My personal training clients can be very clever sometimes. Last night I was reminiscing about all my wonderful personal training clients in Fort Collins that I have had in the past. I also was ruminating on my current Fort Collins personal training clients as well! To be a personal fitness trainer, you have to have thick skin and a sense of humor. I can’t count how many of my clients have told me at one time or another, “I hate you!”

Now for those of you who would take this personally, all I can say is you could never make it in my profession. As a personal trainer, your clients hire you to be a coach, mentor, bartender, and, yes, blame taker. When a client is in “pain” from a workout, they will take it out on you. You are there to push them to reach their goals, however, they sometimes get upset that you are actually pushing them beyond their preconceived barriers and start hating on you.

But it’s all good!

I also love when a client tells me that they are not going to do something I have told them to do. They are trying to psyche themselves out of something that they perceive will bring discomfort.

Some personal trainers like to yell at their clients. My approach has always been a quiet insistence. My personal training clients will say they are not going to do something, but I tell them that they are going to do it (even though I do know where the boundaries are). What happens when they accomplish the obstacle I put before them? They actually thank me! I have come to the conclusion after all these years that all my clients are bipolar.

Here are some of my favorite names, insults, threats, etc. that my past and current personal training clients have told me:

1.  “You are my P.P.I. (Personal Pain Inflictor).”

2.  “You are part of the Axis of Evil.”

3.  “You are going to get yours someday. Just wait.”

4.  “Oh no you did NOT tell me to just do that!”

5.  “You are a @!*#!!! (enter your own cuss word that comes to mind-I’ve been called them all).

6.  “We are SOOOO not here right now (as the client puts two fingers towards her eyes and points the same two fingers to my eyes).

7.  “Are you serious?”

8.  “WTF?”

9.  “Did they teach you to be mean when you became a personal trainer or did you learn that on your own?”

10.  “In your former life, you were a torturer in the Spanish Inquisition weren’t you?”

If any of these actually upset me, then I would have quit a long time ago and gone back to working in the law! However, this is just another reason why I continue to be a personal fitness trainer in Fort Collins. I am pushing my personal training clients beyond what they thought was ever possible physically and giving them incentives for the next time. To see the shock on their faces when they actually accomplish a new goal is absolutely, positively 100% priceless.