We have a duty of care to ensure the safety
of our clients, but we are also being hired to
facilitate results.
Keep calm (but don’t necessarily
carry on)
When you question your client, it is important
to keep yourself together. In the event that a
client has a potentially serious injury, your
calm manner will assist them and prevent
them from becoming further distressed.
In the more common but less immediately
serious scenarios, it can be helpful to remain
composed because some clients may become
hesitant to tell you that they are experiencing
pain if they suspect that they will be met with
an extreme reaction. Many people do not like
to have attention drawn to themselves in the
gym, so you need to be sensitive to this if you
want your clients to trust you to be able to
handle these situations well and therefore feel
that they can be open with you.
The 30-second article
• Pain is one of the body’s signals, and
in training it can mean many different
things
• It is your responsibility as the trainer
to keep your client safe – you also
need to observe and collect
information when there is pain
present to decide how to manage the
situation
• Stay calm but be detailed with your
line of questioning: the intensity,
quality and localisation of the pain can
all help ascertain what is going on
internally for the client
• If you are unsure about what has
happened, refer on to a physiotherapist
or allied health professional
• Provide some guidelines to your
clients to help them decide when pain
has progressed beyond what is
normal for training and is indicating
that they should pull back.
42 | NETWORK SUMMER 2018
Reluctant pain admissions
There are also clients that may hesitate to tell
you that they are experiencing pain if they
suspect that you will overreact by disallowing
certain movements or otherwise being overly
protective and holding them back from
reaching their goals. As a trainer your focus
should be entirely on your client, so ensure
that you monitor not only the execution
of each movement but also their reaction
to the execution: if their facial expression
or physical reaction to an element of an
exercise suggests that they are in discomfort,
ask them about it, while reassuring them
that it doesn’t necessarily mean stopping
exercising. Because of its diverse nature, the
occurrence of pain does not automatically
signify the cessation of the training session or
that a movement needs to be removed from
the client’s exercise program. In training, the
pain experienced by clients can range from
the beneficial type that’s getting results,
right through to serious danger, so you
need to ensure that you gather the relevant
information before making any decisions
about how to manage the situation.
Pain vs burn: knowing the
difference
Make sure that your client knows how to tell
the difference between the normal muscular
burn and ache that occurs whenever an
exercise becomes difficult and other types
of pain. This may sound obvious, but to a
complete beginner it may be new territory
as they might never have experienced the
sensation of ‘good’ pain.
It is also important that you pay attention
to the client’s history of self-report. If they
have a tendency to complain at the slightest
onset of discomfort, then a minor complaint
would be taken on in a very different way
than if you were being told the same thing
by a client who generally does not make any
comments about the efforts of exercise.
Location and sensation
There are several important pieces of
information that can help you figure out what
may be going on for the client.
First, you need to find out where they
are experiencing the pain, and whether it is
localised within the one spot or whether it is
radiating anywhere else in the body.
Second, the intensity of the pain should
be assessed, and this is where ranking
scales can come in handy. For example, if
a 10 means they are about to pass out from
pain and 1 is pain that they can only just
detect, ask them to rate the level of pain
experienced at the time.