About a year ago I sold my local Milwaukee gym to one of our long-time trainers to focus exclusively on building StreamFIT. Though I don’t currently train clients in-person anymore, I accumulated an incredible amount of contact in hours in my first 7 years as a personal trainer.
A quick watch of this viral YouTube video I put together last year (it has nearly 1,000,000 views) called “Shit Women Say to Personal Trainers” is a credit to that:
Most of those sound bytes came from actual experiences in the trenches from a variety of environments including in-home training, corporate training, community bootcamps, and public speaking events. I think that’s why it resonated so well with both trainers and their clients.
Though most of the bits in the video are over-the-top, ridiculous, and humorous, I certainly had some experiences that weren’t very funny at the time. In fact, they were downright painful.
Today I’m going to share what’s probably the most memorable client horror story of my career. I’m keeping everything anonymous but I feel compelled to share this with you because of the lessons contained within it. In addition, someone shared this quote with me on Facebook recently from Carol Burnett:
“Tragedy plus time equals comedy.”
After hearing this story, I’m pretty sure you’ll agree with that piece of wisdom 100%.
Client Horror Stories:
“I Want You To Say These Things To Me“
The first couple years of my personal training career (circa 2005-2007) were very tough. I was doing a combination of training within a local personal training and physical therapy studio in addition to some in-home training. The in-home training was very lucrative and though it really wasn’t my thing, it’s something I had to do to pay the bills and save up enough money so my wife and I could move out of my Dad’s basement (ya, pretty pimp, right?).
Around this time, I got a client referral from another trainer. This trainer had actually worked with this client for a while and they had some success together. But apparently things eventually soured between them and this client was looking for the next best thing- which I guess was me. Being young at the time, and needing the money badly, I lacked the wisdom to realize that it was probably not a good idea to work with someone who another trainer had already struggled with. This was especially true considering how great of a trainer he was, in addition to being probably one of the nicest, most decent people I had ever met in the business up until that point. But, I had a lesson to learn and man, did I learn it!
First some quick background on this client…
He was a very wealthy investment banking type guy who had recently had a life-changing experience after suffering a massive heart attack. It appeared that this health scare was the slap in the face he needed- it was time to make a change and adopt a more healthy lifestyle.
So I took this client on and in the beginning everything was working out great. He was pretty much willing to do whatever you asked him to do. The one thing that scared me a bit was his “balls to the wall” intensity though. Being that this was the first client I had ever worked with who had previously suffered a heart attack, I really wanted to take things easy with him and gradually progress him over time.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t having any of that and he wanted immediate results NOW. Whenever I tried to slow him down a bit, he went out of his way to remind me that my job is to push him harder, that he’s paying me to get the best out of him. And he was paying me a lot- $1,000/month to be exact for 3 weekly 1-hour training sessions. So I set aside my better judgment and gave him what he wanted. After all, isn’t customer satisfaction the most important part of being in the service sector?
I remember being on the constant verge of crapping my pants when we’d do cardio intervals on a recumbent bike to end each session. He would push himself so hard that he would start to shake and tremble after barely finishing each set. Honestly, it looked like he was having a seizure and it really freaked me out. I’d look at him wide-eyed and say:
“Okay, I think that’s enough for today.”
To only hear an angry reply:
“No, you need to keep pushing me until I puke!”
Oftentimes, puke he would. This really wasn’t what my training philosophy was all about, but he was paying me to deliver a service and I’m ashamed to say I continued to give him what he wanted.
But then came some very strange demands. I remember showing up to one session and him handing me this note card and saying to me:
“I want you to say these things to me.”
I looked at the card and here’s what he had written on it:
- Finish strong!
- Keep pushing!
- Don’t stop. Don’t EVER stop!
Though this seemed a bit too cliche and contrived for my tastes, I figured I could give it a try and if it helped him achieve his goals I guess it was worth me feeling a bit sheepish.
But with each new session came new strange slogans and masochistic motivational sayings that made me increasingly more uncomfortable. This one note card will forever remain seared into my brain until the day I die:
- Keep #ucking going, you dirty &astard!
- Don’t feel sorry for yourself, you lazy $hit!
- Quitting is for ^itches and %ucking losers!
I threw up in my mouth a little bit after reading these and finally, I had to say something:
“Look, I hate to say this, but I really don’t feel comfortable saying these things to you. I get the fact that you like to be pushed and you like the intensity, but degrading people and calling them names is just not how I like to motivate people. I hope that’s okay.”
He looked at me bewildered for a couple of seconds and lashed out with the following reply:
“Hell no! That’s NOT okay at all! I’m paying you to do exactly what I tell you to do. You’re job is to do whatever it takes to motivate me so I can push beyond my limits. If you don’t feel comfortable doing that, then give me my money back or get over it. DO. YOUR. JOB!”
So I sucked it up and said these crazy things to this man during what was the longest hour of my life. If I didn’t scream at him or repeat these sick sayings with enough frequency, he would remind me to do my job and step up to the plate. This was quickly becoming a nightmare, so much so that each weekend was filled with the dread that I had to go and train this lunatic again on the coming Monday.
I kept sucking it up for as long as I could until one day he demanded I start training his wife for a full marathon. At the time my schedule was fully booked and I didn’t have any room for another client. In addition, I was neither passionate about nor well-versed in training for a marathon so I wasn’t the right fit for her anyways. So I told him:
“Though I’m extremely grateful for the referral, my schedule is already jam-packed and I have no room for more people at this point. Plus, there are better trainers out there than me for marathons. Would you like me to find someone that’s a better fit for your wife?”
He looked at me with more rage than a rabid bull and spit out:
“That is COMPLETELY unacceptable! How much money am I paying you?? I’m sure a helluva lot more than all of your other clients combined so you need to either make room or you can kiss this monthly paycheck goodbye. Go home and think about it because we are DONE here for today.”
For me, that was the last straw. I was sick and tired of how sick and tired this guy was making me. Ya, I needed the money but it became very clear to me that no amount of money could ever make up for how much of a negative impact this dude was having on my life. I consulted with my wife and we agreed it was time for me to let him know that I wasn’t going to be able to train him anymore. Now I had to muster up the courage to call him and let him know…
“Hey _____. After thinking it over, I’m not going to be able to work with you anymore. Please know that it’s not personal and I really appreciate your business up until this point.”
There was a good 5 second pause, and then:
“It’s NOT personal? WTF! It’s always personal. We’re through. Good luck to you because you’re going to need it!”
I will never forget the sense of calm and tranquility that swept through my body after he violently hung up the phone on me. You know, it’s that amazing feeling you get when you immediately realize that you made the right decision.
Clearly, this guy had some demons. And clearly, he was not used to being told “no” and had always used his money and power to get his way. Had I not taken a stand then, he would have kept stepping on me and who knows… maybe I’d still be stuck training him in metabolic misery.
So, what’s the moral of the story?
Well, a couple of things…
1.) There’s no amount of money that can off-set unhappiness.
2.) No matter what, don’t sacrifice your personal beliefs simply to appease someone.
Oh yea, there’s a third one too:
3.) If someone hands you a note card and wants you to call them a “dirty *astard” or a “lazy $hit” then you need to get the hell out of there STAT!
Thanks for reading and if this proves to be popular, maybe I’ll share more of these horror stories in the near future. After all, I’ve got plenty of them 
BJG
