Getting around lack of equipment availability?

[BadgerDave]

Hey guys,

I'm a fairly new trainer and I just wanted to get your opinions. How much do you guys wait for equipment to open up vs working around it and using different exercises. For instance, if all the squat racks are taken, do you wait for one, do you do something else first or do you tell your client to do dumbbell squats?

[LivingStrongE]

Lol this acutally happened to me today with one of my free session clients. The lat pull down machine was taken, so I went up to the gentlemen working out on that machine and asked if he didn't mind if my client jumps in and work in. He didn't mind, so I started to train my client on the machine. Good thing because the guy that was using the machine saw how I was doing with my client and asked if he can get a free session with me. That's another $10 in my pockets and I get to satisfy another person. It's been 3 days since I got my first job as a PT and it's working out great. If the guy didn't want me working in then I would of just went to another machine. I don't want to have my client waiting around wasting time they bought, and on top of that it will make it seem like I had a workout prepared and know what is next on the list. Which I do write down and plan ahead.

[KyleAaron]

Do something else. In general, you might have 3-6 exercises planned for a 30' session. If you can't do one, just go onto the next one and come back to the other one later when the equipment is free. Just keep glancing over. And if you think it really won't be free by the end of the session, say there's some idiot doing heavy partial squats supersetted with weighted partial chinups and reading the fcking newspaper in between sets, well no worries, you introduce the client to a new exercise, a variation on what you've already done before, like BadgerDave said.