How to program for a 54 yr old lawyer 42% body fat 260lbs EQUINOX trainer

A brand-new Equinox trainer asks a simple question with huge stakes: how do you program for a 54-year-old lawyer who’s 260 pounds, 42% body fat, fresh off a divorce, and dead set on getting to 200? We walk through exactly how we’d run the first two Equifit sessions so the client feels safe, seen, and genuinely excited to come back, not crushed and embarrassed after 15 minutes.

We get specific on the assessment that makes you look like a true professional, including why taking blood pressure and resting heart rate is a credibility multiplier and a real service to the client. From there, we map out a “Goldilocks” first workout: warm-up with engagement, smart upper-body work before heavy legs, simple circuits built on push, pull, core, carries, and accessories that keep the session fun without turning it into random chaos. The goal is adherence and momentum, then progressive overload as conditioning improves.

Then we shift to the part most trainers avoid: the sit-down conversation that turns a great workout into a committed client. We share how to present personal training packages clearly, why fewer options sell better, and how to add value with bonus sessions, reviews, and referrals while still playing the long game on your career. If you coach with competence and consistency, your rates rise because your results rise.

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Transcript

Welcome And Quick Calls To Action

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome to the Show Up Fitness Podcast, where great personal trainers are made. We are changing the fitness industry one qualified trainer at a time with our in-person and online personal training certification. If you want to become an elite personal trainer, head on over to showupfitness.com. Also make sure to check out my book, How to Become a Successful Personal Trainer. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. Have a great day and keep showing up. Howdy all, welcome back to the Show Fitness Podcast. Today we're gonna help you design a program for a 54-year young lawyer, 42% body fat, currently 260 pounds, wants to get to 200. This is for Miss Sam. She is an SUF CPT, just got hired in Los Angeles at Equinox. All she needed was that SUF CPT. We got her connected with the recruiter, hired on the spot because she's a qualified personal trainer. And now it's time to climb the rankings, Miss Sam, and get to that number one. So you can showcase why you are such an amazing trainer. So what would a program look like? 54 years young, he's divorced, he has the money, he's a lawyer, he goes to Equinox. Average person that goes in Equinox or lifetime, they're bringing in significantly more than 350,000. So if you show the value, they're gonna bring out their Black Amex. And so at Equinox, you have two equifits. You got the first one where you do the assessment, and that's where she gathered all this information. The second one is a program. These are both complimentary. I like to set those clear expectations when we meet the first time. You show up at least 30 minutes early. You're reading the book. Hell, you have my book, How to Become a Successful Personal Trainer. You're smiling, you shake their hand, not some weak little passive handshake. It's a great handshake with a smile, and you set clear expectations. Normally, these assessments are 150 bucks, but you get two comp sessions. I'm really excited to help you achieve your goals. Now, what's going on? In the assessment, he told her he is emotionally invested into getting into good shape. Wonder why? Just going through a divorce. There's motivation. Listen to what he wants and then deliver with value add. Show him a few things he's never done before, but you listen on what he likes. He likes the treadmill. He's not in great shape. He could have a heart attack. He's 260 pounds, 54 years young. I want to check his blood pressure. What is that out? I don't see enough trainers doing it. It's called the salon killer for a reason. You really establish yourself as the professional by taking blood pressure. I don't even know if Equinox has a blood pressure cuff. So go buy one. So then you can educate him. This top number is called systolic. The bottom one's diastolic. This number right here is your resting heart rate. Think of blood pressure as like the base in your car, whereas volume is going to be the heart rate. We want your heart rate to be around 60 to 70. Blood pressure less than 120, systolic, less than 80 diastolic. They call it the silent killer for a reason because inside you could be having a bunch of stuff going on. You're a lawyer, you're probably super stressed out, working 18-hour days, not sleeping that much. It's super important for you to play off that emotional side. Maybe he has kids. Do you want to be around for your grandkids to grow up? Of course you do. And then you take them through the best experience ever. Do a nice little warm-up. You're not foam rolling on your phone for five minutes. You get engaged. Get him to smile, to enjoy being around you. Ask great questions. Where'd you go to law school? I've always wanted to work with a lawyer. Okay, something were to come up. Lawyers are great to have on your team, tickets, whatever. I love working with lawyers because they can help you get out of legal issues, but also they're smart as hell. To work out after the warm-up, I'm going to get into some upper body. If you get right into legs, unless they ask for it, a lot of dudes, especially when they're overweight like this, they're going to get wiped out in the first 15 minutes. His ego is going to be put in check and he's probably not going to sign up with you. So do some inclined dumbbells into some dumbbell rows. And let's do some abs or some arms. Ask him if a genie were to pop out of a lamp. I know I say this all the time, it's corny, but it works. Keep it PC. What would be that magical body part that you would like? He wants an arm form. So do some curls. Go back to the second round of the inclined dumbbells. Add some weight. Get engaged. That last breath. Take one of the dumbbells, have him close his eyes and give slight little perturbations. Do some double rows again and then some more curls. Three rounds of that first CCA. You take that core movement pattern, which would be a horizontal push, complementing with a horizontal row, and then some accessory work to make it fun. That's where I think trainers lose the value. Because if you make the whole workout fun, he's not going to get results. But our clients think new equals results. I use the cell phone analogy, but you rather have a brand new cell phone, the Apple iPhone, iOS 37, whatever we're on, or number one. You don't want the one, you want the new one. So the accessories when you have fun and you get them to get that pump in an area that he wants, work on some mobility. I don't put cardio in that first accessory, because again, it's just going to smoke them. After three rounds of that first circuit, you're going to be about 20, 25 minutes in. Then the second one, we're going to do a landmine press into an anti-rotation, which would be your core into a farmer's. So technically, this would be a C A C, which is fine, but just because of the proximity of the landmine press for the shoulders, then go into anti-rotation. So you're pulling the bar back and forth, have him close his eyes. He's guaranteed he's never done that before. He's going to fill it in his core, and then do some farmer's carries. And then that last circuit, let's get into some goblet squats, test the legs now. If he's completely smoked, you could just do upper body. You make that decision into a push-up. Maybe he needs to be on a bar. Maybe we need to regress it to a wall. Just be careful of that wrist mobility. And let's do some abs. Three rounds of that's going to take roughly 15 minutes. Make sure you rest until he catches his breath and he can go again. People do not like exercising. We are an overweight, obese nation. Case in point with this guy. He's 54 years young. He hasn't been exercising. He is seditary. If we increase the volume and the intensity and shorten the rest periods, we're going to annihilate him. Why? What are the chances that you think he's going to sign up for training if he has to quit halfway in because he's lightheaded and you have to give him two or three glucose tablets? Make sure to have those. He's not going to be bought in. You want it to be just the perfect workout. It's like Goldilocks, not too hot, where you smoke them, not too easy, where he's thinking, hmm, I could probably do this myself. Just perfect. After three rounds of that, maybe he's stronger than you think and he can crank out push-ups. Have him bring a leg out, give some perturbations. That's that trainer engagement. Take the weight from him when he's doing the goblets. Start with 20s, then go to 30s or 40s. That last set, that last round, have him do a weight for 10 reps. It's going to be challenging. You take it from him, you put it down, you go grab him some eucalyptus towels, then you look at the clock. How much time do you have left? A lot of gyms will do 50-minute sessions. I want to have enough time where I can sit down and have a conversation about training with me. That's the sales process. So in this Equifit 2, give yourself 10 minutes to walk into a room and sit down. Get them that towel, get him some water. Before the workout, get a bottle of water and an energy drink. Invest in the process. So at the end of the workout, you give him that. Give, give, give. He's thinking, wow, this is really professional. I like this service. So you sit down, let's call him Frank. Say, Frank, how'd you like that workout? And he goes, Holy shit, that was awesome. We did a full body. I really enjoyed how you pushed me. It was challenging. I want this. He is emotionally invested. He wants this. You just showcased a great workout. So then you write down, and I'm a big believer in writing it out versus showing him within the Equinox app because it's not the best, in my opinion. Too many options. One, six, twelve, fourteen, twenty, twenty-three. No, give him a couple options, and that is it. So, Frank, how many times would you like to train with me? Whatever he says, you formulate a one month and six month option. And I'm gonna give you a little curveball right here to impress your managers. So let's say he says three times. 12 sessions is gonna be 133 per session, 48 is gonna be 122, because that's what the Equinox app has. They max out at 48 again, which I think is dumb. So this is 122. Which one would you like, Frank? He's gonna point to the 48. You know what I'm willing to do, Frank? I could even bump down another 12 bucks and get you to 110 per session if you do 96. What are your thoughts on that? It's gonna be$10,000. He's not going to blink. He has the funds to do it and you're giving him a discount. So then you go to your manager and say, hey, I got a problem. That assessment that I just got, he wants to do 96 sessions at 110. Can we make that work? If you get a$10,000 sale within your first couple of weeks of working at Equinox, that manager is going to start sending you so many more leads. And guess what? Now you have a client who's training with you three times per week. Give him more sessions because you are new. Hey, Frank, you did awesome this week. You did three sessions on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. How does tomorrow look? Looking pretty good. I have an eight o'clock open. I want to give it to you for free. Normally these sessions are, you know, 110 plus, but I'm going to give it to you for free because you were consistent and I want you to get your results even faster. And then the following week, you do the same thing. You are training more. You won't be getting that hourly rate of 110, which is about half of that, say 50 bucks or so. You're going to be getting minimum wage, 20 bucks. Victim mindset goes, oh, that's not enough. I should be making more. The gym's taking all my money. You're playing the long game. You're thinking, I'm going to be here for a couple of years, gain this experience. This is my first client. I'm going to wow him, get him into amazing shape. Who knows what the future is going to have? He's going to invest into buying a gym for you. Once he gets to his goal of 200 pounds, which he will because you're a qualified trainer, he's bought in for life. That means his law firm, his clients, he's going to be referring you people right and left. Hell, maybe six months from now, he says, why don't we open up a gym together? These are the opportunities that present themselves in these environments at Equinox and Lifetime. Your clients are invested into you because you are a great trainer. The proof is in the pudding. That's an amazing CCA workout. It's appropriate. Now, this first workout that we did isn't going to be the same when he's at 200 pounds. We're going to be doing more CCAs, maybe even a CCC. The volume is going to go up, more rounds, the intensity is going to go up. We're going to get down to four to six reps. The first month, we keep it light to strengthen ligaments and tendons and to own movement competency. You will progress into heavier loads, more complex movements. You'll start doing an upper body, a lower body day. We're doing goblet squats now. We'll be doing trap bar deadlifts and safety bar squats in the future, getting up to body weight squats for 10, 15, 20 reps. He will be able to do that, but right now he's deconditioned. So it has to be appropriate for him. Just that perfect amount. So he gets through it, he sees the value, and then he will invest into you. I would suggest 12 sessions or 48 because that's what they offer. If you have an independent opportunity, I would always do one month and six months because during that assessment process, you plant that seed and you say, Frank, what does success look like working with me six months from now? And Frank will say, I want to lose X amount of weight. I want to take that 42%, get down into the teens, let's get down to 15%. That's absolutely possible, but you need to be consistent. By throwing in those extra workouts, he's going to get there faster. Hey, Frank, if you go online and you leave a review on Google, say you're working with the best trainer at Equinox, I'll give you another free session. Hey, Frank, if you bring in a coworker, I'll get him a day pass. I'll take you both through a workout and it'll be complimentary. The more that you do that, you're going to get kudos from your managers. You're going to get a lot more opportunities, and that's playing the game. Trainers don't do that. I was at Equinox yesterday at five o'clock in the morning because one of my clients canceled. Luckily, our gyms are always within a couple mile radius. I was working out and there were two trainers there. There must have been 50 people working out. Where were the other trainers? Oh, I need to sleep in. I'm tired. We're all tired. Life is tiring. You have to get after it and do more work in the beginning. That's just part of any career. Do you think a lawyer is going to work 40 hours that first job that he gets? No, he's cranking out 120, 130 hours. He's in LA. I guarantee you he's working 16-hour days, sometimes seven days a week. That's part of that profession. For our profession, you need to be to the gym when your clients are potentially there. That's early in the morning and late at night. Your schedule will be all over the place. Because you're competent, though, you're going to be able to engineer it for the best schedule. But in the beginning, you need to take any and every opportunity. So when he gets those results, you let him know, hey, Frank, I just went to an awesome seminar. This upper body soft tissue stuff that I did at Show Up Finance. Oh my God, it was amazing. It allows for me to level up my skills. My new pricing for 96 is going to be 120. And then the next time he invests into it, 96 sessions, it goes to 130 and then 140 and 150. If you have the conversations with your clients, they know because they're seeing firsthand that you're a great trainer and that's the process. Then you're going to have a full book of business paying you 150 per session. You'll be bringing home 75, maybe 85, because you're doing more than 100 sessions per month. You get bumps in pay after you go up full time, 22 sessions per week, which I think is pathetic. Trainers settled 25 hours is a full workload. That just blows my mind. No other profession, 25 hours is full time, but ours, we settle for it. Get to 40 sessions. Push the envelope. Challenge yourself to train as much as possible in the beginning. There will come a time when you're charging 200 plus and you're only doing 15, 20 sessions a week because you earned your stripes. That's the rite of passage that we need to just understand in the beginning. You have to invest into your career by training your clients more, being in the gym all the time, showcases to the members that you're serious because they see trainers quit all the time. And trainers come up to them and say, would you like your free equal fit? Come and invest in me now. Now they're urgent, they're transactional. That's not you. You're playing the long game. I know you found today's podcast valuable. Throw it into your story. Let trainers know there is a solution for their success. We got three certs. Get certified for life, like Sam did. She's now training at Equinox, the best gyms out there. Most textbook trainers need to go to an LA Fitness, Anytime Fitness, for a couple years to gain the experience before they can even get into that interview process at an Equinox for Lifetime, not when you have your SUF CPT. Soft tissue mobilization cert, and then we also have a nutrition cert, which is going to help drive those streams of revenue. Remember, big biceps are better than small ones and keep showing up.