Working With Post-Rehab Clients

As a fitness professional, you work closely with people on a daily basis. Knowing and understanding your clients is key to establishing long-term relationships with them, as well as enabling you to get more referrals down the road.

People coming out of rehabilitation make up a large part of many fitness professionals client base, and fully understanding their needs and tendencies can only benefit you and your practice.

Post-rehab clients fall into two main groups: those who exercised before their medical treatment and those who didnt. Both offer up a unique set of challenges that, as a fitness professional, youd do well to expect and understand.

The post-rehab client that did exercise before their procedure can be a firecracker to handle. This type of client realizes the value of exercise (and, just as important, the value you bring to their exercise) and will probably want to jump right in where they left off before their procedure. Their mindset is Well, my physical therapy is done so I must be healed!

The reality is that their insurance will only cover so many sessions, and its rarely enough to ensure adequate recovery. Because of their past history with exercise theyre very likely to find post-rehab boring and tedious. Your job is to make sure they dont go too far too fast. Many of these clients will religiously follow instructions until they are 80-90 percent healed, but then feel they are good enough to quit following instructions and jump back on the horse. Its usually this last 10 percent that leads to chronic problems down the road.

Clients who have never exercised present an entirely different set of challenges for you. Chances are high that youll be working around a host of physical problems. They might be referred to you because their doctor sees them as a high risk of heart attack due to a poor lifestyle. But, that isnt their only problem. If theyre overweight, they probably have problems with their knees, or their hips. They might be seeing multiple doctors for all their different conditions, which may lead to conflicting instructions for their exercise regime. For example, an overweight cardio patient may need 30 minutes of walking per day to reduce her risk, but the doctor she is seeing for her degenerative hips may only recommend 15 minutes per day. This can be challenging for you, as her personal trainer, but can lead to some great opportunities if you know how to take advantage of them.

By acting as a go between between all your clients doctors, theyre in perfect position to see what a great job youre doing with their patient. This could lead to many more referrals down the road for you. Spending some time dropping off brochures and business cards would make it even easier for these doctors to pass your name along to their patients in the future!

(C) 2007 Anthony Carey, Function First

Anthony Carey is the author of Relationships and Referrals: A Personal Trainers Guide to Doing Business with the Medical Community,, and The Pain-Free Program. Carey also is the founder and CEO of Function First and a nationally recognized continuing education provider who teaches health and fitness professionals how to grow their businesses by working with the medical community and incorporating corrective exercise into their practices. To learn more about Anthony Careys books and programs and to receive a free book chapter, free corrective exercises and 2 free articles visit http://www.FunctionFirst.com

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