Are You Overwhelming Your Clients?

Are you overwhelming your clients?

Do your clients hang on to every word you say? Have you ever noticed how much you talk during a client’s session?

What if I told you that we can easily overwhelm a client by giving them too much information?

In Motor Learning Theory this concept is called Attentional Demand. Essentially, we all have a certain amount of attentional demand. This means that we all have a particular amount of focus that we can allocate to specific tasks, but there comes a point where we are spread too thin and this allocation system becomes stressed. 

Imagine you are driving in your car. You have a lot of experience with driving so it is essentially an automatic task. You are able to pay attention to where you are going, you are able to consciously ignore the other cars driving past you, and you are able to listen to the radio without the task of driving being hindered in any way. However, let’s say that now you are driving somewhere new, where you have never driven before, and your mom is in the front seat telling you a complicated story that is hard to keep straight. Your attentional demand will be tested in this scenario and either the task of driving or listening to your mom will be impacted. This is because we only have so much attentional demand that we can allocate. As much as we think we are excellent multitaskers, we can’t pay attention to it all!

The point of this analogy is that this is exactly what happens to our clients, especially beginners, when we are teaching them Pilates. They are on new equipment, listening to choreography, listening to cues, and we are asking them to apply corrections and move their body at the same time. What is the most important task the client should be allocating most of their attention towards? 

When we over cue, or give a client too much information, we are setting them up for failure. When their attentional demand is overloaded the client cannot create a mind body connection of what we are asking them to do. Therefore, it is very important to consider how we communicate with our clients and what we are asking of them. Many teachers do not realize how much talking they are doing just to fill in space until they watch themselves teach on a recording! 

My advice to you? 

Record the audio of you teaching a client.

Listen back and count how many times in a 10-minute period that you give corrections, prompts or choreography, and motivational comments. This is the first homework assignment in my 6-week online course What You Say Matters. This assignment gives the teacher a true snapshot of their teaching, and they are usually very surprised by their results. Knowing what category you provide the most verbal feedback in is incredible information for you as a teacher. This is where you can grow and become a more efficient communicator. And the more efficient we are as communicators, the more effective we are as teachers, and the less overwhelmed our clients are. 

It is our job as teachers to set our clients up for success. It is our job to help create an environment where they feel supported but also where they can achieve their goals. If we are unknowingly overwhelming them with information they will not be able to see progress quickly and will not have lasting changes in their bodies. I encourage you to challenge yourself as a teacher and take a snapshot of how you communicate. You won’t really know until you see it for yourself.