How Technology Is Changing the Training Experience Part 2: One-on-One Training

Technological advances continue to influence our lifestyle at work and play. Our increasing use of, and dependence on, technology is altering our interactions with each other and impacting the way our brains process and retain information. Now, after looking at the bigger picture in Part 1, we turn our attention to one-on-one training. What influence does current technology have on our clients’ experiences, our own experience with our clients, and the session itself?

In this article, we’ll look at the impact on a broad scope of aspects involved in training: our expectations, ability to learn, retain and integrate new skills, a willing mindset for adherence to mid- to long-term goal setting, constructive social interaction and effective communication skills. Best practice recommendations will be shared for adaptations that could enhance session outcomes in today’s techno-laden landscape.

Learning Objectives:

1. Identify technology-influenced changes in our world with a potential impact on areas related to the one-on-one training experience.
2. How these changes present new challenges and opportunities to trainers and our clients.
3. Adopt and create strategies to counter potential negative impacts and maximize client experience during and between sessions.

Technology-Influenced Changes and Their Potential Impact

Between advances in technology and the resulting adaptations in our cultural and social norms, training today is different for both the trainer and the client. While the changes occurring are complex and often affect multiple aspects of training, there are some areas more affected by a particular change than others.

Below are several tables. In the left columns are a technology-related changes discussed in Part 1 of this series (Change). In the right column of each table is a generalized breakdown of common, training-related aspects (Areas of Potential Impact) affected by the technology-influenced change. The change and the areas most likely to be impacted significantly by that change are in italics.

A closer look at one or more of the elements is included below each table to view how a particular effect might arise in a training session or with a client in general.

Keep in mind that all or most areas listed below could be argued to correspond in each case.

In a world of near-instant gratification, patience is more than a virtue: it’s a rare commodity. Guiding our clients to set mid and long-term goals can be a greater challenge due to the current trend to focus on immediate change. Perception shapes the experience, so “packaging” goals and program design that will net big outcomes over the long term as a series of goals and programs that are achieved along the way, will be more apt to engage our clients who are used to life at the speed of a click.

Structuring mid- and long-term goals into a series of segments and building long-term program evolution by using incremental program design are two ways to assist our clients in learning long-term.

Brent Gallagher, owner of the Texas-based AvenuFitness, addresses the changing tide with a business model focused on saving time through 30 minute workouts and keeping people motivated through events and social media (B. Gallagher, personal communication, September 6, 2016).

Robert Cappuccio, Director of Coaching for 24 Hour Fitness, designer of multiple professional development curricula and a longtime trainer, sees a great deal of potential to motivate clients in our current climate of quick turnarounds and sound bites (R. Cappuccio, personal communication, August 27, 2016).

In this excerpt from our audio interview by phone, Cappuccio draws the connection between self-perception (how we see ourselves) and outcomes (how we perform). He discusses the ways our clients can inadvertently undermine themselves and how technology can help clients to tap into their sense of self, invest in fulfilling the goals they set and show greater adherence.

In this clip from the same interview, Cappuccio outlines the connection between self-perception (how we see ourselves) self-efficacy (how we perform), and how current technology like smartphone apps and wearables can assist trainers coaching clients through lifestyle change.

As mentioned in Part 1 of this series, one of the benefits of the trend toward multi-tasking is that our executive function to problem-solve in a short period of time seems to be increasing. While deep thought or concentration is not promoted, our ability to quickly assess and make decisions to solve less complex issues appears to be improving.

Interruptions can change the emotional state and receptivity of the learner. Katiti King, a bodyworker who teaches Simonson movement technique privately and in group format, urges trainers to be prepared for sudden changes immediately following a client checking the phone for messages. “Usually the phone is off limits during a session unless there is an emergency. Sometimes people feel they have to “check-in” for one reason or another and, if they get an upsetting text or see a Tweet they don’t like, it can ruin the whole session. Sometimes it takes a great deal of effort to get them to let go and get their focus back." King shared that she has seen this happen across all age groups, but that youth clients who lack a clear commitment to developing elite level skill are most susceptible. “The dancers I train privately are used to being very focused on the work. They are less likely to want to interrupt their session to look at their phone” (K. King, personal communication, September 3, 2016).

Recommendations on how to reduce distracting interaction with devices during a session will be coming up later in this series.

Looking at the model for memory discussed in Part 1, Working Memory plays a large role in our learning, habit change and overall skill acquisition experience. If Working Memory is taxed because there is a volume of new information to process and prioritize, then storing the information received into the appropriate type of memory may become backlogged or unable to process it all. Some items could get “lost in the shuffle,” and our ability to recall later could be more challenging.

According to a 1976 study by Alan Baddeley and Graham Hitch, who proposed a new memory model called the Working Memory Model, as a revision of the 1968 Atkinson-Shiffrin model on short-term memory, our visual and verbal processing tasks can be performed simultaneously without much cognitive load because they are from separate systems within our Working Memory, but it is more difficult to perform two of the same kind of tasks simultaneously: verbal (such as thinking about responding to that last comment someone posted on a Facebook wall and following your verbal cues) or visual tasks (such as seeing mounted monitors flashing video when you are demonstrating an exercise or asking the client to catch a ball repeatedly thrown to them in assorted, random directions) (Working Memory Model, 2011).

Challenge Leads to Opportunity

Technology and, more importantly, the way in which we engage with it, is affecting our sessions whether we like it or not. Our challenges? Knowing that our clients’ attention is divided, our attention spans and the conditions in which we focus most effectively tend to run shorter, and our capacity for processing complex thought (which means our ability to understand concepts fully) and our recall require greater effort than before our phones were smart and we used paper maps that didn’t speak. But technology brings assets and, coupled with our strengths, a great deal of opportunity awaits us.

Making a Difference

Select suggested strategies for navigating the impact technology-influenced changes can have on learning, expectations, endurance mindset and relationship building are listed below. Let these suggestions spark your own ideas for additional means to convert challenges posed by technology into opportunities for a positive outcome.

Technology is Not Our Successor; It Is Our Supporter

The same technology that competes for our clients’ attention and alters the way we approach cognition also provides us with tools to support our work with them. It can help us foster

• community, support, encouragement, education (social networks, messaging, membership-based communal portals, online education and file sharing),
• accountability (wearables and other tracking platforms)
• easier management of our client-related admin work (scheduling apps payment gateways, exercise libraries, and even templates for intakes, screens, and other commonly used forms).

Nothing can replace the richness of a one-on-one live interaction. As trainers, we can pique our clients’ curiosity and provoke their desire to grow. The spontaneity of a live interaction means that even the most carefully-designed program can be a fresh experience, different from that delivered by even the most sophisticated technology.

The mindfulness elements that may be jeopardized by the way we currently interact with technology (discussed in greater length in Part 1), can be supplemented by our very presence. Through the exchange of ideas, humor and empathy, we preserve, and can even enhance, each other’s relationship skills.

Technology will continue to evolve and, hopefully, become more adept at cultivating our mindfulness, but no one has taken the real key away: if we continue to tap our own strengths, we can enhance our own and our clients’ ability to be more conscious of ourselves and connected to the world around us in every day and age.

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