I regularly ask my clients to pause, look back, and reflect.
- What went well.
- What did not.
- And what they can learn from it all.
So this year, I decided to take my own medicine. Dangerous, I know.
I have been self-employed as a personal trainer since January 5th 2015. That’s for eleven years! That feels both impossibly long and like it has gone very fast, depending on whether I am counting calendar years or total number of squats coached.
Here is my honest, light hearted review of how it has gone so far.
What has gone well
First up, the big one. I have stayed fully self employed the entire time. No “just until I find something else” job. No escape plan. Still here. You can’t get rid of me that easily.
I have been coaching continuously since January 5th 2015, which means I have worked with 181 clients. Some for short stints, some for years. On average, people stick with me for two years, which I take as a good sign that I am not completely unbearable. One client has even made it to ten years, which feels like some kind of endurance event we should both get medals for.
Across that time I have clocked up over 10,200 training sessions. That is a lot of conversations, a lot of inappropriate jokes, and a lot of “just one more rep”.
Somewhere along the way, I found my niche. Or maybe it found me. I now specialise in coaching people with medical conditions, injuries, or any other limitations that make exercise feel complicated, intimidating, or just difficult as hell. Hence my tagline:
Solving your exercise problems so your health, strength and fitness can thrive.
I have learned an enormous amount working with people with neurological conditions like stroke, Parkinson’s and MS, physiological issues like injuries and pre or post surgery recovery, and cardiovascular conditions including hypertension, diabetes and obesity. Every client has shown up with a slightly different puzzle, and I have loved figuring out how to work with what is actually possible, not what looks good on Instagram (even though I obviously look mighty fine on the socials).
Alongside the physical side of things, I have gone deep into behaviour change. How people really change. Slowly. Messily. With a lot of false starts. And how to help people reshape habits they have had for a lifetime, without relying on motivation, willpower, or magical thinking.
And finally, one of my proudest achievements. I have managed to turn a tiny, empty room into a well equipped, genuinely useful gym that has changed lives. It is not fancy. It is not huge. But it works.
What has not gone so well
COVID and lockdown deserve their own line, don’t they. That was… character building. Overnight, everything I did moved online. One to one coaching. Some form of group training. People lifting household objects while trying not to knock over laptops. It was not perfect, but it worked well enough to keep people moving and sane.
I have also had my fair share of injuries over the years. Occupational hazard, really. Thankfully, I have a solid support crew around me who helped me adapt when my body decided to be unhelpful. Being forced to coach while injured turned out to be an excellent empathy lesson.
There have also been times when equipment at various venues failed spectacularly. Dead lifts. Broken machines. Missing kit. None of it ideal, but all of it taught me how to adapt, improvise, and keep on trucking when the plan falls apart. Which, as it turns out, is most of the time.
What lessons can I learn from the experience
Writing this, I noticed something interesting. There are far more highs than lows. And most of the lows turned out to be excellent learning experiences in disguise. Annoying at the time, useful later.
I have learned how to plan for contingencies. You never know what a new client may present with, or whether a new venue will be very different to what you were promised. Having a Plan B, C and D is not pessimism. It is professionalism.
I have learned to adapt on the fly. My thinking has shifted from “I can’t do this” to “how can I do this?”. That one change alone has been huge, both for me and for my clients.
When I do not know the answer, I have learned that I just need to ask the right questions of the right people. Nobody knows everything. Pretending you do helps no one.
I have learned to make things simpler. Over and over again. Because less really is more. Fewer exercises. Fewer rules. Fewer ways to bugger things up. Better results.
And finally, the second time is always better. So we may as well get our shitty first draft over with. Whether that is a workout, a lifestyle change, or a blog post like this one.
So where next?
First up, I will keep doing the thing I hope I’m very good at. Solving clients’ problems so they have absolutely no excuse not to do their damn exercises.
- Fewer barriers.
- Fewer “I can’t because…” moments.
- More “oh… I can actually do this” realisations.
I also want to lean much harder into coaching behaviour change, not just during our sessions, but for the other 23 hours of the day when I am not standing next to them with a stopwatch and a raised eyebrow. Helping clients build skills so they can make better decisions on their own, recover when things wobble, and stop assuming that one imperfect week means they have failed at life.
And that means, I want to properly get my In-Depth Coaching service up and running. It exists. It works. I have spent a frankly stupid amount of time developing it. Now it needs to stop skulking in the background and start doing it’s damn job, helping people plan, reflect, adjust, and keep going when motivation inevitably disappears.
Same work. Same values. Just done a little more deliberately.
Here is to the next chapter. Still figuring it out. Still making it simpler. Still starting again, but a bit better this time…