I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with a UBC Grad Student who requested if she could interview me for an assignment that she was working on with regards to the difficulties that Personal Trainers face in today’s health and fitness industry when it comes to business marketing and retaining clients. Being the person who usually conducts the interviews and/or consultations with potential clients myself, it was a new experience for me to be on the other end of the conversation for once. And like any new experience that I usually go through, I learned something new. But I didn’t learn something new about my business or myself this time. This time I actually learned something new about people in general. More specifically, I learned about the way that different generations respond to the physical demands and rigorous training needed to improve upon one’s health, aesthetics and overall well being.

The Perfect Client

One of the very first questions that the Interviewer asked me during our meeting was the type of client that we as a business, try to market ourselves to. Truth me told, we actually don’t try to market or promote our services to one particular group of people or specific demograph. In fact, as I explained to our Interviewer, our overall clientele range between the ages of 16-82.

The follow up question to this response though is what really got be thinking. The interviewer wanted to know as to which age bracket I thought trained and exercised the hardest. Up until this point I never really compared our clients with one another nor did I group different generations as “harder workers” or “better exercisers” then other generations. But again, the question did get me to thinking………..

The Battle Begins

As mentioned above, we work with a wide range of clients from all ages. If we were to group our clients into three different age groups though they would have to be the Baby Boomers, Generation X also known as the “Xers” and the Millennials.

There’s no doubt in my mind that certain people do exercise and train harder in the gym then others. But is age really that much of a deciding factor when it comes to work ethic and threshold of pain?

I had to find out! So I analyzed, scrutinized, examined and evaluated the different generations that we work with both on the floor and online. And the results were to say the least, very interesting…….

Check out part two of my blog due out at the end of this week to find out as to which generation comes out on top in the iron jungle and which generation I believe works the hardest and wants it the most.

Yours in Good Health,

Nick Cosgrove
Forever Fit Performance