Teach Your Clients to Fail Properly
We’ve all seen it in the gym.
The wriggle.
A set closes in on failure and the body starts to bargain.
Joints shift to pull fresher muscles into the job, or to cut the resistance's leverage and make the load feel lighter. Mechanical tricks aside, almost every good trainer agrees that wriggling out of a rep is the wrong outcome. It drops joints into less stable, less supported positions, which raises injury risk, and it pulls tension away from the muscles you were trying to load. More risk, less reward. A bad trade.
To avoid that, we’re looking for good coaching, and solid composure.
Coach Benny Teaching Control of the Spine & Trunk during Exercise with Cueing
The client's mindset has to move away from "move the weight at any cost" and toward "hold perfect form at any cost." If they reach the middle of a rep and need a spot, or have to put the rep down entirely, fine. That was the job done well.
Worth saying: if you're flirting with failure this closely, do it on exercises that allow it. No dumping a barbell off the shoulders in a squat or folding onto the chest in a bench press.
Many clients assume this means failure. It’s our job as coaches to frame it as an achievement. They’ve taken themselves to the limit, and they’ve not taken the easy way out. (The easy way out being squirming and contorting until they've cheated their way to lockout.)
When we’ve changed this mindset – ‘spotting’ takes on a whole new perspective.
Dr Mark Slavin Coaching and Cueing composure during a Leg Press (an exercise that a lot of clients panic at the bottom of executing, particularly when fatigued)
A spot is usually a partner or coach accommodating a simple mismatch: the resistance profile of the movement doesn't line up with the person's strength profile. They hit a point in the range where they can't overcome the load and need a hand through it. Helping them through that sticking portion is far safer, and far closer to their goal, than helping them cheat past it. It's also the clearest proof of why your presence beats the client training alone.
All of that depends on one thing: a calm, composed client who holds form even against a load that's beyond them for now. So before any of it, you have to teach them to fail. Properly.
We teach you how on RTS Level 1.