Elements and Performance Criteria
- Support clients to undertake exercise behaviour change.
- Obtain information about the client's current exercise behaviour and their attitude towards exercise to determine the stage of readiness to make a behaviour change.
- Show sensitivity to cultural and social differences.
- Assess the level of motivation, commitment and confidence of the client to change attitudes, beliefs and behaviour.
- Identify client's perceived barriers to exercise and other factors that may impact negatively on the success of an exercise behaviour change.
- Identify suitable strategies to motivate exercise behaviour change based on behaviour change models, processes of change, evidence based research and client characteristics.
- Develop a plan for behaviour change including suggested behavioural modifications relevant to the client.
- Reinforce positive beliefs and behaviours.
- Emphasise short and long term benefits of regular exercise to encourage exercise behaviour change.
- Implement strategies to improve client exercise adherence
- Demonstrate an understanding of the determinants of exercise adherence that influence an individual's behaviour.
- Identify and implement a variety of strategies suited to the client to improve exercise adherence based on personal and situational factors.
- Provide guidelines for improving exercise adherence.
- Implement effective goal setting to support clients to adhere to long term exercise behaviour.
- Monitor and review progress regularly to reinforce efforts.
- Recognise ongoing barriers to continuation of long term exercise and provide motivational strategies as appropriate.
- Assess changes in behaviour in collaboration with the client to determine the effectiveness of the strategies implemented and make appropriate adjustments.
- Recognise common reasons for discontinuation of an exercise program and apply strategies to overcome setbacks.
- Apply basic counselling approaches to motivate clients to increase their exercise adherence.
- Apply a variety of motivational techniques when training clients.
- Tailor motivational strategies to suit individual client psychological needs based on personal and situational factors.
- Use effective verbal and nonverbal communication skills when instructing clients to optimise motivation and performance.
- Identify arousal levels and use arousal control techniques and apply arousal and anxiety theory to enable the modification of client exercise behaviour.
- Provide positive reinforcement and feedback to clients to positively influence exercise behaviour.
- Use personal attitudes and values to positively influence clients exercise adherence and behaviour.
- Increase confidence in clients to help them cope with increased stress and anxiety.