A weekly check in questionnaire for online coaching clients: the free template, and why each question is on it

A good weekly check in takes your client a few minutes and hands you the three things you cannot see from your side of the screen: what the scale and the tape did, whether they actually ran the plan, and how the week felt. Below is the exact form we would send, twelve questions in four blocks plus one optional follow up, with the reason each one earns its place and what to do with the answer.

Copy it as it is, or cut it down. Do not add to it until you have read the section on why it is only twelve.

What is a check in actually for?

It is not a report card. A check in exists to find a problem while it is still small, before it turns into a missed week, then a missed month, then a polite message about "taking a break for now".

There is research behind the habit. A systematic review of self monitoring in weight loss reported that a significant link between tracking and weight lost "was consistently found", and was honest that "the level of evidence was weak" because of how the studies were run. The better reason is the one every coach already knows: clients do more when they know someone is going to read it. A 2011 paper by Mohr and colleagues calls that supportive accountability, and argues it works through a coach the client sees as "trustworthy, benevolent, and having expertise", with clear benefits flowing back to the client.

That last part is the whole design brief. The client gives you five minutes. The form has to give them something back.

The template: twelve questions in four blocks

Question	Answer type	Why it is on the form
1. What was your average morning weight this week?	Paragraph (a number)	One weigh in is noise. The weekly average is the signal.
2. How many of your planned workouts did you finish?	Multiple choice	You cannot judge a program the client did not run.
3. On how many days did you hit your protein target?	Multiple choice	The one nutrition number worth asking about every week.
4. Roughly how many steps a day did you average?	Paragraph (a number)	A step drop explains more stalls than any theory.
5. Energy this week	Scale, 1 to 10	Your early warning for under eating and over training.
6. Sleep this week	Scale, 1 to 10	Bad sleep wrecks hunger, mood and recovery at once.
7. Stress this week	Scale, 1 to 10	Tells you whether to push or to hold.
8. Hunger this week	Scale, 1 to 10	The number that predicts next week's missed targets.
9. What got in the way this week?	Checkboxes	Turns "I was bad" into a specific, fixable cause.
10. Is anything hurting?	Multiple choice	The third answer is a message today, not next week.
11. What was your biggest win this week?	Paragraph	Makes them look for progress, gives you something to celebrate.
12. What is one thing you want from me this week?	Paragraph	Often where the real problem finally shows up.

Plus progress photos every two to four weeks, which we cover below.

Block one: the numbers

Average morning weight. Ask clients to weigh most mornings, after the bathroom and before food or water, and report the average. Daily weight moves with salt, carbs, sleep, stress and the menstrual cycle, and a client who reports only Monday's number will have a "bad week" that was really a pizza on Sunday. If weighing daily makes a particular client anxious, drop this question for them and lean on the tape and photos. The form serves the client, not the other way round.

Workouts finished. Offer four choices: all of them, all but one, about half, none. Adherence comes first because every other number depends on it. A stalled client who finished every session needs a different conversation from a stalled client who finished two.

Protein days. Choices of 0 to 2, 3 or 4, 5 or 6, and all 7. Asking for calories every day turns a check in into an audit and invites creative accounting. Protein is the target most clients undershoot, it helps protect muscle while they lose fat, and it is easy to answer honestly.

Average steps. Their phone already knows. Steps are one of the biggest swings in daily energy use, and nobody thinks of them as exercise, and a client who went from 9,000 a day to 4,000 because they started working from home has explained their plateau without either of you blaming their willpower.

Block two: how the week felt

Four scales from 1 to 10, and the labels on the ends matter more than you would think. Vague ends get vague answers. Try these:

• Energy: 1 is running on fumes, 10 is bouncing off the walls.
• Sleep: 1 is barely slept, 10 is slept like a dog in a sunbeam.
• Stress: 1 is on holiday, 10 is everything is on fire.
• Hunger: 1 is forgot to eat, 10 is would fight a raccoon for a bagel.

Nobody enjoys filling in a scale. Everybody will tell you how close they came to the raccoon.

Block three: what got in the way

What got in the way is checkboxes, so the client can tick more than one: work, travel, poor sleep, social plans, illness or injury, motivation, and "nothing, it was a good week". The point is to replace "I was bad this week" with a cause you can plan around. Travel is a logistics problem. Motivation three weeks running is a program problem.

Is anything hurting has three answers: no; a little, but it did not change my training; yes, I changed or skipped exercises because of it. Add an optional paragraph underneath for where and during which movement. The third answer should reach you before you have finished your coffee, which is why it is multiple choice rather than buried in a paragraph you read on Sunday.

Block four: the two open questions

Biggest win makes the client go looking for evidence that it is working, which is half the job on a slow week. It also gives you something specific to open your reply with.

One thing you want from me turns the form into a conversation. The answer is often the thing the client has been circling for a month: they hate the Tuesday session, they are going to a wedding, they want to try running. Twelve questions in, it finally comes out.

Why only twelve?

Every question on a check in is a small tax on the client, and the form has to be finished every single week for months. A thirty question form gets filled in beautifully for three weeks, then half filled, then skipped. A skipped check in tells you nothing.

The test we recommend: if the answer to a question has never changed what you did for that client, delete the question. Waist measurement weekly? Probably a delete, since it rarely moves enough in seven days to act on, so ask for it with the photos instead. Water intake, supplement lists, a mood journal? Useful for some clients, dead weight for most. Add a question for one client when you have a reason, not to every client by default.

Twelve questions, most of them a single tap, is a few minutes on a phone. That is the budget.

Weekly, every two weeks, or monthly?

Client	Cadence	Why
New, first 8 to 12 weeks	Weekly	Habits are forming and small problems are cheap to fix.
Active fat loss or muscle gain phase	Weekly	The numbers move enough to act on every week.
Established and on track	Every two weeks	Enough contact to catch drift without nagging.
Maintenance	Monthly	Less to adjust, still worth a scheduled conversation.
Progress photos, everyone	Every 2 to 4 weeks	Weekly photos mostly record lighting.

Pick a fixed day, and tell the client exactly when your reply will land. The rhythm is part of the product.

Progress photos without making it weird

Every two to four weeks, the same three angles (front, side, back), the same time of day, the same light, the same clothes, the phone at the same height. That consistency is what makes a change visible. Store them privately, say so in writing, and make them optional. Some clients find photos genuinely hard, and a coach who insists loses the client and gains nothing.

What to do with the answers

A check in is only as good as your reply. These are the patterns worth acting on.

What you see	What it usually means	What to do
Weight average flat three weeks, adherence high	The target is now maintenance for them	One small change: a little less food or a few thousand more steps, not both
Workouts finished drops two weeks running	The plan is bigger than their life right now	Shrink the plan before you question the client
Energy or sleep at 4 or below two weeks running	Under recovered, under fed, or a life event	Ask before you add anything
Hunger at 8 or above	The deficit is biting	More protein and high volume food first, then consider a smaller deficit
"Yes, I changed exercises because it hurts"	A real injury or a technique problem	Modify today. Refer to a physiotherapist or doctor now for sharp pain, swelling, numbness or tingling, or pain that is getting worse or wakes them at night, and for anything that has not settled in a week or two. You are a coach, not a clinician
No check in at all	Often the first sign they are drifting	Message the same day, kindly, and make it easy to reply

How to reply so the check in actually keeps the client

Go back to that paper for a second: Mohr and colleagues argue accountability works best when the coach is trusted and the client can see what they get back. In practice that means four habits.

1. Reply inside the window you promised. Twenty four to forty eight hours is a sensible window. Reliability matters more than speed.
2. Reply to what they wrote. Quote their win back to them. A reply that could have been sent to anyone tells the client nobody read it.
3. Change one thing at most. If you change the food, the steps and the program in the same week, neither of you will know what worked.
4. Ask one question back. It keeps the conversation open until the next check in.

A two minute voice memo often lands better than three paragraphs, and it is much harder to mistake for a template.

An intake questionnaire is a different form

Everything you need to know before the first session belongs in a separate form, filled in once: health history, injuries, training history, goals, schedule, equipment and food preferences. Start the health part with the Physical Activity Readiness Questionnaire for Everyone, known as the PAR Q+, which describes itself as the international standard for pre participation screening. Its first page is seven questions. If the answer to all of them is no, the person is cleared for unrestricted activity; if not, the form walks them through follow up pages or towards a qualified professional.

Keep the intake and the check in apart. Bolt the intake onto the weekly form and the weekly form is no longer twelve questions.

Running this template in BryksBuilt

Full disclosure, this is our product. The check in builder in the BryksBuilt coach portal has the four answer types this template uses: paragraph, a scale with your own end labels, multiple choice and checkboxes. There is a switch that adds a front, side and back progress photo step (once it is on, the client adds all three to submit), and a form can repeat weekly, every two weeks or monthly until an end date you choose, due at a time you pick (9:00 AM unless you change it) with a reminder before it is due (a day ahead unless you change it). Clients answer in the BryksBuilt app, and you reply to each submission in the portal with written or voice feedback.

What it does not have yet is an import button for this template. Building the form by hand takes a few minutes, and you do it once, then assign it to every client. To ask for photos every two to four weeks, make a second short form with the photo switch on and set it to repeat every two weeks or monthly, so the weekly form stays photo free. A form can also be sent one time only. There is no dedicated intake questionnaire in the portal yet, and for health screening, send the official PAR Q+ from its own site rather than retyping it.

Check ins are included on every plan, including Trainer Free, which covers up to 5 clients at no cost. If you already run check ins somewhere else, keep this page open and copy the questions across. The template is the useful part, and it is yours either way.

Where to go next

If you are still building the roster that these check ins are for, our guide to getting coaching clients online sorts every channel by whether it brings you strangers or only converts people who already know you. If you are working out what to charge for all this attention, the pricing guide and the client capacity calculator will tell you how many clients you can actually coach well at once.