Training adherence: how to measure it in your clients

You measure your clients' training adherence by comparing the sessions they had scheduled with the ones they actually logged, week by week. The figure comes from what happens, not from what people remember, which is why it lets you talk to a client without blame. The rest is up to you: deciding when a number worries you and what conversation to have when it drops.

What measuring adherence is, and what it is not

Measuring adherence means answering one specific question: of what was planned, how much was done? It does not tell you whether the client trains well, whether the plan is right for them or how their health is. That is why it helps to keep it apart from other things that also matter to you:

• Adherence: sessions completed versus sessions planned.
• Consistency in follow-up: whether they send you their weekly check-in or open their app.
• Results: how their measurements or the numbers they log on their exercises change, which depends on many more things.

Mixing them up leads to the wrong conclusions. A client can do everything that was planned and never send you a check-in, or send it on time every week and train half of what was scheduled.

Scheduled versus completed: the basis

To measure anything you need a reference point. If nothing is scheduled, there is nothing to compare against, and any figure you give will be made up. You need three things:

1. The plan on a calendar. “Trains several days a week” is not enough: you need to know which days were due.
2. A record of what was done. The client logs every session, including the ones they do on their own. What is not logged, as far as the count goes, has not been done.
3. The same period. Compare whole weeks, not isolated days.

With that, the maths is simple. A hypothetical example: if a week had four sessions scheduled and they logged three, that week stands at three out of four. What is useful is not the figure for one week, but how it moves over several.

Look at the trend, not a single week

Anyone can have a poor week: a trip, a busy week at work or something unexpected. What tells you something is the trend. Watch for three signals:

• It falls for several weeks in a row, even if only gradually.
• It drops suddenly compared with the previous week.
• They have gone days without logging anything, not even one session.

Those are the ones that deserve a message. A single low week can wait until the next review, especially if the client has already told you why.

Set your own threshold

What counts as a warning sign depends on your service and on each client. There is no figure that works for everyone, so decide yours and write it down:

• How many days without logging workouts make you get in touch.
• How many weeks of decline make you suggest a review.
• What you do if someone has not logged a single session since you gave them the plan.

Review your thresholds from time to time. If you get alerts that tell you nothing, raise them; if you find out late, lower them. How to turn these signals into a daily check is covered in how to retain your clients.

What conversation to have when it drops

The number opens the conversation; it does not close it. A few guidelines:

1. Ask before concluding. “I noticed you logged less this week, how did it go?” works better than “you didn't stick to it”.
2. Listen to the reason. It could be lack of time, a change of schedule, a plan that does not fit their week, or that they train and do not log it.
3. Adjust what is organisational: the days, the schedule or the way of logging. The content of the plan is your professional judgement and we do not go into it here.
4. Agree something concrete until the next review, and check together whether it happens.

If the reason has to do with their health, do not try to solve it yourself: they should consult a healthcare professional. And if you want to show them how they are doing with their own data, we cover it in progress reports for clients.

How Entrenify handles it

• The plan on their calendar: you put each day of the plan on a date in the client's calendar, or load a multi-week programme onto it.
• Scheduled versus completed: on each client's record you see, for each of the last four weeks, how many workouts were scheduled and how many they logged, with the percentage.
• No data, no figure: if nothing is scheduled, it says there is not enough data instead of showing a misleading zero.
• Signals from real data – below, you see sentences drawn from their data, for example whether they have gone a week or more without logging workouts, how many of the scheduled ones they have completed in the current week, or whether their adherence has dropped by more than twenty points compared with the previous week. They are alerts so that you decide: nothing is carried out automatically.
• Daily alert: a single alert a day, at your chosen time, listing the clients who have not trained for several days according to the threshold you set, alongside everything else you need to look at.
• Client list: you can filter for those who have gone at least the number of days you choose without training.
• Logging from their phone: the client opens their app and sees the day's routine; they log sets, repetitions, weight and RPE.

What it does not do: it does not connect to fitness bands or smartwatches, so what counts is what the client logs; and the figure does not explain why it has dropped: that is something you ask. The rest of the product is on the Entrenify home page (in Spanish).