5 Questions Every Group Trainer Needs To Be Asking Each Session

Do you employ group trainers? Or maybe even one yourself?

These 5 questions will take you from good to great on the floor and keep your members around much much longer. We’ve heard it all before, the conversations on the floor quickly end up being non-fitness related. What's on for the weekend? Who are you dating at the moment? OMG, have you been to.. Blah blah blah etc.. and you don’t need to be a guru to know that isn't good for your business long term. Gossip, lack of focus and cliquey groups isn't ‘building community’ it’s damaging the longevity of your business.. That stuff is always going to happen but it doesnt need to happen during the class and encouraged by your trainers.

As the trainer or coach on the floor you need to be the authority in the room. You drive the attitudes, behaviours and training outcomes of the members in each session. If you can touch base with each member in your session whilst covering these five questions, you will be a very popular and loved trainer at your gym. You will be giving the member what they are paying for.. Attention, Results, Accountability and Support!

Breaking down the class

If you're running a group training class that goes for approx 45 mins, take 10 mins off for an intro, warm up, demonstrations and cool down you’re left with 30 mins of actual work time. If you have 30 people in the class, it works out to be 1 minute per person, with the trainer. Now of course you cannot go around to each member and spend a whole minute with them and then the next and so on.

So you’ll break that minute down into 5 smaller touch points of 12 seconds, give or take. That said, this will change constantly. 2x 30 seconds, 3x 20 secs, 1x 60 seconds. We all know each day is different and there are some more demanding clients than others. But it’s important to get around to each individual member in every session and offer your professionalism. That way your presence is well known on the floor and each member will have quality time with you.

It’s important to note that these questions are aside from assessing, correcting and motivating members during the class. This should be a given!

At each touch point ask your members these 5 questions and if the topic of conversation veers off, bring it back to their training. Also, you can ask these questions every single session.

1. [Training] How is your training going?
2. [Frequency] How many sessions are you getting in each week?
3. [Recovery] How is the body holding up?
4. [Nutrition] What’s your food like?
5. [Accountability] When are you in next?

1. How is your training going? [Training]

This shows you have a genuine interest in the client and their training needs/ goals. Also opens up to hear more around what they want out of their training and how you can further assist them with their training goals.

2. How many sessions are you getting into each week? [Frequency]

This will help you understand their training patterns and commitment level. You can link this back to their training goals and further assist them with committing to an appropriate number of training sessions each week. For example, if you have a member that might not be seeing their desired results they could be training everyday, multiple times a day, without appropriate recovery or simply not getting into enough sessions each week. You can be on top of this each session as their trainer.

3. How is the body holding up? [Recovery]

Here we get an indication of how your member responds to the training sessions and how their recovery is going. If their body is constantly sore, tight, fatigued or whatever it may be, it will only be a matter of time before they cut back on their training and eventually leave. You’ll also get an opportunity to educate your members and offer some personalised assistance.

4. What’s your food like? [Nutrition]

In group sessions you don’t always have a lot of one on one time like you would in a private personal training session to go over food or nutrition in detail. So this question is a way of checking in with your member, opening up the conversation to see if there is anything you could help them with right there and then. As well as a way to show that you are keeping them accountable to their training goals. For example, If your member is training every day and putting in some great work on the floor but completely neglecting themselves on the food front, ultimately they might ‘blame’ the gym or the trainer for not getting the results they’re working for. If you ask your members each session this could be avoided.

5. When are you in next? [Accountability]

This question is great for two reasons. Firstly it closes the conversation and allows you to move on to another client without getting stuck in a long conversation if you’re short on time. And secondly you have an opportunity to guide the client towards when you want them in next keeping them accountable to a regular training routine. “I’ll see you on tuesday, ok?!” You should never let a client say things like “I don’t know, sometime this week or whenever..”

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Give this a go at your next session. See how your members respond. The beautiful thing about consistently asking your members these 5 questions is that you get to know your members on a deeper level, it’s professional and adding so much more value to their workouts. You're able to give a more personalised service, building strong trust and rapport with your members, creating sticky clients and increasing your retention rate.

Your members will feel so comfortable with you and your business that they won’t want to leave and will only share raving reviews about your business.

If you're interested to know more, please get in touch with the team via the help button at the bottom of the page.

✌️🤩 CloudFit Team