You’ve seen it play out in real time.

A new client shows up for an initial session energized and sincere. They talk about what they want, why they want it and how “this time feels different.” They aren’t vague or resistant. They are ready. You spend the session listening, clarifying what success looks like and agreeing on a realistic first step. And for a while, it works. They show up. They check in. They complete a few solid weeks and start to feel the early wins that make change feel possible.

Then the schedule changes.

Not all at once, and not because they stopped caring. It starts the way it usually does. A meeting runs late. A kid gets sick. A flight gets delayed. One week is unusually hectic, so they miss a workout and promise they’ll make it up. Your check-in message gets a quick, upbeat reply: “Crazy week. I’ll get back to it.” But the next week brings its own disruption, and suddenly the missed session is no longer a one-off. The client who was consistent for a stretch is now trying to claw their way back, and the routine that felt surprisingly sturdy a month ago feels fragile again.

This is the moment many health and exercise professionals default to the familiar fix: motivation. More education and reminders. A stronger “why” and another round of goal setting. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t.

Researchers Nathalie André, Marine Grousset and Michel Audiffren argue that the gap is not because motivation doesn’t matter. It is because many popular behavior-change approaches do a better job predicting who already exercises than explaining how people change in the messy middle of real life. They note that factors like attitudes, intentions, self-efficacy and perceived barriers are strong predictors, but a meaningful share of behavior change still goes unexplained.

Their recommendation is a shift that should feel practical to health coaches and personal trainers: Stop treating exercise as the endpoint you reach once a client is motivated. Treat exercise behavior as a driver that can build motivation, strengthen follow-through and help attitudes catch up over time.

A Fresh Definition of Adherence

The researchers start by challenging how adherence is commonly discussed in health settings. Adherence is often used interchangeably with compliance, which can imply the client’s job is simply to follow directions.

Instead, they define adherence as something more useful for coaching and training: the strength of the link between attitude and behavior. In their view, adherence is the process by which people “behave as they think” or “think as they behave.” Exercise adherence, specifically, is the back-and-forth alignment between how someone feels or thinks about exercise and what they actually do.

That single reframe changes the conversation with clients. It shifts the goal from “Do what I recommended” to “Let’s build a stronger connection between what you value and what you do, until it starts to feel like you.” It also gives you a clearer way to assess what is breaking down when consistency is fragile.

Why a Behavior-First Approach May Work Better in the Real World

The researchers make a point that is easy to miss: explaining established exercise behavior is not the same thing as explaining behavior change. A model can be good at predicting who exercises now and still fall short when the task is helping someone change their routine, their identity or their habits.

They argue that one reason change is hard is that attitudes can take time to shift. If your only plan is to change attitude first and assume behavior will follow, you can lose clients during the waiting period. Exercise, on the other hand, is an action that can happen today, even when a client feels ambivalent.

From that behavioral perspective, the researchers describe three connected pathways:

• Exercise can increase motivation by delivering immediate, near-term benefits.
• Repetition can strengthen the ability to sustain effort over time through executive functioning and “willpower.”
• Consistent action can shape attitudes through commitment processes, so that beliefs and identity begin to align with behavior.

If that sounds familiar, it is because it matches what experienced professionals often do intuitively: create small wins, make follow-through easier and help clients see themselves as capable. Chris Gagliardi, MS, ACE Scientific Education Content Manager, says this familiar coaching experience also shows why the behavior-first reframe can be useful when motivation is treated as the main engine.

“A lack of motivation is not always the reason a person does not stick to their plan,” Gagliardi says. “You and your client may have followed the steps for changing a behavior, and yet the behavior still isn’t progressing the way either of you expected. That is when changing the way we view exercise behavior can be helpful.

“We all know the many physical and psychological benefits of exercise, but we can add another benefit to that list: Exercise itself can help build motivation, self-efficacy and follow-through,” Gagliardi explains. “If consistent exercise is treated only as the end result of a program instead of as part of the journey, its role can be underused. What if a client starts exercising before feeling fully motivated, and the act of exercising becomes the resource they need to build more motivation? Motivation is important, but if we wait for clients to be 100% motivated before taking action, we may never get started.”

Make Exercise Pay Off Today

Dropout is common in exercise programs, and the researchers describe a practical reason: Exercise has costs right now (fatigue, discomfort, time, money), while many benefits feel delayed (weight loss, improved fitness). If clients experience exercise mainly as cost, the decision to repeat it becomes harder to justify.

Their solution is to prioritize what they call “immediate purposes,” the short-term benefits a person can feel during or right after a session. They describe examples that most clients recognize instantly: feeling more energized because arousal increases, satisfaction from achieving a meaningful goal, pleasant physical sensations like warmth, improved mood and social interaction.

As a health coach or trainer, you obviously don’t want to ignore long-term outcomes, but you should probably urge your clients to stop relying on long-term outcomes as their only fuel. When a client expects a “today benefit,” it becomes easier to say yes at the decision point. Gagliardi says this requires a deliberate shift from future-oriented outcomes to present-tense feedback clients can notice immediately.

“This is an important point, and many clients may not be used to this way of thinking,” Gagliardi says. “A typical day is filled with long-term outcomes—from work to school to family and friends and everything in between. We are conditioned to plan for the future, which is important, but that does not mean we should lose sight of what is happening in the moment. Helping clients identify meaningful in-the-moment and short-term successes can help keep a steady source of behavior fuel going.”

Behavior-change techniques also give you practical tools for helping clients reach immediate goals. Previous research has shown that short-term techniques such as cues and incentives, and social and nonspecific rewards can increase motivation in certain populations. Techniques such as biofeedback, demonstration and practice or rehearsal can also serve as effective short-term strategies in physical-activity interventions.

It’s worth noting that digital tools can support this immediate-purpose approach by making progress visible during the session, which might include measures such as steps taken, heart rate or energy expenditure, and by offering guidance and prompts outside of sessions.

Repetition Builds Follow-Through, Not Just Fitness

A single great session can spark hope, but adherence really depends on what happens after that session, when the client is back in their life making the next decision.

Regular exercise is a form of effort-based decision-making. It takes physical effort to do the workout and mental effort to keep choosing it over time.

Evidence reviewed in the study supports a “virtuous circle” idea: Chronic exercise can improve executive functioning, and improved executive functioning can make adherence easier. In other words, executive functioning is central to the relationship between exercise and health behavior, with benefits flowing in both directions.

Planning matters here because it is directly coachable. When barriers show up, a specific plan can reduce the load on willpower by making the next action clearer. This is when implementation intentions—the specific plans about how, where and when someone will perform an action—are particularly important.

One practical insight highlighted by the researchers is especially useful for clients who struggle with routines: time-based cues can require monitoring, while event-based cues may be more important. Research cited in the study suggests that consistency of prior events (such as after breakfast) relates to habit strength, while doing activity at a consistent time of day may not show the same relationship.

This matters because it gives you another way to help clients who are “bad with routines.” For some clients, the problem is not discipline. It is that their plan depends on ideal conditions that rarely appear. For clients whose plans depend on the perfect window, Gagliardi says the coaching task is to co-create options that still count.

“I think this is another concept we can all relate to: waiting to do something until the time is just right,” Gagliardi says. “Maybe I’ll walk outside only if the weather is perfect, I get home early, the kids have finished their homework and the stars are aligned. If we wait for the perfect moment to exercise, it probably will never happen. This is where co-creating a plan with a variety of options for being active can come in handy. It may not be the perfect day or the perfect workout you imagined, but every step, jump, hop, push, pull, bend, lift and twist counts.”

When Behavior Reshapes Beliefs

The third pathway is the one that can change how you think about client buy-in.

Because attitude change can be slow, waiting for full buy-in can stall progress. A client can complete an exercise session even when their attitudes are not fully aligned. The challenge is whether the experience makes them more likely to repeat it.

To explain how attitudes may shift after action, the researchers draw on social psychology, including cognitive dissonance and commitment theories. They describe a common pattern: when individuals commit to a behavior, they may modify their attitudes afterward to better align with what they have done. In short, repeated action can help beliefs catch up.

They describe “commitment through actions” and note conditions that strengthen it, including freedom or choice, repetition, the “cost” of the action (including choosing among levels of effort) and internal reasons for acting, such as pleasure, satisfaction or health.

The point is not to pressure clients into effort, but rather to structure the environment so that clients experience ownership and meaning. When the plan feels chosen, not imposed, it becomes easier for clients to see the behavior as part of who they are.

The researchers also offer a caution that is relevant to coaching style. External rewards and social support can boost motivation, but they can also interfere with attitude-shift processes if the client attributes their effort mainly to external reasons, such as pleasing someone. Whenever possible, keep the emphasis on internal rewards and autonomy.

What This Means for Health and Exercise Professionals

In the framework proposed in this study, adherence works like a cycle. It begins with the decision to initiate exercise, is supported by immediate benefits during the session and becomes easier with repetition as longer-term changes accumulate. Over time, those changes can include reduced effort costs, increased value placed on effort, stronger executive control and shifts in attitudes that reinforce behavior. Exercise behavior can help build consistency by creating immediate benefits, supporting repetition, strengthening longer-term self-regulation and reinforcing attitudes over time. Figure 1 shows how those pieces can work together over time, with exercise behavior helping to generate the motivation, follow-through and attitude shifts that support adherence.

Figure 1. Exercise Adherence as a Cycle

For you, the day-to-day application is straightforward: when a client struggles, identify which part of the cycle is weakest right now.

If the client never feels better after workouts, the immediate payoff may be missing. The fix may be session design, scaling, pacing, recovery, coaching language and a clearer sense of “what today is for.”

If the client enjoys sessions but cannot follow through alone, the issue may be planning and cues. The fix is not a lecture about priorities. It is a simpler action plan anchored to the client’s real schedule and real barriers.

If the client shows up but still talks like exercise is not “for them,” the issue may be ownership. The fix is more autonomy, more choice and more reflection on internal reasons that the client can endorse.

It’s worth noting that this study synthesized existing evidence, and more research is needed to determine when and how these processes interact. It’s also a reminder to focus on what you can control: the client experience, the decision environment and the support systems that make repetition more likely.

As a health and exercise professional, you have broad power to influence behavior. You can educate, support planning, build routines, teach exercise skills, set goals, track progress and create accountability. You can also create a safe training environment that makes clients want to return. Here is what that looks like in practice:

1. Build sessions around immediate purposes that are within your scope of practice. You are not treating depression or anxiety when you ask a client to notice how movement affects their mood. You are helping them observe their experience and connect it to behavior. Keep language practical: energy, sleep quality, stress level, confidence, comfort in the body.
2. Treat planning as part of the program, not an afterthought. Helping a client create an implementation intention or select an event-based cue is behavior coaching. If the barrier is pain that worsens, dizziness, fainting, chest pain or other concerning symptoms, pause and refer to a medical professional. Resume within your credentialed scope after receiving appropriate guidance or clearance.
3. Use commitment strategies ethically. Emphasize choice, not pressure. Offer options for workout structure, intensity or schedule. Ask clients what feels realistic and why it matters to them. This supports internal reasons for action, which the researchers describe as a commitment condition.
4. Be thoughtful with rewards. Encouragement and community are valuable. At the same time, the researchers note that relying heavily on external rewards can shift a client’s explanation for effort away from internal reasons, which may reduce durable attitude change. The practical solution is balance: support clients while keeping the story centered on what they gain internally from the behavior.

Table 1 turns the adherence cycle into a quick troubleshooting guide, showing which coaching response fits each breakdown: immediate payoff, planning cues or autonomy and ownership.

Table 1. Adherence Troubleshooting Guide

Conclusion

Ultimately, exercise adherence is not built by waiting for clients to feel perfectly ready. It is built through repeated experiences that feel worthwhile, realistic and personally meaningful. When health coaches and personal trainers help clients notice immediate benefits, plan around real-life barriers and choose actions that reflect their own values, exercise becomes less dependent on motivation alone. Over time, each bout of movement can strengthen the next decision, reinforce a more positive attitude and help clients see consistency as something they are capable of building—one action at a time.