Please, STOP Counting Reps
Dear trainers: please stop counting reps.
More precisely, stop counting them out loud, for the whole gym to hear.
I know it feels like part of the job. It's also quietly damaging how much we're seen to be worth.
Personal trainers have an image problem, and we built it ourselves, mostly through low standards and worse branding. Fitness education has been so thin for so long, and the bar set so low, that the public assumes anyone can do the job. To a lot of people, what a trainer offers is:
Accountability (someone to show up for, at a time that costs money to waste)
A plan (because trainers like fitness and like making plans)
A rep count (to make sure all the reps happen)
Those are low-value markers. You could download a program from the Internet and outsource the rest to a well-trained monkey.
The job is so much more than that. Good personal trainers are part exercise consultant, part nutrition consultant, with a little behavioral scientist mixed in. We read a client's needs and goals through a blend of science, experience and logic, then customize the prescription to fit. We choose our words to explain what a client is doing, why, and how to keep it on track.
Standing there counting to ten over and over conveys none of that, not to the client, not to anyone watching. If counting out loud is the most useful thing you can offer during a set, the coaching itself is worth a second look.
Your voice can do so much more. It can cue the movement, hold the client's attention on the things that matter, and keep them out of mindless autopilot. On a complex exercise with five or more things to track, you're watching closely for the cue that's slipping and bringing it back. On the simple stuff, you're making sure the basics hold. Underneath all of it, you're managing their head.
Some people call that motivation, but not the ‘shouting "YES, NICE" across the floor’ type of motivation. It's reassuring a client that they're capable of what you're asking, especially as they approach their limit, and keeping them moving forward on the back of your infectious belief that they'll get there.
Above all, it's keeping them calm. When a set gets hard, the animal part of the brain starts to panic, and a panicking client loses focus and form falls apart.
If you really consider everything that needs to be managed during an intense set, the number of reps already completed is the last thing you want in a client's head. A count just hands them a clock, so their mind sits on how close the end is instead of how well they're executing the rep they're in.
So please, I'm begging: stop counting reps.
If nothing better comes to mind to say during a set, it's worth asking whether your education ever equipped you to read and improve someone's execution. Closing that gap is the whole point of RTS Level 1.