Mock Client Final Project

Matthew Schrage

Kirsten Trimmer is a cycle and core instructor at McComas gym. She is from Richmond, Virginia and is
senior Food Science major. She has a high current level of activity, leading two exercise classes once a
week and training 5 days a week outside of that. The majority of her recent training experience is in
strength training, in combination with her group classes. Before the switch to online, Kirsten’s goals were
to increase her barbell squat and bench, to increase arm strength, and to learn to do her first pullup. Each
of those goals became hard to program for without proper gym equipment, so necessary adjustments
needed to be made to those goals. We decided to switch to more hypertrophy-based goals and replaced
barbell squat and bench with dumbbell variations. Because she does not have access to a pull-up bar, we
decided that training the pull-up indirectly through back training was a decent substitute for now.
The program I wrote for her is strength and hypertrophy focused. I wrote it to be 4 days per week with a
basic Lower/Upper split. Each major muscle group (chest, back, quads, hamstrings, glutes) started at 12
direct sets/week spread across 4 exercises (3 sets/exercise). Because biceps and triceps have indirect
involvement in pulling and pushing, I started them at 6 direct sets/week. I used Session RPE as a guiding
metric for autoregulating volume. Week 1, she rated her sessions an RPE 5; therefore, I added ~2 sets per
muscle group so that the next week became slightly more challenging. Over the course of Weeks 1-4, I
increased sets incrementally until each exercise reached ~5 sets. In Week 5, I switched out some of her
exercises and decreased volume slightly to start the cycle over again.
Because her heaviest set of dumbbells is 25 pounds, I started Week 1 with an AMRAP (leaving a few
reps in the tank) on both flat dumbbell bench and dumbbell squat to give her a starting place for the
program. Each week I programmed “Aim to beat your reps last week” as a basic progression system. We
did not have the option to progress load, so the goal was to progress reps and sets instead. For most other
exercises, I programmed sets of 8-12 reps or 10-15 reps, having her aim to beat her reps from the previous
week. Once she got to high end of the assigned rep range (12 reps for 8-12) I would have her increase the
weight and go back down to 8 reps. These progression systems both worked very well, and she seems to
have progressed all exercises by at least a few reps or by load.
One thing I will definitely take away from this experience is seeing that being a trainer is obviously a very
socially demanding profession. In the initial consultation and first session, I could tell that Kirsten was a
bit uncomfortable and that I could have done a better job of being more social and conversational. In the
first session, I asked her a lot more about herself (her major, spring break plans, career plans) and talked a
lot about being an architecture major. It was immediately apparent to me how powerful a little small talk
can go in making someone feel more comfortable as your client, and it shows that you care about them as
a person and are interested in their life. Although as of now I don’t have any professional aspirations in
the fitness world, I am not going to underestimate how important it is to have a connection with client if
you want them to listen to you and trust your judgment. I train a lot of my family members and friends on
my own time, but in the future I’m going to make more of an effort to just TALK with the person about
their life and do a better job of making them comfortable just talking to me.
I think you did a good job with the online transition. I know this is hard on everyone, but you have been
much more accommodating and understanding during this time than many of my architecture professors.
I can’t thank you enough for making my life a lot less stressful than it could have been. In terms of things
that could be improved, I think that if you had us submit our weekly programming through Canvas or
have some sort of check-in system where we could easily get feedback on our program that it would be
helpful. Also for the class in general, I found the modules to be a LOT of reading and at some point I
stopped reading altogether because there was just so much. It’s hard to critique this because you have to
read the entire book before the test day, but maybe if there’s some way to make the reading assignments
each week less monstrous that I would be more inclined to do them. I also struggled with all of the
background info that the HNFE majors apparently had coming into this class that I wasn’t prepared for.
We kinda blew through all the science-y stuff really fast and I don’t feel like I learned any of it all that
well. I wish I could have taken this class fully in person because this is genuinely one of my favorite
topics outside of architecture, but I don’t think I’m going to be taking the ACE exam this year. I think I
will retake this class so that I could get the full benefit of the in-person client and potentially take the
exam later.
Thank you for a fun semester! You’re a great teacher!