The Personal Trainer Client Intake Form

There are two kinds of intake form. The first exists so that, if something goes wrong, you can show you asked. The second exists so you write a better program on day one. Most trainers only build the first, usually by downloading a PDF from their certifying body, and then wonder why the consultation still feels like an interrogation and the first four weeks still feel like guesswork.

You need both. They are not the same set of questions, and they are not answered in the same way.

Start with screening, but know what it is for

The standard starting point in the fitness industry is the PAR-Q+, the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire, maintained by the PAR-Q+ Collaboration and available at eparmedx.com. It is a short set of yes/no questions about heart conditions, chest pain, dizziness, bone and joint problems, blood pressure medication, and other conditions, followed by follow-up pages if any answer is yes.

Use the current official version rather than a copy someone typed into Word in 2014, and use it unaltered. Its value comes from being a recognised instrument. A version you have edited is just a form you wrote.

Two things it is worth being clear about:

• Screening is a starting point, not a clearance. A clean questionnaire suggests the client can generally begin activity. It does not mean their shoulder is fine or that you know what you are dealing with.
• A "yes" is not a rejection. It routes to follow-up questions, and sometimes to a conversation with the client's doctor. It is a fork in the process, not a door closing.

Your insurer and your certifying body may have specific requirements about which screening tool you use and how long you retain it. Check with them. What follows is about the second form, the one that changes your programming.

The questions that actually change the program

These are the ones most intake packs leave out, and they are the reason the good ones are worth doing properly.

"What did you do the last time you were consistently training?"

Better than "what is your experience level", because it produces a story rather than a self-assessment. A client who rowed at university and stopped eight years ago is a completely different starting point from one who has never trained, even though both will tick "beginner".

"What stopped it?"

The single most useful question on the form. Injury, a house move, a baby, a job change, boredom, an instructor they did not click with. Whatever ended the last attempt is the thing most likely to end this one. Now you know what you are designing around.

"What does a normal week look like for you?"

Work pattern, sleep, commute, children, whether they are on their feet all day or at a desk. This tells you the recovery budget you are working with, and it tells you which session times will still exist in three months. A client booking 6am who currently wakes at 7:30 is a scheduling problem you can predict on day one.

"Which parts of your body do you think about?"

Phrased this way instead of "do you have injuries", because it captures the knee that is not an injury but that they are aware of on stairs. That is exactly the information you want before you program lunges, and exactly the information a yes/no injury question misses.

"How will you know, in three months, that this was worth it?"

The real goal, in the client's words. Sometimes it is a number on a scale. Often it is something else entirely: getting through a shift without back pain, keeping up on a hike, feeling less self-conscious in a photograph. Write it down verbatim, in their language, and read it back to them at the twelve-week mark. Very few trainers do this, and clients remember the ones who do.

"What have you been told before that did not work for you?"

Surfaces the previous coach's approach, any diet advice they have already rejected, and occasionally a piece of misinformation you will need to unpick gently. Better found now than in week six.

"How do you prefer to be contacted, and how often?"

An admin question that behaves like a retention question. Some clients want a Sunday check-in and read it as care. Others read the same message as pressure. Ask once, record the answer, and act on it. See why clients quit for what happens when you get this wrong.

The administrative half

Less interesting, still necessary. Keep it short enough that it does not smother the questions above.

• Full name, date of birth, phone, email, preferred contact channel.
• Emergency contact: name, relationship, phone. Check it annually, because these go stale.
• Relevant medical detail: current conditions, medications that affect exercise, recent surgery, pregnancy or post-partum status where relevant.
• GP or physiotherapist details, if the client is happy to give them and there is anything you may need to coordinate around.
• Your terms: cancellation policy, payment terms, and a liability waiver appropriate to your jurisdiction and approved by your insurer.
• Permissions recorded separately per purpose: holding health data, taking progress photos, using anything publicly. If you are relying on explicit consent for any of them, never bundle them into one tick box.

How to run it without killing the first meeting

A twelve-page form handed over at the start of a consultation sets a tone you spend the rest of the hour recovering from. Split it in two.

1. Before the meeting: screening, contact details, emergency contact, consents, and the waiver. Administrative, unambiguous, and no discussion needed. Send it when you confirm the appointment.
2. During the meeting: the programming questions, asked out loud as a conversation while you take notes. "What stopped it?" produces a useful answer when a person asks it and a one-word answer when a form does.

Then write it down the same day. Intake information that lives only in your memory of a good conversation has a half-life of about two weeks. Once the intake is complete, use a separate client assessment to establish the physical baseline you will repeat later.

Where it lives, and for how long

Many of the medical and injury answers are health data. Under the UK GDPR and the EU GDPR that makes them special-category data, which needs both a lawful basis under Article 6 and a separate condition under Article 9 (explicit consent is only one of the options, and not always the best one). Other jurisdictions have their own rules. A few practical implications that apply almost everywhere:

• Do not keep it in a group chat, a shared email inbox, or a spreadsheet on an unlocked laptop.
• Collect only what you will genuinely use. Every extra field is extra liability.
• Keep it retrievable. A waiver you cannot find is worth roughly the same as no waiver.
• Have a deletion point. Decide how long you keep records after a client leaves, write it down, and follow it. Your insurer may specify a minimum retention period, so check that before you delete anything.

None of this is legal advice. Requirements differ by country and by insurer, and the right move is a ten-minute conversation with yours rather than a template from the internet.

Keeping intake on the client, not in a folder

The practical failure is not collecting the information. It is that six months later the answers are in a PDF in an email thread, and the question "did they say their lower back was an issue?" takes four minutes to answer instead of four seconds.

RosterOS keeps screening on the client record itself, alongside goals, injuries, tags, measurements, session history, and payments. To be precise about what that includes: the seven standard PAR-Q yes/no questions, free-text fields for allergies, medications, surgeries and conditions, a doctor-clearance toggle, and a date recording that the client signed your waiver. The waiver document itself lives wherever you keep it; RosterOS records that it was signed rather than storing the paperwork. If your insurer requires the current official PAR-Q+ pathway with its follow-up pages, run that separately and use the app as the index to it.

The value is that it is one screen per person, reachable in a couple of taps mid-session, and it syncs across your devices rather than living in one phone's notes app.

The client management documentation covers how the intake section works, and the privacy policy sets out how the data is stored and deleted. It is free for your first three clients. If your wider record-keeping is the problem, start with how to keep track of personal training clients.