Fitness Coaching Check-In Tips: The Questions You Must Ask During Your Client Check-Ins

Whether your coaching business focuses on personal training or online fitness coaching, the check-in process is crucial to your client's success.

Client check-ins may sound like they should be a simple conversation and an opportunity to collect “data” on your clients, but your check-ins can be a powerful tool for behavior change if you use them correctly.

This post will help you have better check-ins with your clients so you can increase their adherence, accountability, and success. This will also help you increase client retention and elevate your reputation as a fitness coach.

Why are Client Check-Ins Important?

There are several reasons why a weekly check-in (or however often you've agreed upon) is important, other than the obvious fact that it's a basic part of the service you provide.

Regular check-ins allow fitness coaches to assess their clients' progress towards their fitness goals. By reviewing factors such as changes in weight, body composition, strength, endurance, and overall performance, coaches can track their clients' progress and make adjustments to their training and nutrition protocols as needed.

These check-ins provide an opportunity for coaches to hold their clients accountable for their actions and adherence to the program and support them where they are struggling.

Knowing that they have a scheduled check-in also encourages clients to stay committed to their fitness journey and motivates them to make consistent efforts toward their goals. They know there's someone who will call them out (respectfully) if they aren't sticking to their plan, and that same person will support them in the areas they're struggling in.

Thorough check-ins allow coaches to identify any challenges or barriers that their clients may be facing in their fitness journey.

This could include issues such as lack of motivation, battling a fixed mindset, difficulty sticking to the nutrition plan, or struggles with certain exercises. By understanding these challenges, coaches can provide support, guidance, and strategies to help clients overcome them.

The fitness industry is saturated with coaches who provide nutrition coaching, personal training, mindset coaching, and so on. If you want to help people and maintain a successful coaching business, you must provide excellent check-ins with your clients.

Common Mistakes With Client Check-Ins

First off, the purpose of a check-in is more than just celebrating small wins or getting your client's new body measurements. It's an opportunity to track progress in various aspects of their wellness and help them maintain accountability.

A common mistake fitness coaches make during their check-ins is including mainly yes/no questions on their check-in forms. The problem here is that it's rarely ever as simple as yes or no⁣. 

Questions like “Did you stick to the plan last week?” or “Did you have a stressful week?” require a yes or no response, but the answer is much more complex. 

Two clients might both say “yes” in response to sticking to the plan, but they could have totally different definitions of what “sticking to it” really looks like. 

Or, you might have a client say that they had a stressful week, but as their coach, it's incredibly important that you understand what kind of stress or where that stress stems from.

You can ask your client all the questions you want about their mental health, eating habits, sleep, etc., but if your check-in questions are all close-ended (a.k.a, can be answered with either a yes or a no), they won't be very helpful in determining your client's progress or how you, as their coach, can help them succeed.

What Kind of Questions to Ask on Your Check-In

The key to helping your client achieve their fitness goals is in the details of their answers.

Consider the check-in a performance review. You want to get a clear picture with as many details as possible so you can better support them through your coaching sessions.

These details are what will lead to better coaching and success (for you and the client). 

Although the questions you ask your clients matter, so does how you ask them and how you expect your clients to answer them. 

If you've ever learned from me as a client or as a coach inside the Health Mindset Coaching Certification or workshops, you know I love rating scales.⁣

Rating scales require more thought and embrace the gray area because your clients have to assign a number to how they're feeling. Asking a yes or no question implies that the issue at hand is black and white. 

It's more complex than that, you are more complex than that, and your clients are more complex than that.⁣

⁣For example, you can ask two clients if they are confident they can hit their macros this week, and both clients A and B may say yes. 

But, if you ask them on a scale of 1-10 how confident they are in their abilities to hit their macros this week, Client A might say 9/10 while Client B says 7/10.⁣

 Asking the question this way provides much more insight. ⁣

But you shouldn't just stop there.

There are two important follow-up questions:

       Why didn't you choose a higher number?⁣

       Why didn't you choose a lower number?⁣

When you ask these follow-up questions, you can really uncover the good stuff.⁣

⁣You can learn that Client A is confident she can hit her macros, but she knows this weekend might throw some curve balls because she's traveling. 

Knowing about her travel plans and why she rated her abilities at a 9 rather than a 10 opens up room to potentially provide help navigating her nutrition when she travels this weekend—something you wouldn't have known was necessary from the simple “YES” answer.⁣

The follow-up questions also let you know that Client B has some confidence in her abilities but also really doubts herself, so unless she feels like she's 110% certain, she feels that she can't rank herself anything higher than a 7 no matter what the circumstance. 

Your client's in-depth answer gives you more insight into her mindset and a huge area for growth. Knowing this information can significantly impact this client's success because you know more about what you need to work on with her.

Both clients said “yes,” but how that is defined looks entirely different.⁣

Asking these open-ended questions allows your client to explain the nuances of their situation and gives you a more complete picture of what they are struggling with (e.g., motivation) and what they feel confident with (e.g., hitting their macros).

It also makes it easier for you to give them more effective feedback when you follow up with them.

Become a Better Fitness Coach

Do you want to instantly improve your coaching abilities? 

Ask your clients fewer yes/no questions, and provide more rating/Likert scales, then follow up with open-ended questions.⁣ You can learn more about improving your check-in forms, intake forms, and even your application form from a psychological perspective.

Check out my most popular workshop for coaches: Transform Your Forms.

Updating your forms is a good start, but if you want to be a coach with killer client adherence, retention, and success, you've got to have a good handle on mindset and behavior change science overall!

Join the waitlist for the next round of the Health Mindset Coaching Certification and when you do so, you’ll get 5 free lessons in mindset and behavior change coaching that you can apply with your clients ASAP!

You'll learn how to apply research and science to your coaching practice and feel more confident in your abilities to help clients with psychological aspects of health and fitness, such as mindset, habits, goal setting, willpower, self-efficacy, confidence, and negative thought patterns. 

The Health Mindset Coaching Certification will teach you how to help clients, like in the above example, overcome the biggest obstacles they're facing in their fitness journey. 

Join the waitlist here, and you'll also get 5 FREE lessons in behavior change and psychology to improve your coaching right away!

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IG: @coachkaseyjo @healthmindsetcert