Training Differences Between General Population Clients and Athletes

To successfully and safely help people with their fitness goals, a personal trainer must familiarize him or herself with certain demographics and personal characteristics of the clients, such as age, gender, medical history, and, of course, their goals. Why is this person seeking training? The answer to this question will be much different for athletes as compared to general population clients, a.k.a., normal people. Likewise, the best training plan will differ greatly between these two groups, largely due to the following distinctions. 

Goals. You may have a female client who’s greatest accomplishment in the gym is developing the ability to do a bodyweight pull up, while an athlete may work week after week to increase his or her broad jump by a couple centimeters. An athlete might aim to make the Olympic team, while a general population client may aim to be able to pick their kids up. An athlete may need to strengthen their hamstrings to prevent injury while sprinting, while a normal client may need to strengthen their troublesome back muscles to be able to wake up pain-free. In general, the training focus of athletes is explosive power and sport-specific strength and mobility; athletes aim to improve their sport performance above all. Regular people, on the other hand, are trained with more general goals in mind: hypertrophy, overall strength, and endurance (Aslam et al., 2025). 

Training cycles. Training designs based on micro- and meso-cycles apply to both athletes and general population clients, but in different ways. Normal people don’t have a competition season, or a conditioning season, or a rest season. Athletes do, which is why they benefit from programs that are periodized and specific to their sport (Aslam et al., 2025). General population clients, on the other hand, are typically offered foundational resistance training with progressive overload (Aslam et al., 2025). These two distinct methods work for their respective targets because untrained individuals–who have a lower baseline than athletes–will typically see bigger, quicker gains when starting a training program, whereas athletes tend to plateau, necessitating the implementation of varied, complex, and more stimulating exercises (Aslam et al., 2025). 

Engagement in other forms of exercise. Your general population clients might walk everyday or jog regularly or garden or golf leisurely or play a game of pick-up on the weekends. Athletes are probably involved in much more intense and frequent, sport-specific activities outside of what they do in the gym. This will also vary by what “cycle” of their training they’re in. These factors will or should impact how they train in the gym. For example, if you have a heavy squat planned for an athlete client, but they have an explosive sprint session later that day, you would want to make adjustments so that they can get the most out of their gym and track sessions together.

Recovery needs. Athletes recover faster from fatigue caused by resistance training than untrained individuals (Raikova et al., 2021; as cited in Aslam et al., 2025). This should be considered especially when transitioning from working primarily with athletes to working mostly with general population clients. Non-athletes will typically not be able to complete or benefit from the high volume, high intensity workouts that athletes may be familiar with. For instance, general population athletes should train with longer rest periods and at a relatively moderate intensity, as compared to athletes, and they will respond best to a lower weekly training volume, such as 2-3 days of resistance training versus 5-6 (Aslam et al., 2025). 

Physiology. Elite athletes, as a result of their experience with power-oriented programs, exhibit muscular adaptations that allow them to produce greater force and move faster than untrained individuals (Aslam et al., 2025). For instance, evidence suggests that elite weightlifters have significantly more fast-twitch fibers in the vastus lateralis muscle than other healthy individuals (Serrano et al., 2019).

Injury risk. Injury in all populations can be largely avoided with the right oversight, instruction, technique, recovery, and progression. However, athletes and non-athletes are more or less susceptible to different injuries. For instance, untrained individuals are at a higher risk of sustaining an acute injury, such as a lower back strain or ankle sprain, as a result of poor form, aggressive load progression, or inadequate recovery/adaptation time (Faigenbaum & Myer, 2010; as cited in Aslam et al., 2025).

For the reasons discussed, certain exercises that would benefit athletes should not be included in training programs for general client populations. Injury risk likely poses the greatest reason to avoid certain exercises that athletes perform regularly. For instance, Olympic lifts (i.e., cleans and snatches) involve highly technical movements–widening the opportunity to perform them with poor form–high velocity movement–which non-athletes are not normally adept at–and significant load on major joints (i.e., the hips, ankles, and knees) that may not be sufficiently strengthened. Furthermore, most plyometrics pose an unnecessary risk to non-athlete populations. While it can be beneficial to one’s health to be able to jump and produce great amounts of power, these motions are not normally required by normal day-to-day living; therefore, the advantages are probably outweighed by the potential negative effects of high-stress plyometric exercises like depth drops and box jumps. For similar reasons–namely that normal people simply cannot move as quickly or safely manage heavy loads in an explosive manner–you may omit exercises like pin squats and high pulls in general population programs. Such exercises are excessively specialized and thus offer less value to non-athletes. 

Other exercises should be left out of general population programs not only because of injury risk but also because of their inapplicability to non-athletes. Athletes need sport-specific training, but sport-specific exercises like continuous bounds, sprints, and shuttle runs have much less to offer to normal people. 

Another factor that differs between athletes and non-athletes is coordination. Most people do not possess the motor coordination of athletes who have the ability to produce highly controlled body movements. Of course, coordination can be improved, but it’s important to expect untrained individuals to struggle with exercises that require high levels of coordination, like multi-direction cones or agility ladder drills. These types of exercises are probably more likely to cause a fall than a substantial benefit. 

-Hanna Reuter

Citations

Aslam, S., Habyarimana, J. D., & Bin, S. Y. (2025). Neuromuscular adaptations to resistance training in elite versus recreational athletes. Frontiers in Physiology, 16, 1598149. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2025.1598149

Faigenbaum, A. D., & Myer, G. D. (2010). Resistance training among young athletes: safety, efficacy and injury prevention effects. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 44(1), 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsm.2009.068098

Raikova R., Krasteva V., Krutki P., Drzymała-Celichowska H., Kryściak K., Celichowski J. (2021). Effect of synchronization of firings of different motor unit types on the force variability in a model of the rat medial gastrocnemius muscle. PLoS Comput. Biol. 17 (4), e1008282. 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1008282

Serrano, N., Colenso-Semple, L. M., Lazauskus, K. K., Siu, J. W., Bagley, J. R., Lockie, R. G., Costa, P. B., & Galpin, A. J. (2019). Extraordinary fast-twitch fiber abundance in elite weightlifters. PloS One, 14(3), e0207975. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0207975