There is a client on your roster you think about before you open your laptop. They question every exercise, or they message four times a day, or they agree to everything on the call and then do none of it and ask why the scale has not moved. They are not bad enough to sack and not easy enough to forget, and the effort they take is coming out of the time you owe the other thirty people.
This is about that client — the one who is still coachable but hard work. If you have already decided the relationship is over, how to end a coaching relationship covers that conversation. If the problem is that they contact you whenever they like, setting boundaries with online coaching clients covers the rules. What follows is the middle ground, where the client wants the result and the working relationship has gone wrong.
Difficult behaviour is usually anxiety, not defiance
Almost none of the clients coaches describe as difficult are trying to be difficult. Sort what you are seeing into three causes and the response gets obvious:
They are frightened. They have failed at this before, sometimes many times, and they are watching for the moment it stops working so they can be right about themselves. This produces arguing, over-researching, constant reassurance-seeking and dramatic reactions to a normal weight fluctuation.
Nobody set the expectation. They think unlimited messaging means a reply at 11pm. They think they bought weekly video calls. They think twelve weeks is enough to lose 20kg. None of that is unreasonable of them if you never said otherwise — and mostly, coaches never said otherwise.
It is genuinely not a coaching problem. Distress, grief, an eating disorder, a mental health condition. That is not a client to manage better. It is a referral.
The three need opposite responses: fear needs more structure at fixed points, an unset expectation needs one clear rule, and the third needs you to step back and hand over.
The five patterns, and your first move
| What you see | What it usually means | Your first move |
|---|---|---|
| Argues with every programming decision | They do not trust the plan yet, or they have been let down before | Explain the reason once, in writing, and give it a review date |
| Needs constant reassurance | Fear of failing again; a scale reading treated as a verdict | Move them onto a fixed contact rhythm and change the metric |
| Agrees, does nothing, asks why nothing changed | The plan does not fit their life and they did not want to say so | Cut the program until it is small enough to be embarrassing |
| Messages at all hours | Nobody told them when you work | State response hours in writing, then hold them |
| Expected a result you never promised | The sale, not the client | Reset the timeline in numbers, then fix your sales call |
The client who argues with every programming decision
You prescribe RDLs, they want good mornings. You put them on three days, they read that five is better. Every session comes back with a question attached.
Underneath it is usually one of two things: they have paid a coach before and been given a generic template, so they are checking whether you are doing the same; or they have read a lot and their identity is partly built on knowing about training. Neither is contempt for you.
Answer the question once, properly, and tie it to their goal — not to authority. "You are pulling from the floor with a rounded back at anything above 80kg, so we are building the hinge first, and we will retest the deadlift in six weeks." A reason with a date attached ends the argument far more reliably than "trust the process".
Then give them one decision that is genuinely theirs — their accessory work, or the day they train legs. Clients who argue are usually trying to get some control back, and a real choice costs you nothing.
If they are still relitigating the same decision in week six, that is not curiosity, and it goes in the expectations conversation instead.
The client who wants constant reassurance
They send a photo asking if they look smaller. They weigh daily and message about every uptick. They want to know, again, whether it is working.
This one is worth being careful about, because it is the pattern most likely to sit on top of something you are not qualified to treat. If the weight talk is disordered — if they are restricting hard, describing food or their body in ways that alarm you, or the anxiety is clearly bigger than the coaching — stop coaching around it and refer them to their GP or a dietitian who works with eating disorders. You are a coach, not a therapist. That is a scope line, not a judgement.
Where it is ordinary anxiety, reassurance on demand makes it worse, because every answer trains them to come back for the next one. What helps is a rhythm they can rely on and a metric that does not swing. Move the verdict to a fixed weekly review, tell them that is where you will answer it, and change what you are both looking at — weekly average weight instead of the daily number, sessions completed, load added, waist measurement. A well-structured weekly check-in does more for this client than any amount of mid-week hand-holding.
Say it directly: "I will answer the weight question properly every Monday when I have got seven days to look at. One day on its own does not tell either of us anything."
The client who agrees to everything and then does none of it
They say yes on the call. Every session is prescribed and none are logged. Four weeks later they ask, without irony, why nothing is happening.
It is almost never laziness or dishonesty. It is a client who did not want to tell you the plan was too much, because saying so felt like admitting they were not serious. So they agreed to five sessions a week, did two in week one, felt like a failure, and did none in week two.
Do not confront the gap. Say what you can see and ask a question that has a comfortable answer: "You have got two of the five in over the last fortnight. Which two days actually work, and what gets in the way of the others?"
Then cut the program to what they are already doing, plus a little. Two sessions of forty minutes that happen beat five that do not, and a plan they complete is the only thing that will rebuild their belief that they can. Coaches resist this because a small program feels like a small service. The client is not buying volume.
Where this pattern is your whole roster rather than one person, keeping clients accountable is a programming and onboarding problem, not a discipline problem.
The client who messages at all hours
Sunday, 11:40pm: three voice notes about a knee. You either answer it and teach them that you answer at midnight, or you do not answer and feel guilty until morning.
They are almost never testing you. They are messaging when they think of it, on a platform built to feel immediate, and nobody has told them when you work. If you have answered at midnight before, you have already told them the opposite.
The fix is a stated rule and no exceptions for a month. "I reply to messages between 8am and 6pm on weekdays. Anything you send outside that I will pick up the next working morning. If something hurts, stop the session and we will sort it when I am on." Say it to everybody, not just the offender, so it reads as how you work rather than a telling-off.
The part coaches get wrong is answering one late message a fortnight later because it seemed urgent. That resets the whole thing. If a client keeps pushing after the rule is clear and repeated, you no longer have a boundary problem — you have a fit problem.
The client whose expectations were never realistic
They wanted 15kg in twelve weeks, or abs by a wedding that is five weeks away, or the results of the physique athlete whose Instagram they sent you. When it does not arrive, you get treated as the reason.
Be honest about where this one comes from. Most unrealistic expectations were set on a sales call by a coach who did not want to lose the sale, or by marketing that showed a best case as a typical one. Occasionally the client arrived with them and nobody corrected it.
Reset it with numbers rather than adjectives. "At a sensible deficit you will lose between 0.5% and 1% of bodyweight a week. For you that is about 0.7kg. Over twelve weeks, if you hit the sessions and the protein, that is 6 to 8kg, and it will not be linear." A range with an if in front of it is honest and still motivating.
Expectations are also a packaging problem. A client on your cheapest tier who expects daily contact is not being unreasonable — they are misreading what they bought, which is a question for how you structure and price your packages as much as for them.
Write the expectations down where they cannot be misremembered. An intake form that captures the goal, the timeline and what the client thinks they are getting — and their answer stored against their profile — turns a later disagreement into a document you can both read. That is what forms and check-ins are for.
When it is not a coaching problem
Some difficulty is distress. A client going through a bereavement, a divorce, a mental health crisis, or a relationship with food that has stopped being about fat loss is not a difficult client and does not need a better coaching technique.
What you do is say that you have noticed, that it is outside what you are trained for, and that you would like them to speak to their GP or an appropriate professional. Then decide with them whether coaching pauses, continues in a reduced form, or stops. Do not counsel them, however much you want to help. That is not kindness — it is taking on something you cannot hold.
If it is most of your clients, it is not the clients
One difficult client a year is a person. A pattern across your roster is a signal about your system, and it points somewhere specific:
- Lots of arguing — your programming is not explained, so clients cannot tell individualised work from a template.
- Lots of reassurance-seeking — you are letting the scale be the scoreboard, and you are not showing progress any other way.
- Lots of non-compliance — you are prescribing for the life you wish they had.
- Lots of after-hours messaging — you never published your hours, and you answered the first late one.
- Lots of disappointed clients — your sales call is overselling, and that is the costliest one to leave alone.
Every item on that list is fixed before the client starts, which is why onboarding is the highest-leverage hour in your business. Setting an expectation costs a sentence. Correcting one costs a relationship.
Knowing when to stop
Not every difficult client becomes a good one. You have done your part when you have named the behaviour once, plainly and without heat, made a specific change, and given it four to six weeks. If nothing moves — or they are rude, or the work is costing your other clients real attention — the answer is not a better script. Ending it early is better for both of you than resenting them for another six months.
