The Reluctant Trainee: Coaching Those That Do Not Want to Train

There comes a day in the lives of anyone working in the health and fitness space where we are confronted with an individual that does not enjoy physical activity and has never enjoyed it. No sports growing up, no run club in university, and no recreational activities. These are people that have come to a coach for assistance in training by doctors’ orders, a health scare, or just learning of the benefits and they wish to change the path their life is going down. Now, we must forget about the athletes and those that care about performance for school, profession, or which physical performance is their sole motivator for weight training. We are striving to build success for the individuals that are in pain during physical activity and those that do not enjoy training. These people are taking a huge step forward in bettering their health and putting a lot of what may be their first impressions of this world on us as a coach.

It seems to shock some coaches that many people have never thought of health and they are stumped on how to approach the situation when getting strong or losing weight is not a primary motivator. Strength coaches can become heavily reliant on measurable results to ensure they are providing value to their clients. Business coaches hammer home the idea that we should be measuring many things (body weight, weights lifted, volume, workload, body fat percentage, and much more) to ensure we can explain to our clients that what we are doing is working. However, to these specific clients, none of that matters. They may have no weight goal or strength goal, no event deadline to get in great shape for, like golf season or a wedding, so we must shift our scope of what is providing value to what is the most sustainable and achievable changes possible. When working with these clients coaches must ask themselves questions similar to:

1. “How can I improve this person's quality of life?” - This means addressing the challenges and limitations an individual faces in their lives. This can be as simple as reducing knee pain or being out of breath going up or down stairs, to the complexity of strengthening tissues to handle a summer of golf with friends without exacerbating their golfer's elbow. It is crucial to understand the entire scope of what is impacted by training. There is injury prevention and improved capacity for movement of course, but there is even feeling less bloated or inflamed when diets are well balanced and more focused on nutrients than convenience.
2. “How can I improve this person's relationship with fitness?” - Aim to build sustainability for the individual over optimization for maximal results. Not many share the same enthusiasm and love for the grind of weightlifting and “runners high” of cardio that coaches tend to have. Non-athletes do not see as direct a reward from the efforts put in with training. That means as coaches we must find a way to make it slightly less of a chore for individuals, find the exercises that are slightly more bearable and they show some enthusiasm for. If they come forward with an idea they want to try, that is not a risk of injury or totally unproductive, maybe it's worth a shot at finding a way to implement it into a session to harness that momentary enthusiasm.
3. “How can we create change with the least resistance or obstacles? Can we remove any obstacles?”- This means to step back from the situation and assess things that may be impeding the person from progressing to their goals. People do not want to change. Habits and behaviours are incredibly difficult to break and are formed very often as a side effect of a million other events taking place in an individual's life. There is more to decisions being made around someone's health than purely wishing to do things that are “good” for their health. It is crucially important to not be judging the habits that people have formed over a lifetime of just trying to enjoy life and not be too stressed. It is not the job of a strength coach to get every client to approach every decision in life with how it will impact their training, physique or health. It is our job to help guide them in a way that gives them the best opportunity to make good decisions for themselves most of the time. While holding an understanding of what can be easily implemented in their life. For example: A planned snack that prevents cravings for late night sweets.

To these individuals the weight on the bar is irrelevant, there is no “ego-lifting” because they do not value these things the same as coaches and lifetime athletes do. As coaches, there is still value in tracking and progressively overloading as this is the basis of our training. The difference is in these individuals the hammering home of personal records and all-time bests, falls flat. There is more success to be found in the real-life application and slow and steady progression of movement. Walking up and down stairs pain free or without getting out of breath; the carrying of groceries or shovelling of the sidewalk not being a dangerous ordeal.

There should be an emphasis on creating an environment that is welcoming and easy to move into within the scope of an individual's day. Removing any sort of personal stress associated with their sessions in the gym. It does not need to be a pre-workout fuelled, heavy metal infused all out workout for everyone. This means slow progressive warmups into long range movements that can be used to open people's bodies from the sedentary and rigid lives that are common in today's working and leisure environments. Creating low stress on the body and joints while still working towards greater goals.

Exercises should be chosen that are not daunting to work through, limiting long set up times or apparatus. Strength coaches can love the fancy toys and machines, but to some those can be described as “medieval devices” and machines that are only used to inflict misery. One cannot assume that their own enjoyment found in this world of physical fitness and performance is universal or can even be achieved by everyone. It is an unfair imposition to those that find no pleasure in training.

All prior discussion has been about what’s often called “general population” individuals, those who do not and have never performed high level or competitive athletics. However, these problems can also be present while working with athletes. Some just wish to compete in their sport and find no joy in the weight room. To these individuals we also cannot rely on hitting personal best lifts as a strong motivator and we must constantly show or explain the relevance to sport. As coaches we understand the

importance of being motivated and present during training sessions, if not for performance, at least for proper exercise execution and reducing a risk of injury.

A simple straight explanation of how the exercises relate to sport can suffice and get some buy in from athletes: “This will increase power”, “this will help your endurance on the pitch” , and so on. Sometimes we may need to dig deeper and create a more direct line between sport and training. This is where we can use exercise that have similar movement patterns to the sport in question: Lateral med ball toss for a thrower or baseball player or jump training for basketball and volleyball players. We can then combine this with specific cuing in our coaching to relate the exercise: “Jump for the rebound!” “Imagine your crushing a fastball down the middle!”. This can then help pull the athlete into the mental state of their sport and help the intrinsic motivation to give their best in the training.

Not everyone wants to be incredibly lean/strong/fast or be able to run a marathon, some just wish to be healthy and live happily. They are not going to give up eating out at the restaurants they love, or Sundays watching football on the couch with some drinks and chips. Coaches have to come to terms with this and assist their clients with consistency and progressing in the right direction and instill training as a regular habit and behaviour over time. Making healthy decisions a bit more often in a way that is very sustainable and building towards the best life possible. At the end of the day any training is better than no training.