Welcome to the second half of Exercise Prescription, Programme Design.
This is the part of your Personal Training journey where you will start putting together some of the theoretical knowledge that you have gained over the past couple of weeks and apply it to real life clients.
For the remainder of exercise prescription, we will cover aspects such as pre-screening, fitness testing, how and why to perform appropriate warmups and cool downs, some fundamentals of programme design, and how to put it all together to create individualized programmes for your clients.
Watch
We hope this video helped you understand the basics of programme design. Over the next couple of topics, we will go into these aspects in more detail to set you up for success.
Client reminder
For your Programme Design assessment, you will need to find a willing and able participant who would fall under the general population category – this would mean finding someone who is:
- Aged 18 – 65 years old
- No major injuries that would prevent them from performing basic movements in the gym
- No, or minimal, medical conditions (such as high blood pressure, history of cardiac events, moderate-severe asthma, pregnant or lactating, or have any other medical condition that would put them at high risk for exercise)
- Able to access the gym or training area that you attend (i.e., also be a member of the gym you are wanting to train them out of)
- Available to train with you several times per week for multiple weeks, and
- Someone who is not a high-level competitive athlete training for a specific sport (we do not want to interfere with their training regime). An example of someone who would be appropriate would be someone who attends 1 – 3 practices per week and 1 or 2 games per week. There is flexibility here, but the idea is that we are avoiding over-training for that person, and we are not increasing their risk of injury by interfering with their recovery.
Letter of introduction reminder
By now you should have completed and submitted the “Letter of Introduction” task. If you have not yet completed this task, now is the time. This is an important part of completing Assessment 03A2, and must be done before you carry out any tasks in a gym setting. The Letter of Introduction can be found in the Assessment Tabs in the navigation bar at the end of this module.
Working with members of the public can have its ups and downs – if you have ever worked in a customer facing job, you will know what we mean! It is important to remember that as a personal trainer you are providing a service to the public, in a public setting. Before you get too far into the programme design section of this module, give yourself time to recap some of the information provided in Module 2 Ethics.
Check out this article by the International Sports Sciences Association (ISSA) regarding working with challenging clients.
Next, we will move into the specifics on the procedures you should follow when setting up a training programme with a client.
