Client assessment is an important aspect of personal training. Following the right assessment process, you can get to know your clients’ existing fitness levels, their diet pattern, medical history, general lifestyle, and much more. Depending on your evaluation, you can then design the optimum diet and exercise plans, exclusively customized for your clients. By performing client assessment, you also get to demonstrate the value of your personal training services which, in turn, can reassure clients of investing in your training abilities.
Read on to understand the different types of client-assessment how to conduct them.
Types of Client Assessments
Below are two distinct types of assessing your clients.
- Subjective Assessment – In this type of assessment, you get the information directly from the subject that is your client.
- Objective Assessment – Here, you collect clients’ information through your observation as a personal trainer.
How to Conduct Subjective Client Assessment?
Subjective assessment is the first step in the successful evaluation of your client. In this type of assessment, you will have to extract maximum information from your client. This can be done by interviewing the client with a set of questions. These questions should be such that they help you know your clients’ Physical Readiness (PR), General Lifestyle (GL), and Medical History (MH). You can conduct this assessment verbally or through a form.
Following are sample questions for PR, GL, and MH to help you understand and create your own question set.
- PR – Has your doctor ever said you have a heart condition or high blood pressure?
- GL – Does your occupation require long hours of sitting?
- MH – Have you ever had any surgeries?
Related:
How to Conduct Objective Client Assessment?
A successful objective client assessment depends on your thorough observation. As there are several aspects that need to be evaluated under this type of assessment, it can be further categorized as explained below.
Static Postural Assessment
This is an observational test and is often carried out in the initial stage of a complete physical assessment. As the name suggests, you have to carry out a visual observation of the clients’ posture while they are standing still. Through this, you understand their overall alignment and know if there are any abnormalities or imbalances that can further affect their movement or functions. This helps in selecting the right exercises for your clients.
While conducting the assessment, look at your client’s head, neck, and spine position from the front, side, and back. Look for common faults, including forwarded head position, rounded shoulders, or excessive arch in the lower back area.
Movement Assessment
After evaluating your clients’ posture while standing still, you must move on to assessing their posture in motion. Through this, you assess how well your clients’ muscles and joints are working together. For this type of assessment, use light exercises on technical grounds since skills should not be a limiting factor when assessing movement.
To put it in simple terms, do not assign any difficult exercise to your client that would require some skill to perform. For example, a simple goblet squat can help judge the structural alignment between different body parts.
Movement assessment has the ability to offer you a wide range of data that would help you in drafting the most advantageous program for your clients. However, you have to make sure that all your movements or exercises given to the client are purposeful.
Mobility Assessment
This is the last type of assessment that helps you identify your clients’ deficits in the joint range of motion, and helps refine observations seen in static and movement assessments. The movement or exercise that you assign your client to perform should exhibit a combination of soft-tissue flexibility, joint range of motion, and neuromuscular control. Standing toe touch and shoulder flexion are two such exercises that you can use for conducting mobility assessment.
Practical assessments are essential in planning the training program for the client or yourself. In addition, the information collected during the process will help you understand the priority work areas for the client. The client should pass all assessments in an ideal world with no red flags. But in the real world, this is not the case. Therefore, sharpen up the assessment game to provide the best program for the client or yourself.
Authors:
Pankaj Narsian (INFS Faculty)
Ketki H. She is a wandering soul who loves travelling solo, and firmly believes in enjoying the journey rather than hurrying to the destination. Although a graduate in Mechanical Engineering, she took to writing for reaching the masses.
