Practical Approach To New Member Behaviour Change

Helping members successful change behaviours comes down to understanding how we think. You could create the perfect workout, but unless you can get the members to complete it, it will not have the desired effect. While not exhaustive these six actions will increase the likelihood of your members achieving success, and you getting the credit for it.

1. Make It Personally Relevant.

Make sure that any exercises included in a workout can be directly related to the members outcomes or goals. When you teach an exercise, a member will be evaluating the benefit cost of that exercise in relationship to their overall goal.

If I give someone a squat to do and their goal is general fitness, they can recognise the relationship between the exercise and the goal and will continue to include that exercise in their routine. If however, they cannot see the relationship between stretching and general fitness they will drop that exercise in favour of doing more of the exercise that they think does contribute to overall fitness. Maybe this is why so many people fail to warm up or cooldown appropriately as they don’t recognise the benefits of these activities to the overall outcome.

2. Work To Reduce Barriers

Sometimes we set up barriers without even thinking about it. Over prescribing in terms of visit frequency or exercise volume can create barriers. Suggesting someone needs to train 3,4,5 times per week to get the benefits is way too much when it comes to changing behaviours. Start with modest visit frequency and exercise volume so the member has a chance to adapt successfully will avoid to drastic a change to their weekly schedule. One to two times per week is a realistic place to start and encourage members to build up over time. A modest exercise volume will avoid delayed onset muscle soreness and give the member time to learn the exercise with less focus on intensity.

3. Make It Easy, Enjoyable, And Challenging

For those new to exercise discomfort and pain are a real barrier to continued participation. I like to use the term ‘hump of discomfort’ to describe that feeling exercise produces when you’re first starting off. Experienced exercisers often look forward to excessive levels of pain and discomfort as they recognise the benefits of putting your body in that situation. Don’t slack off so much though that the workout isn’t challenging.

4. Feedback, Support and Recognition

During an exercise session feedback and reinforcement are practical ways to encourage and reassure members of their efforts.  Studies conducted to measure changes and effects of feedback on people have identified that it is not the feedback per se.

It is the effect of the feedback on the participants perception of competence, that moderated changes in motivation and increase exercise adherence. Three areas to feedback on are technique, effort and skill acquisition.

5. Set Realistic and Achievable Goals

During individual consultations it is quite common to identify a members goals using the SMART approach (Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time framed). This provides us with details from which to design an exercise program or suggest a range of appropriate classes but it does not identify the motivator for the behaviour.  A simple question you can ask a member to help identify the motivator is what will you be able to do once you have achieved your goal/s. This clarifies the reason they are exercising and is referred to as their Super Ordinate Goal and is the thing that motivates them.

6. Avoid Threshold Mentality

Motivation to maintain a behaviour decreases when members miss or skip sessions. Sometimes this unavoidable and we should be careful not to penalise those members too quickly as we may trigger a behaviour called the abstinence violation effect (AVE). Think of it like this, all week I have been eating healthy in order to reduce my weight. By the time I get to Sunday my motivation is dropping and I decide to treat (cheat) myself to a single slice of pizza. Once I have eaten that slice my critical self-talk tells me I have failed and I might as well finish the pizza, which I do, then I continue to devour the entire contents of the refrigerator.

                                    The abstinence violation effect in full flow.

This also and possibly more importantly also impacts visit frequency. If I can’t do three sessions this week I might as well not do any. If I miss Monday, then I’ll start again next Monday.

To avoid the abstinence violation effect being triggered provide ranges to work between. This could be, aim to workout 4-12 times this month. Then working out a plan for sessions to last between 30-90 minutes. This provides members with a minimum and maximum to work between. On weeks when it’s been more difficult to accommodate their workout requirements, they can still feel successful, and I have a chance to make it back up.

Any of these six components will impact your member behaviour. Focus on one or a very limited number of behaviours at any one time. Get them exercising regularly before trying to change their nutrition. Changing multi aspects of someone’s behaviours will often fail as the member struggles to maintain consistency.