Client Intake for Pilates: What to Ask Before the First Session

The five areas

Intake is not paperwork. It is the thirty minutes that decide whether the next hundred sessions are aimed at anything. Cover these five, in roughly this order:

Goals in their words matter more than goals in yours. “Get stronger” is not a goal, it is a category. “I want to pick up my grandson without my back seizing” is a goal — it tells you what to program, and it tells you what to say in six weeks when they cannot feel their own progress. Write down the sentence they actually said.

Expectations is the one people forget. A client who thinks Pilates is stretching, or that they will be sore every time, or that twice a month will transform them, is a client who quietly disappears at week five. Two minutes of honest calibration up front prevents that.

Asking about injuries so people actually tell you

Here is the failure almost everyone makes. You ask “any injuries?”, they say “no, I’m fine”, and forty minutes later you find out about the shoulder — usually because it just complained.

They were not hiding it. People filter for what they think counts. A twinge that comes and goes, a surgery from a decade ago, a knee that only hurts on stairs — none of it registers as “an injury” to them, and all of it changes what you program.

The second version works because it lowers the bar for what counts, and because “told to avoid” invites them to repeat instructions from a physio or surgeon they had otherwise filed away. Follow it with three specific prompts, which take fifteen seconds and catch most of what the open question misses:

“Any surgeries, ever?” — including ones they consider ancient. “Anything going on with your back or neck?” — the two areas people normalise most. “Anything a doctor is currently monitoring?” — this is where pregnancy, blood pressure and bone density tend to surface.

A handful of conditions genuinely change a Pilates session, and are worth recognising by name so you can ask a follow-up rather than freeze:

What not to ask — and where your job ends

You are an instructor, not a clinician. Intake exists so you can teach safely and personally. It does not exist to diagnose, and the moment it drifts that way you are outside your scope and your insurance.

So: ask what has been bothering you, not what do you think is wrong with it. Ask what have you been told to avoid, not should you be avoiding this. Record what the client tells you as what the client told you, and record clinical instructions as coming from the clinician who gave them.

When something is beyond you — undiagnosed pain, anything acute, anything that has changed suddenly — referring out is the professional answer, not a failure. “I’d rather you get that looked at before we load it” is a sentence good instructors say often, and clients trust them more for it.

The intake checklist

Everything above, in the order you would actually ask it. Tick as you go, then copy it into your notes.

Intake is not a one-time event

This is the part most intake advice misses entirely. The form you filled in during January describes a client who no longer exists in March. Bodies change, and Pilates is the discipline that is supposed to change with them.

Since that first conversation they may have picked up an injury, recovered from one, started running, stopped sleeping, become pregnant, had surgery, or simply got stronger. Every one of those changes what the next session should be — and none of them will reach you if intake was a form they filled in once.

The fix is not more paperwork. Nobody will re-do a form, including you. It is two questions at the start of a session, every few weeks:

Beyond the routine check, three moments always warrant asking again regardless of the calendar: after any break of more than a couple of weeks, any time they mention pain even in passing, and after a life change — pregnancy, surgery, a new job that changed how they sit all day.

Reading the first session

The form tells you what they know about themselves. The first session tells you the rest — and the two often disagree.

Watch for: breath held during effort, a side they consistently favour, a range they avoid without mentioning it, or a face that changes at a particular movement. Someone who says “no injuries” but never quite loads the left leg has told you something the form did not.

Good signs to note too, because these are worth programming toward: what they picked up quickly, what they visibly enjoyed, and what made them say “oh, I felt that in the right place.” The exercises a client enjoys are the exercises they come back for.

Whatever you notice, write it the same day, in the same place as their intake answers. A first-session observation that lives only in your head is gone by the eighth client on Thursday.

Where the answers should live

Intake answers are only worth collecting if you can find them thirty seconds before the client walks in. Loose forms in a folder fail that test; so does a phone note you cannot search.

Whatever you use, it should hold the stable information — goals, cautions, history, life context — separately from what changes each session, and it should put cautions somewhere you will actually glance at before you teach.