Do you find your clients adherence drops over time?
At PTD Ninja we found that on average after 3 weeks client adherence begins to drop in many online programs.
We looked into why this happens and how you can tweak your program to help stop adherence dropping.
There are two main reasons why adherence drops.
First, because the client doesn’t have a deep enough understanding of why they are doing the program.
A lot of people will know they need to do something but not know really why they should, they might think they do, but they probably don’t. This means that when someone signs up to your program they feel they have taken a big step, at this point motivation is high but will fast run out.
Motivation is actually one of the worse ways to maintain long term adherence. It’s based on how a person feels at any given time. There isn’t much control over that. How many times have you “gotten out the wrong side of bed” and not known why?
Will power, is something that can be controlled though. Having a deep enough understanding why they are doing the program helps them ‘willingly make decisions every day to check in and get things done that need to be done.
Will power, is also what is behind the second reason adherence drops.
The steps you asking your clients to take are not simple or clear enough.
Humans only have so much will power, how much depends on a lot of factors such as work life, family life, financial health, social life, etc.
The more the client has to think about doing something the more ‘will power’ is required to do it.
If they have a lot of other things going on, this will power gets used up before even thinking about what is going on in your program.
The simpler and clearer you can make each step in your program the better. Basically make each step so simple that they can’t fail, this mean little to no will power is required to complete the task.
That doesn’t mean you can’t do complicated things eventually, just build up to it.
An extreme example here but imagine learning a new language, if someone said go and learn to read War and Peace in a foreign language, how would that go for you? I’m guessing not well.
But If they said, go and learn these 3 words this week. Then the next week they ask you to learn a sentence, then following week, a paragraph and so on. You would stand a better chance of achieving the goal and a lot more likely to stick to the process.
Same goes with online coaching/training and maintaining adherence. Start simple and keep it clear, then build on these progressively over time.
Try looking back through your program and put yourself in your clients shoes and think, “do I know why I’m doing this?”
If not, included something in your systems to help them understand.
Then work through your program and ask yourself if I was the client would I understand this and action it with all the other stuff I have going on in my life?
If not make it simpler and add clarity so that they know exactly what to do, when to do it and how to check-in to say they have done it.
And remember…
Climbing the biggest mountains my seem impossible but then you realise, its simply just about consistently taking one step at a time in the right direction.
If you are stuggling to get your online personal training business up and running and want to find out the exact steps you need to follow to lauch and grow an online fitness business, plus have all your content and systems set up and done for you without paying out thousands of your hard earned cash, come take a look at the PTD Ninja 101 course and the Online Personal Training Certification here.
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