Things like:
How long is the program?
Is the program and exam online?
What makes ACE's program different?
Call (888) 825-3636
or
Chat 
now!
Perform 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise and resistance training twice a week, plus neuromotor exercise, flexibility training and balance training.
Eat a healthy diet and get a good night’s sleep. Connect with loved ones. Meditate. Do yoga. Perform breathing exercises to help manage stress. Spend time outside.
Take a cold plunge. And a warm-water soak.
Count your steps and calories. Track protein and water intake and heart rate variability.
Oh! Fiber! Don’t forget fiber.
Just typing that intro stressed me out. Now, imagine your clients being constantly inundated with things they “should” be doing for their health and well-being and then trying to find a way to squeeze all of that into their already busy schedules. No wonder so many people feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to start.
Your role as a health and exercise professional is to help clients sift through all that information, collaborate to determine what is truly important and then help formulate a plan that serves their needs.
Perhaps the secret lies not in finding a way to address every aspect of health and fitness, but instead in chipping away until you uncover the essential elements that will enable clients to achieve their goals with the least disruption to their lifestyle.
“Social media has created this illusion that every single health behavior deserves equal attention,” explains Erin Nitschke, EdD, exercise science professor and Program Director of Sciences at Laramie County Community College in Wyoming and an ACE Certified Health Coach and Personal Trainer. The thing is, none of the “to-do” items listed above is bad advice on its own. In fact, most of them are evidence-based elements of a healthy lifestyle. The thing to remind clients is that almost no one is doing them all consistently, even though that is often the expectation when you’re getting advice from all directions.
Chris Gagliardi, MS, ACE Scientific Education and Content Manager, reminds us that social media is all about stimulation and keeping users hooked and engaged. “Being inundated with information can lead to feeling overwhelmed and inaction or feeling like you need to do everything all at once to be healthy,” he says. “It can lead to challenges with all-or-nothing thinking.”
Dr. Nitschke agrees that the cognitive overload leads to inaction. With too many options, people just don’t know where to start. “As a coach,” she says, “you don’t need to dismiss any intervention forever, but you also have to help them decide what truly deserves attention right now.”
Those last two words—right now—are vital. We can’t do everything, every day. So, helping clients identify the must-haves that will produce the greatest return for them “right now” is an essential first step.
In the context of behavior change, minimal viable output is about identifying the least amount of action that will keep a client’s plans on track, even on their worst day. “Every positive behavior has health benefits,” explains Gagliardi. “Minimal viable output keeps behavior change going and can break the cycle of waiting for perfection. Optimal output is amazing when it happens, but this does not mean that minimal output is bad or pointless. Both have a place in a behavior-change journey.”
Clients can gain a sense of accomplishment from adopting this kind of mindset, he says. “If we always wait for the perfect moment to take action, then we may never end up taking action. If we don’t exercise because we don’t have 90 minutes to spend at the gym, or eat more fruits and vegetables because we can’t meet the recommended servings, then we will simply keep waiting for a perfect moment to get started.”
Minimal viable output thinking is also great for when things don’t go according to plan. A rainy day, traffic or working late can derail a program, but doing any amount of activity or choosing one healthy food can lead to big changes over time.
There is a difference between capability and capacity, says Woods. It’s important to encourage clients to give themselves some grace on what is a lifelong health and fitness journey and become O.K. with what they’re capable of in any given moment.
So, if a client can’t make it to the gym for an intense workout, establishing a “minimal viable output” of a 20-minute walk after dinner can help keep them on track and feeling like they’re moving forward. By contrast, an unplanned day off with no activity can feel defeating. This same mindset can work for any element of healthy living. For example, a client may have a goal to cook a healthy meal at home four days per week, but having a pre-planned healthy to-go option instead of fast food can lead to an important victory when cooking just isn’t possible.
In addition to the “must-haves,” clients may drop certain behaviors into other buckets, such as “nice-to-haves,” meaning those things that they will do when possible as add-ons to their routine, and “not right now,” which are those activities or elements of health that are not top priority at the moment but may be at some time in the future. A fourth bucket may be labelled “nope” and hold those things that simply don’t interest that client. Nope, not soaking in 50-degree water no matter how great the benefits might be!
This categorization process gives clients permission to stop chasing trends and instead home in on what works best for them, right now.
It’s also important to consider that adding more responsibilities or “must-haves” can sometimes add more stress about what they “should” be doing, which is counterproductive. Moving some of those things down to the “nice-to-have” bucket can reduce stress levels and help the client focus on what they’ve deemed more important. Remind clients that if positive lifestyle change is becoming a stressor, then it’s not really all that positive.
People can sometimes fight against this idea. “They are trying to be what they see on social media, trying to do what their neighbor does, trying to do what works for their trainer or coach,” says Anna Woods, ACE Certified Personal Trainer and CEO and Founder of sheStrength. Instead, help clients explore questions like, “Who are you? What do we know about your tendencies, strengths and weaknesses, and how can we customize this for you?”
Gagliardi also suggests that choosing a single starting point can be beneficial. “Narrowing down to one new behavior at a time can lead to having a clear direction that feels attainable,” he explains. “A clear path forward begins with one step instead of trying to move in 100 different directions all at once. It can also be beneficial to work with clients to understand that not everything needs to be done all at once and that positive and meaningful changes can be made one step at a time, one meal at a time, one bite at a time, and one breath at a time.”
If a client expresses that they feel overwhelmed (or you see signs of that stress during sessions), consider approaching the conversation through the lens of subtraction. Asking clients, “What part of your routine feels hardest to maintain right now?” can encourage them to think about subtraction rather than addition. Some clients may be surprised and feel empowered by that approach.
From there, you might ask which habits make them feel best. Helping them identify what is and isn’t working can be enlightening for both of you and make it possible to collaborate on modifying their routine. “If your after-work walk is stressing you out because it’s cutting into the time you spend cooking healthy dinners with your kids, which you really enjoy, let’s remove that for now and lighten your load. Later, we’ll find another place in your week to add some more physical activity.”
Another approach to better understanding how a lifestyle change aligns with a client’s values is to reframe the conversation. Instead of focusing on fitness-related outcomes or what they feel they should be doing each week, talk to clients about what they want their lives to look and feel like. “One of the biggest shifts that professionals can make,” explains Dr. Nitschke, “is moving from asking the question, ‘What do you want to achieve?’ and moving more toward, ‘What kind of life are you trying to build?’”
That next-level conversation will likely reveal a lot about the client’s underlying “why” and what they value in life. Yes, you may have clients pursuing personal bests or other fitness-related goals, but others may be more interested in increasing their energy levels to play with their grandkids or reducing pain so they can enjoy more leisure-time physical activity. Dr. Nitschke says that when pros begin with values instead of metrics, it can become easier to identify their priorities.
Gagliardi recommends asking evocative scaling questions to determine just how important a target behavior or goal is. This might include use of the confidence ruler or importance ruler. To continue the earlier example, you might ask the client to rate two health-promoting activities—their after-dinner walk and cooking healthy meals with their kids—on the 0-to-10 importance ruler, where 0 means not important all and 10 means extremely important, and then use their responses to kick off a conversation about modifying their routine to pursue what they value most.
And remember, it’s never all-or-nothing. A client doesn’t have to stop walking in order to continue cooking. Imagine they are walking for 30 minutes after work four days each week. They could cut that to two days per week to free up time for cooking and find other places in their schedule to get 60 more minutes of movement. It’s all about adjusting the program to free up time for what the client deems most important—in this case, cooking with their kids.
Woods takes a very practical approach. With each client, she’ll discuss their schedule, energy levels, stressors and so on before coming up with a plan to incorporate movement or address other behavior-change goals in a way that’s not so disruptive. “That’s where we start,” she says. “I always want people to feel safe in their approach.” Many people develop fear and guilt, Woods says, that they’re not doing enough to live up to the expectations that things like social media can set for us.
Woods also suggests that these conversations begin with exploring what the client enjoys doing. Pick one or two things they enjoy and make that the starting point. Challenge and accountability should be built in, but starting from a place of joy can be empowering.
Your role is to collaborate with each client to figure out what they value most and adjust the program to suit their current lifestyle, with a goal of making things easier, not more cumbersome. Remind clients that true lifestyle change involves making the best choice they can as often as they can, not pursuing perfection or completing a checklist of what other people think they “should” be doing.
How do we make this easier? That’s the key question for any client who is struggling to begin or adhere to a behavior-change program, no matter their focus.
Dr. Nitschke suggests reminding clients that simplification doesn’t mean they’re failing or lowering their standards. “It means you’re reducing friction,” she says. “It means you’re reducing complexity."
Consider behavior-change strategies like movement snacks and habit stacks, which can help clients integrate movement or other lifestyle changes into their daily routine without “adding” anything new. It’s not quite “subtraction,” but it can feel like it. Choice architecture, which involves manipulating the environment to make decision-making easier, can be used to reduce the reliance on willpower, as well as the stress associated with having to make healthy choices throughout the day.
Also, combine workouts so that they address more than one element of physical fitness. Circuit training can be effective cardio and strength training. Integrate cognitive challenges into existing workouts. Perform two full-body resistance-training workouts instead of a four-day split routine. Perform balance training or practice mindfulness as part of the cool-down. This can subtract from the time spent in the gym without taking away from the results.
Meal planning, while meant to be a simplification tool, can actually become very stressful for a lot of clients. Dr. Nitschke recommends batch cooking one or two proteins for the week instead of cooking elaborate breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Also, there’s power in repeatability. For example, a client who has been struggling to count calories but values that approach can select one or two options each for breakfast and lunch that have roughly the same number of calories, which means they’d only have to measure dinner each day.
Another great strategy is to find ways to achieve two or more goals with one activity. The ACE 7 Core Drivers of Healthy Living remind us that each element connects with and supports each of the others. Here are some ideas to share with clients that address more than one Core Driver: Meet up with some friends for a weekend bike ride, then enjoy a healthy meal together. Practice stress-reducing deep breathing or meditation as part of your bedtime routine. Join a walking group that cleans up local parks or hiking trails. The possibilities are endless, so the key is to find a strategy that addresses the elements of health the client is most concerned about and that aligns with their values and objectives.
Embracing the power of subtraction can be an important lesson for health and exercise professionals, as well. “Very early on in my career,” says Dr. Nitschke, “I believed that I should say yes to every opportunity—any committee, any engagement, any travel, any project.”
For newcomers to personal training, this might look more like saying yes to training clients early in the morning, at night and on weekends to reach as many people as possible. And yes, that may be necessary early on, but it’s likely not sustainable. Eventually, every pro needs to learn the lesson that saying no to certain things frees up time and attention for something else, and that determining what that new focus will be is where the magic happens.
Every opportunity—or every new client—can look worthwhile on its own but when looked at collectively they can quickly become overwhelming and counterproductive.
Eventually, Dr. Nitschke’s focus shifted to being effective in all the things she chose to do, which meant becoming more intentional about protecting her time so she can do what she calls the “deep work” she finds most meaningful, like writing, course development and educational content. To protect that time, the automatic “yes” had to become a thing of the past, especially if an opportunity required travel that would take her away from her family. This is a great example of making your work—whether that’s behavior change or literal work—fit your lifestyle, rather than the opposite.
Instead of shrinking her career, she says that subtracting certain obligations actually sharpened it.
In a world where we’re constantly being told to add more movement to our days while also getting more work done, eating better, getting to bed on time, being more mindful and so on, subtracting responsibilities can feel like a revolutionary act. It also honors the autonomy of the client by allowing them to make the ultimate decision about what is most important, and what they can release. It can free up mental space, reduce stress and restore energy, potentially improving a client’s health and well-being in ways they might not anticipate. This new approach—harnessing the power of subtraction—may be just what your clients need to keep moving forward.
by 
