Ask most people what their idea of a health and fitness coach looks like, and I bet they picture some sort of comic-book extreme.
A yelling, red-faced, make-you-hurt drill sergeant who shames you into another set of push-ups or bullies you into bingeing on beets. Or a slap-you-on-the-butt cheerleader who rah-rahs you into box jumping onto the roof and chasing it with a green smoothie. (See also: An evidence-based physician who doesn’t understand what it’s like to fear the weigh scale. A nutritionist whose only food crayon is “leafy green.” Or a yoga teacher who can twist like a pretzel but would never condescend to eat one.)
You know what? They may not be that far off base.
For a number of reasons, many coaches unconsciously fall into those caricatures (perhaps influenced by popular portrayals of trainers on shows like The Biggest Loser). Now, I have nothing against drill sergeants or cheerleaders when they’re actual drill sergeants and cheerleaders. However, when health and fitness coaches act like drill sergeants and cheerleaders, that’s when things go awry.
The world’s best health and fitness change makers think differently about their relationship with clients.
Traditionally, in coach-client relationships—doctor-patient relationships, too—professionals act like they’re preordained to have all the knowledge and power. Clients are there to be passive, pliable recipients: I’ll tell you what to do; you go out and do it.*
In today’s environment, it’s a surefire way to fail.
Another less common, but also somewhat dangerous, approach in health and fitness coaching is: Client as best buddy. While this might sound like a good situation, it’s not. In this scenario, the coach tries to “motivate” the client by being “nice,” spends a lot of time talking about the client’s non-health-related personal problems, and may even tell the client way more about the coach’s own life issues than the client should know. The result? Coaches can become enmeshed in something close to a friendship (or even more inappropriately, a romantic relationship) with the client. This makes it hard to set a clear direction, focus on the task at hand, offer difficult feedback, or “disappoint” the client (for instance, by taking time to go on vacation or not being available 24/7).
Thankfully, there’s a better approach. Instead of seeing the relationship as “teacher-student” or “boss-employee” or “sergeant-trooper”—or even as “buddy-buddy”—today’s most effective coaches see themselves more like professional guides.
Their job isn’t to lecture about what they know, judge performance, give directives, or become a BFF. It’s to collaborate with clients to co-create their program and then walk side by side with them, nudging them down paths they should see, pointing out potholes and missteps they should avoid, and asking them where they want to go next.
Sometimes clients know a lot about the area they’re exploring. In this case, the coach is just there to open the client’s eyes to new things. Other times, when clients are brand-new to the environment, the coach’s work is a little more involved. At times, coaches may even need to offer uncomfortable feedback, prod their client into acknowledging unpalatable truths, or highlight cognitive dissonance (e.g., the difference between what someone says they want and what they’re actually doing).
Sure, from time to time, coaches might need to step in front to lead, or behind to push. But, most of the time, the best coaches are right there, next to clients, side by side.
A simple way to remember this? Instead of being a sage on the stage, opt for being a guide on the side. Think less about who you are and what you know. Think more about who your clients are and what they need, including:
how they see the world,
what they want from the coaching process,
which stage of change they’re currently in,
why they react to change the way they do, and
how you can best help facilitate change.
You’ve heard the saying: “You can lead a horse to water but can’t make it drink.” That describes how far most coaches are willing to go in helping clients change. I’ve told Drew what to do a million times, given him at-home workouts, told him to cut back on alcohol, and he just won’t do it.
For coaches, it’s seriously frustrating. Plus, it lends itself to blaming clients for not following orders. But imagine what it’s like for clients, who really do want to look, feel, or perform better but can’t figure out how, within the context of their real lives. Then, on top of that, they have this coach giving orders without much sensitivity to the things getting in the way.
Change makers look at the process differently.
They think: “No, you can’t make the horse drink. But you can make it very, very thirsty.”
Seven Game-Changing Coaching Principles
Most professionals spend their first few years immersed in the science of health and fitness, from muscle physiology to nutrient biochemistry. They learn about energy systems, organ systems, macronutrients, and micronutrients. If they’re lucky, they’re also taught how to translate that into useful recommendations.
It’s a good start, if it were only a start. Unfortunately, it’s where most education ends. Many newly minted professionals never learn how to deal with the real health issues, psychological barriers, and frustrations of working with real people.
If you’re planning on being a professor or researcher, you could always stop at the science. However, if you’d like to become an elite change maker, you have to go one step further by also studying, and developing mastery in, the best practices of coaching and change psychology. The following principles will give you the blueprint to do that.
And by the way, many of these principles will work for your business development too. A client might want to lose weight, and you might want to grow your business; the focus is different but the path to mastery is the same.
* This is a logical holdover of medical paternalism, a set of attitudes and practices common until the end of the twentieth century. With medical paternalism, physicians believed diseases were nothing more than a collection of symptoms and that patient history (and preferences) didn’t matter in providing care. Since the patient was irrelevant in the medical encounter, physicians often undermined their autonomy by making decisions for them, sometimes against their will.