gonna make somebody feel a lot more at home with you when you're working out with them. So that's the approach that I make. And I just try to keep it as natural as possible. - Yeah, I know, like I said, the majority of the clients that I have are kind of that junior high, high school age. And just by happenstance, I think it's some weird number like around 87% of the athletes that I have are actually female athletes. So I have, like it or not, I've kind of taught myself to learn a little more about like one direction and Justin Bieber and some of those things, just things that they talk about that they're interested in from day to day. I know one of the things that I like to do, you know, to start a session is most of them are coming in, you know, after their school day or after practice. So I'll just ask how their day's been, you know, ask them, so sometimes they'll just ask them how school's going. And that's enough to carry a conversation for the full hour, just something to kind of get their mind off of training so much so that it kind of sounds ironic, get their mind off of training so that they could do a better job at training if that makes sense. - Yeah, it's funny you say that because like, I'm a morning trainer, I train class in the morning. So a lot of them are before work starts. And so one of the things I always break off into is, you know, you have a busy day today and whether they even, they might unload on it, talk about all the things and it sort of mentally prepares them for that. Or, you know, maybe they say it's a lighter day today, but you have a discussion about that. Sometimes maybe I share about what I got going on as well, outside of just the clients and so on. And so it's a nice little way to do it as well. Now, on the note of work on that topic, I want to talk about the fact that it's something that anyone who knows me knows that I've spoken about before that is I do think that the personality kind of often begets the job that somebody is going to have, right? And that right there is going to be a very important point to consider how you might mince your words or how you might approach a certain topic, how you might coach a client, how you might do a client in an exercise, how you might motivate a client, all of those things because I'll tell you, if I was to be training a third grade teacher, I guarantee you that it would be a different approach that I take compared to trading an investment banker, right? - True. - And if not so much it has nothing to do with anything in economic or anything like that. It has to do with the fact that the things that are going to drive those people, the way the behaviors or the characteristics that are going to make them good at their jobs, respectively, are going to be very different, right? So even if I say what this programming is going to lead to as far as the end results, how I'm going to frame that and what's going to get them excited to actually work toward that goal, it's going to be very, very different from one person to the other. It's important that we don't just start using a hooky cutter kind of approach to everything and individualize things like that, you know, lawyers versus engineers versus bankers versus they have their own unique sets of skills, talents and ways of thinking about stuff, even the ways that they're going to apply coaching views, even the ways they're going to approach a program in and of itself. So it's very important that people recognize that even a person's occupation can say a lot as far as what direction you might want to go in terms of how you coach and cue them and motivate them and so on. - I think that's a great point because just like you said, everyone is coming from a different perspective. Everyone has a different career, might be in a different spot in their life. So they're coming into that training session from a different perspective. So you have to find out number one, where they're coming from, number two, how can you communicate with them to get the most out of them for that session? - Yeah. - I know that like you said, you're used to training more in the morning. You might have someone getting ready to go to work that's coming in to train with you. For a brief time, I had a situation where I was training an adult gen pop client and then I would go train an athlete and then back to a gen pop client. So it's kind of like conflicting personality is going bouncing back and forth. So it was really important to try to get into that different mindset before going into that specific session. Otherwise, I might go into training maybe a 70 year old client and I'm still talking to them like they're in sixth grade or something. Wait, which doesn't always work out there? - Yeah. Being able to, when you have a string of clients in a row, there's definitely a skill that is involved with regards to being able to sort of switch it up and not again, be a certain version of yourself where you're one person and then you're another person but you're still yourself at the same time. And if you have very contrasting clients from back to back and it's funny that you say this because this morning had a great example of this little situation. And so you really have to sort of turn on a different version of yourself and then turn off that first version and then turn it back on for the next time. It is a bit of a tactic and it's a bit of a skill that you need to do but the only way to really get better at that is through exposure to clients. And that's what I was gonna say as well is that being in the field for the amount of time that I have so far and I'm glad that I started things out of the commercial gym. I'm glad that I worked for a number of years being exposed to a lot of like a great variety of clientele older, younger, very skilled, not too skilled et cetera. Those were very, very teaching moments for me that could help me learn and navigate different personalities and different personality types. A lot of people might have goals of working with sports teams or sports athletes and that's fine and that's great. And if that's what you wanna do, then great. But always remember that you're probably going to be exposed to very, very similar personality types within that in terms of how motivated they are. What their drive is, how disciplined they're gonna be and so on. They are all working toward a very common goal, especially if they belong to the same team, let alone play the same sport. And so from that regard, it's going to be, it might be a little bit tougher for you to break free from that or break away from that if the time calls for it. So communication is going to be a little bit of a more welcome challenge for people if they're working in the general population in my opinion. And I think that it's something that everybody should have a lot of experience with. And I do believe that if you're very good with trading general population clients, you can set the framework for a lot of other populations that you end up wanting to work toward afterwards. - Yeah, I think those are great points too. And it's something that it seems like always comes up is that we can learn so much about the science and biomechanics behind training in the classroom when we're going through all of our coursework, just to become more knowledgeable about this area. But what we, I won't say all the time, but it seems like what isn't taught all the time is that, you know, person to person communication that we need to deal with. I worked in gyms where we've had, you know, interns come in and you can tell right off the bat. I mean, they're fresh out of class. They know exactly everything that you would want them to know as far as the science behind lifting, but it's just kind of like they, sometimes they just stand there in a session and they don't talk and they don't know exactly how to communicate with that particular client that there were. - Yeah. The confidence factor is definitely a big part of it. It's funny because I just came from the classroom myself. I just taught a class right now. And one thing that I tell students of mine on the regular is, well, especially if we're doing a lab, then I have, there's a part that's involving a warmup. For example, where the student gets the chance, where I give a student the chance to warm up the whole group of people. And so it serves as practice a lot of times to be more assertive, a little bit more confident and show that you can lead because, you know, when somebody is paying for personal training session, they're paying to be led most of the time anyway, right? And so just being able to build up those skills of showing a sort of assertion and showing that you can be a leader in that regard and being confident in the things that you come up with and not afraid to talk or point things out and even to say that you don't know certain things as well. These are all very important qualities to sort of embrace and then to practice. The other thing is, is that working with clients, I think that a client that might present a little bit of a daunting challenge, maybe personal, maybe a difficult person to work with. Oftentimes we might shy away from that or say, you know, I don't want to work with this person. Well, I mean, these days I sort of take the opposite approach to things. Whereas before I would shy away, now I kind of try to embrace it. What's the reason behind why they're a difficult client now? Do they have an experience with personal training and have been the past that didn't work out too well? Do they have a predisposed notion about personal trainers or personal training in the first place that I can dispel for them, right? So if I can embrace the opportunity to work with them and possibly change their mind or change their personality toward training or toward that experience, toward me particularly, that might be a good thing. Now, a client and a personality, I was just saying this last week actually, a client's personality is a fixed entity. It is never going to change. We're not going to change somebody's personality, but what we can do is possibly change the way that they view this one aspect of their life for the hour that they've been with us or the two or three hours in a week that they spend with us. So if we can have an impact or a footprint on that perspective and have some kind of a, just leave some kind of a mark on that element so that they have an adjusted viewpoint on this whole experience or maybe their own fitness and so on, that can go a very long way for somebody and that could make a world of difference even in terms of ultimately, in terms of somebody's lifespan, to be honest with you. - I think that's such a great point. And I mean, we know that when people come in to train, they're coming in for a very specific reason. They want to change an aspect about their life. So yeah, I guess to your point, if they have an awful experience with you, if you're not communicating with them well, if you just don't get along with them at all, then they're going to kind of not only sour on your sessions, but they might be turned off completely to training, thinking, well, I had a bad experience with this trainer, even if I go work with another one, it's not going to work out just because I had that one bad experience. So that also makes me think of another point that a lot of clients are in to work with us and talk with us for maybe two hours per week, maybe three hours per week. But for some of them, that is the most important hour or two hours or three hours of their week. And a lot of other trainers know this, you get to know that person, possibly more than some of their own family members get to know them because they will kind of tell you, it almost turns into like event session for them at times, which isn't a bad thing because like we said, they're in there to change an aspect about their life, they want to be comfortable. And that means that they're also comfortable with you in that setting, in that situation. So I guess to that point, how important is it for a trainer to be able to relate to someone like that and not kind of pass off some of those conversations that they might end up having with their client. Right, comes right back down to that first thing that we talked about or what does this whole thing represent for them, right? Is it a chance for them to mentally unload in some cases, which is an aspect of health, which is an aspect of fitness? No, we're not therapists or anything like that. However, one thing that can easily become a commonplace is that gray area between being someone's coach and being somebody's friend, right? It's not like working with an accountant that you see two times per year or working with a financial analyst who you see or a dentist who you see once every four months or whatever it is, right? We're in their lives on a regular basis week to week. And again, it might even go beyond what certain family members of theirs will see, right? And so, yeah, at that point, you're going to develop more of a relationship with a person. You're going to develop a little bit more rapport with a person and you're going to have conversations that become very involved, right? And the important thing about it is a, not only being a good communicator, being a good communicator also involves being a really good listener half the time. So when a client comes in and talks about the stresses of their day or they talk about the stresses of their week and so on, we might think, okay, well, you're in the right place now, that's great. But we also might think, well, that gives us clues as to how we might navigate today's session. If you've only gotten four hours of sleep for the last three nights because your kid's been keeping you up or because you were sick the week before or because you're overloaded at work or whatever the case may be, right? Maybe going for 90% RM's on today's program, which was what was scheduled for us, wouldn't be in the cards for you for your central nervous system. So it might be a good idea for us to scale things back, train intuitively and auto-regulate some stuff in order for you to have a great training experience, not get injured, not invite any risk and still be able to last the rest of the day, let alone getting to the next workout. So that's a really important factor as well. All right, yeah, I completely agree there and that's where for me anyway, being able to be adaptable with within that session is so important because like you said, one of the best ways to be able to help people is to be able to listen and if you're a good listener, you're gonna be a better communicator. So in that sense, if you're not a good listener, then you're really not gonna help that person for that particular session. I do want to go back to something that I'm glad that you mentioned that you just got that teaching a class because I'm interested. What are some of the specific things or like tools that you teach some of your students in terms of being a better communicator and kind of owning their soft skills in those particular situations? - Well, I'm constantly encouraging the idea of thinking kind of outside of the box in terms of okay, here's what the curriculum tells you to do and what tells you to know and so on, but realize that this is an industry as a whole that is a very practice-based, B, that is entirely rooted on inference and there's nothing that is concrete at all. There is research out there that will suggest and support very strongly certain things, for example, that a squat is a great exercise to do, right? Or that you can keep your heels down for safety when you do a squat and things like that, right? And those are good principles to abide to and to adhere to, but as a whole, that's just a strong suggestion rather than something that's rooted. In fact, you're gonna always have that person who puts calf raises into their workout program and their biceps start growing more because the calf raises are in there and that's the only thing they changed, right? So there's always going to be anomalies, there are always gonna be situations that go outside of the norm. And so when we think about that and we think about how we program or whether or not there's gotta be a vertical push and following a vertical pole and a horizontal push, following a horizontal pole or whatever, doesn't have to be that way. So being able to expand the horizons and realize that thinking intuitively and using practical and critical thinking skills might even be necessary for on-the-fly modifications, on-the-fly regulations and so on, when you work with a client, the second thing is, as far as communication goes, a, coaching, queuing, all that stuff, that goes without saying, we gotta get good at that sort of thing. But also, if you're working with a client and you show what's the word, the deliberation or trepidation or your tentative about stuff and, you know, equivocating over things, that's the word I was looking for. If you're like that as the leader, then you're not gonna get too much buy-in from the client. So I say to them, and I say to my students, sometimes I say, you know, even if you're not sure what, just what it is that you're doing, you have to come across as though you've got this all figured out. And it doesn't mean you have all the answers, but it means that you're confident in the workouts that you're putting them through right now. If you gotta pivot, you know where you're gonna go, all that sort of thing, right? And so, if you can at least display that kind of behavior, it's going to go a very long way, more than people could even say. And, you know, there's something unquantifiable and intangible that definitely needs to be communicated there about that. It's very important. - Great, excellent point. But I'm glad that you mentioned that word buy-in, because without good communication, you probably aren't going to get buy-in from, in a particular client. So I guess if we could kind of wrap all this up here, I know we weren't gonna spend too much time, I wasn't gonna take too much of your time today. But if we could wrap all this up, what would be one of your biggest takeaways from today in terms of, you know, improving your soft skills and realizing the importance of having good soft skills when you're working with clients? - Well, the importance is that it's very important. It's more important than the actual of the hard skills, which are working with, you know, the actual training principles and the theory of training and all that stuff. And I'll add this as well as that your reputation is not only based on the good things that you've done, it's also based on bad experiences as well. You could easily develop a bad reputation out there for things like, you know, how you handle conflict, how you deal with a client who's not happy with your services. What kinds of ways are you handling or managing a client in order to maintain a positive direction with where a conversation goes, with where an interaction goes? If somebody is emailing you angrily, what's the first thing that you do in response? Do you reply and meet them there? Or do you say, hmm, let's get on the phone and talk about this. Let's get in person and discuss this. How does that change the overall mood and tone of the interaction? Usually it changes it quite drastically, right? And things can get misconstrued and people oftentimes soften up when they're face-to-face compared to when they're over the internet or something like that. That's known fact. So, you know, just those kinds of things, just realizing the importance of soft skills like that, where do you go from this particular point in order to get both of you on the same page, whether it's in a training session, whether it's to get an exercise point across or something like that, or whether it's with conflict or something too, right? Those kinds of ideas, the ideas of making sure your reputation is in a good place and can be maintained in a good place over the course of time, it can go a very long way. And so making the efforts to build up those soft skills that can come very handy for people. - Awesome, definitely said much better than I would ever be able to say there. But yeah, I, again, want to thank you so much for your time and jumping on just to talk about this. Hopefully, a lot of, you know, trainers and coaches were able to log on and watch this. Maybe they'll be able to listen to it later on, but so much excellent information, such an important area for, you know, everyone to, you know, take into account an important area to make sure that we are doing a great job of, in addition to, you know, all the science behind training. So everyone, if you're watching or listening, if you're not already, make sure to follow Lee on Instagram. He puts out a ton of great posts, whether through video or otherwise, a great job of educating. I know that you had a really good post earlier this year. I think it was earlier in January about this as well. Kind of speaking on that a little bit. So again, thanks again. Also, if you haven't picked up his book, definitely pick that up, strength training for all body types. Yeah, speaking of queuing, you're going to find out a lot of that information in here as well. So again, thank you so much, Lee. I really appreciate it. And I will talk to you soon. Anytime, no problem. Look forward to the next slide. Awesome. Thank you for listening to the Human Kinetics Podcast for more information on this and other topics. Visit our YouTube channel, as well as Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and A. For additional resources, visit our website, us.humankinetics.com. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (gentle music)
