Think back to a time in your life when you’ve had a problem or a challenge, when there was something you wanted to fix or change but didn’t know how. What did that feel like? Did you start out motivated and confident? Or did you feel something else?

Now consider what it would feel like to reach out to someone for advice and, instead of considering your unique situation, they incorrectly diagnosed your problem and made a bunch of haphazard recommendations. What would that feel like?

Let’s say you’re having stomach pain. You go see a doctor and, within the first thirty seconds, no greeting or anything, the doctor says: “Ah, pain right there? It’s stomach cancer. We’ll treat it with radiation. Make an appointment at the front desk.”

After freaking out, you’d probably think that the doctor was a jerk and that the diagnosis wasn’t credible because the doc never asked questions, did diagnostics, took a family history, or anything.

Same goes for most other things, right? When you have car trouble, you don’t want a mechanic to flippantly say, “It must be the transmission.” When you have computer trouble, you don’t want the help desk to answer the phone with, “It must be the RAM.” You want people to hear you to help you. And it’s not just because you want to be heard, but because you have some essential information that the other person needs in order to draw an accurate conclusion.

In my experience, when someone has an answer before hearing and deeply understanding the problem, it’s probably not the right answer. (And, even if they get lucky and come up with a technically correct answer, it usually isn’t a helpful one.)

Now, let’s take the same principle and apply it to you—and how you work with people.

Do you make the same mistake as the doctor, the mechanic, and computer expert above? Are your answers sometimes too flippant? Are you sometimes too focused on your knowledge, expertise, and authority (what I call “coach-centered”) instead of focusing on the lives and embodied experiences of your clients (what I call “client-centered”)?

That’s normal, especially at the beginning of our careers. Because we spend so much time learning facts about anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, and biomechanics, it’s easy for us to fetishize our knowledge and accidentally prioritize it when sitting with living, breathing humans. This leads to interactions that are all about us, our information, our authority, and our reputation. It makes the whole process feel “top-down,” like sergeant-trooper, boss-employee, or guru-disciple.

Think about it: If we’re too concerned with “having the right answer” or “looking smart” or “retaining our authority,” we’re not thinking enough about what the client needs, what they already know about their body, what their real challenges are, and which dreams inspire them.^* When we’re too concerned with our reputation, we’re less willing to humble ourselves in front of clients and ask the deep questions required to help us understand their lives.

Here’s one way to think of it. Sure, you’re an expert on the body. But your client is the world’s number-one expert on his or her own life. Therefore, great coaching can only happen when a coach integrates his or her own expertise with the necessary expertise of the client.

This is the essence of client-centeredness. This is part of what will make you a successful coach.^**

Decades of research in teaching, counseling, and coaching have confirmed what we found to be true with more than 150,000 Precision Nutrition Coaching clients. The client-centered approach cuts down on some of your biggest obstacles: client ambivalence and resistance. Plus, rather than building you up, it builds the client. As their dignity, self-determination, self-efficacy, and self-expertise increase, you’ll see better, more sustainable results.

(Just don’t make the mistake of pretending you’re less educated or expert than you really are. While clients want to feel like a collaborator in their own process, they also want to feel like their coach is knowledgeable and experienced. No doubt, it’s a difficult tightrope to walk. But it’s important. You’re doing it right if you’re constantly assessing each client to see if a little more expert direction is needed at that moment, or a little more collaboration is needed, and adjusting accordingly.)

Here’s an example of the difference.

Coach-centered approach

If a client comes to you with a question that you think you have a slam-dunk answer for, it’s easy to feel like a kid in a classroom. “I know this! I know this!” For example, someone’s not losing weight, you look at their food journal, and boom! “Replace that potato with veggies and you’re all set!”

The problem is that, without a discussion, you don’t know enough about why the potato is in their diet in the first place. Nor, without the client’s input, do you know whether they’ll even want to remove it (or if they’d prefer to remove something else from a different meal).

Client-centered approach

Instead of blurting out your knee-jerk solution, this is a perfect time to ask questions about your client’s exercise, overall eating patterns, which foods they can (and can’t) live without, what’s convenient and easy to eat, and so on.

Once you learn more about the client, you can discuss how, for their goals, they might be eating more carbs, or calories, than optimal. Then, finally, you can ask how they might adjust their diet to make the necessary improvements. One of my favorite ways to open the discussion is: “I have a few ideas on what to do next here, but I’d love to hear yours first.”

A few years back, my wife, Amanda, and I were living with her parents while renovating a house about two hours away. During the week, after working a full day, we’d drive two hours to the new home, work on it for a few hours, and drive two hours back. Then, on weekends, we’d drive to the house in the morning, spend the entire day there, and drive back at night. It was exhausting. For the first few weeks, I didn’t work out at all. And I didn’t like the feeling.

Now, when I say I had close to zero time to work out, that’s accurate. But since it wasn’t exactly zero time, I was determined to make something work. So I reached out to a friend who’s an excellent coach.

He listened carefully to my story, asked a bunch of questions, and summarized with this: “Here’s what I’m hearing. Tell me if I’ve got it. You have almost no time to exercise but want to do something, even if it’s not ‘perfect.’ You’d prefer to do it first thing in the morning before your day starts. It has to be really short. And you don’t mind doing it in your bedroom with only body weight.”

He nailed it and went on to create a four-day-per-week circuit training workout that: a) lasted only ten minutes, b) I could do in the morning, immediately after waking up, c) required no equipment, and d) I could do right next to the bed.

Notice what he did there.

First, he listened to my story. Then he asked questions until he thought he understood. Rather than assuming he understood, he summarized what he heard out loud so I could correct him if necessary. Only then did he make his recommendations (which turned out to be really creative and exactly what I wanted). That’s client-centered.

Imagine a scenario where he didn’t practice compassionate listening, where he didn’t ask lots of questions, where he didn’t seek clarity. Imagine if, instead of focusing on my needs, he made it all about himself, his expectations, his expertise. He might have tried to convince me to go to a gym or to persuade me to “just try” four forty-five-minute workouts. He might have said my program demands were unreasonable. Tried to guilt-trip me into making time for more exercise. Or tried to chastise me for making excuses.

But what would that have accomplished? I couldn’t have followed a more intensive program at the time. If he had prescribed one anyway, it would have been frustrating. I would have resented him for pushing his agenda on me without respecting my limitations. He would have resented me for not trying hard enough.

Thankfully, it didn’t go in that direction. Instead, for the months we renovated that home, I maintained my fitness with those ten-minute circuit workouts, a healthy eating plan, and all the extra physical activity that came from doing the renovations themselves. About six months later, when the house was completed and we’d finally moved in, we outfitted it with a sweet home gym.

Guess who I hired to design my first workout program?

The point here is that the world’s best professionals are willing to do everything it takes to understand their clients, which starts with asking great questions and then deeply, actively listening to the answers without any agenda of their own.

This brings us to high-quality listening, a critical part of client-centered coaching.

We’ve all heard this, of course. Maybe you’ve even heard the adage that we were given two ears and one mouth so we would listen twice as much as we speak.

However, many of us struggle with listening because we feel that we have to be “the expert” and that experts teach, talk, and give next actions. That’s precisely why letting go of being “the expert” helps us become better listeners.

It also helps with another thing: becoming students of our clients. When we take our ego needs out of the equation, we can better learn (and understand) what they’re thinking, appreciate their current habits, discover what’s holding them back, and find ways to inspire better and healthier choices.

Of course, I’m not saying that teaching, talking, and giving next actions are bad things. What I’m saying is: They’re only valuable—in a coaching context—after we’ve invested the time to truly listen to and understand our clients.

However, I cringe when people tell coaches to “listen better” and leave it there. That’s because I don’t think you can become a more active, compassionate listener without learning to ask better questions. Good questions unlock the insights worth listening to. And you can use them in a variety of ways, in almost every scenario, to empower clients to:

share personal information,

gain clarity in their own thinking,

say things out loud for the first time,

actively engage in change talk, and

begin solving their own problems.

Plus, they help extend the adage above. Because, instead of listening twice as much as you speak, I recommend listening at least four times as much. In fact, one way to level up your coaching immediately is to spend about 80 percent of your time asking questions and listening and 20 percent of your time guiding or giving instructions.

Here are a few examples of the kinds of questions we use every day at Precision Nutrition, questions designed to improve our listening skills, to better hone into client needs, and pave the way for giving advice without triggering client resistance.

COMPASSIONATE LISTENING QUESTIONS

QUESTION TYPE	EXAMPLE QUESTIONS
Exploring questions	What things are important to you, and how does exercise and eating fit into this? What sort of things would you like to accomplish in your life? If things were better with your eating/exercise, what specifically would be different? What have you tried? What worked and what didn’t?
Imagining questions	Imagine you can X (your goal). Describe your experience. Imagine you are already doing more of X. What would that feel like? Imagine that you have the body and health you desire. What exactly did it take for you to achieve it? If you weren’t constrained by reality—let’s imagine for a minute that absolutely anything is possible—what might you . . .?
Solution-focused questions	In the past, when were you successful with this, even just a little bit? How could we do more of that? Where in your life have you been successful with something like this? Did you learn any lessons that we can apply here? Where is the problem not happening? When are things even a little bit better?
Change-evoking questions	In what ways does this concern you? If you decide to make a change, what makes you think you could do it? How would you like things to be different? How would things be better if you changed? What concerns you about your current exercise and eating patterns?
Statements that act like questions to validate feelings	I get the sense that you may be struggling with . . . It seems to me like you’re feeling . . .
Readiness-assessment questions	If you decide to change, on a scale of 1–10, how confident are you that you could change, when 1 represents not at all confident and 10 equals extremely confident? If you wanted to change, what would be the tiniest possible step toward that? The absolute smallest, easiest thing you could try? Tell me what else is going on for you right now in your life. What else do you have on your plate besides this? Let’s get a sense of what you’re working with.
Planning questions	So, given all this, what do you think you could do next? What’s next for you? If nothing changes, what do you see happening in five years? If you decide to change, what will it be like? How would you like things to be different?
Advice-giving questions	Would it be okay if I shared some of my experiences with you? In my work with clients/patients, I’ve found that . . .
Statements that get people thinking	I wonder what it would be like if you . . . I wonder if we could try . . . I’m curious about whether . . .

Watch popular portrayals of TV trainers and fitness coaches, and you’ll get the idea that telling people how much they suck is motivating.

What’s that in your hand? A donut? Typical. Get off your butt and let’s see some push-ups, you pathetic unmotivated blob of goo!

These coaches are always on the lookout for awfulness, stalking, ready to pounce on it with good ol’ fashioned “tough love.”

In real life, most of us would never speak to clients in this cartoonish and extreme way. However, whether we realize it or not, whether it sounds nicer on the surface or not, most of us do our own “awfulness-based coaching.” And that makes sense. When it comes to helping people, logic tells us: This person has a problem. You have a solution. Put the two together and results follow.

I think that’s why the entire health and fitness field is full of assessments and a subsequent “weakness” obsession. Glutes aren’t turned on? Fix it with this exercise. Diet’s broken? Fix it with this menu. Blood has too much cholesterol? Fix it with this supplement. Again, no matter how nice we dress up our language, coaches spend a lot of time looking for flaws and rushing in to fix them.

There are three problems with this.

First, most clients who can afford health and fitness coaching are decidedly not screwups in most areas of their lives. If they can afford you, chances are they’re outperforming you in at least one area: professionally. In other words, there’s a good chance that the person you’re condescending to about their inadequate protein intake spends the rest of their day performing surgery, running a successful business, or teaching at a university. This is good to know because the skills they use to be successful at work can also be used in the service of their health and fitness goals. (Great problem solver at work? Awesome, let’s apply that to your breakfast issue!)

Second, no one—especially people who are winning in other areas of their lives—enjoys being made to feel like a screwup. It’s demoralizing and demotivating. It kills relationships and results.

Third, coaching using a deficit model—i.e., a core assumption that your clients are fundamentally flawed, defective, and lacking—means that your clients will never be, or feel, or do good enough. Sure, they’ll “make improvements”—maybe. But the core belief (which many of your clients will share) is that they are basically broken. Think about how disempowering and discouraging that belief is. If they’re so screwed up, why bother? Might as well just lie down (with poor posture) and suck ice cream through a straw while waiting for death.

That’s why shifting from coach-centered to client-centered means thinking less about awfulness (what the client’s bad at) and more about awesomeness (what the client’s good at). With awesomeness-based coaching, you specifically ask yourself: “Where is this client winning outside of health and fitness?” And, “What skills are they using to win at that?” (Don’t know where they’re winning or how? Ask them.) Then you look for the following:

AWESOMENESS-BASED COACHING PROMPTS

SKILLS:

What do they already know how to do?

KNOWLEDGE:

What information do they already know?

EXPERTISE/EXPERIENCE:

What have they already done? (In particular, what have they already done well?)

INTERESTS:

What do they like to do? What do they enjoy?

TALENTS:

What are they naturally good at?

NO-PROBLEM TIMES:

When does the problem they often face not happen?^*

Once you understand where clients are awesome, give them the kinds of tasks that interest them or that use their talents. Or help them work toward a goal that inspires or excites them. Use their awesomeness to shape their goals, to solve health and fitness challenges they keep coming up against, or to come up with next actions.

“What are your health and fitness goals?” It’s a question asked by professionals all over the world. And it seems like an easy question to answer. Just rattle off how many pounds you want to lose, what pant size you want to wear, what you want your blood sugar numbers to be, or how much you want to deadlift and you’re on your way.

Unfortunately “outcome goals” like these can actively sabotage progress. That’s because they focus us on things that are out of our control while, simultaneously, distracting us from the things we should be thinking about instead: our behaviors (which are within our control).

At Precision Nutrition, we spent decades looking at goal setting and at how health and fitness coaches set goals with their clients. We concluded that coaches and their clients repeatedly commit the same three errors when it comes to establishing goals. The good news? It’s relatively easy to turn these “bad” goals into “good” ones. You can do it with this three-step process.

SETTING THE RIGHT KINDS OF GOALS

STEP 1

Turn “outcome goals” into “behavior goals”

What are “outcome goals” and “behavior goals”?	An “outcome goal” is something you want to happen, such as losing a certain amount of weight, or running a certain time in a 5K. A “behavior goal” is an action that you’d do or practice to move toward that outcome, such as putting down your fork between bites, or practicing your running technique three to four times a week.
Why not outcome goals?	While there’s nothing wrong with wanting an outcome like a lower body weight, we often can’t control outcomes because they’re affected by so many outside factors.
Why behavior goals?	Behavior goals, on the other hand, allow us to focus on (and practice) the things we can control—actions, not end results.
What it looks like in practice	A client wants the outcome of “losing twenty pounds.” However, to lose twenty pounds, they’ll have to do certain behaviors like exercise regularly, better control calories, manage stress, and sleep well. So you turn those into goals. For example, you might spend two weeks with the behavior goal of exercising four times each week for the next two weeks. Then, another two weeks with the behavior goal of eating slowly and until satisfied, not stuffed. Then, another two weeks with the behavior goal of taking a five-minute break twice a day to do a mind-body scan. And another two weeks with the behavior goal of practicing a sleep-promoting calm-down routine starting thirty minutes before bed. Notice how the goal is now an action, not an outcome.
Remember	There’s nothing wrong with having a desired outcome. But the outcome is for you, the coach, to think about (and track). Your clients, on the other hand, should be thinking about (and tracking) the behaviors/practices that will lead to that outcome.

STEP 2

Turn “avoid goals” into “approach goals”

What are “avoid goals” and “approach goals”?	An “avoid goal” is something you don’t want—something that pushes you away from your current pain, like “I don’t want to be out of shape” or “I don’t want to be on diabetes medication.” An “approach goal” is something you do want—something that pulls you toward a better, more inspiring future, like “I want to feel confident and strong” or “I want to live pain free.”
Why not “avoid goals”?	“Avoid goals”—don’t smoke, stop eating junk food—are psychologically counterproductive because telling someone to stop something almost guarantees they’ll keep doing it. In addition, a flat-out “don’t” reinforces the feeling of failure when someone messes up.
Why “approach goals”?	“Approach goals,” on the other hand, give clients something else to do when old habits might have otherwise kicked in. Plus they’re about helping people feel good, successful, and inspired to keep on their journey.
What it looks like in practice	Instead of “no junk food,” try focusing attention on eating more cut-up fruits and vegetables. Instead of “no soda,” try focusing attention on drinking a glass of water with at least three meals each day. Instead of “no stress-eating,” try focusing attention on stress-relieving activities to do instead of eating.
Remember	Writing down a habit you want to stop isn’t enough. The key is to find a replacement your client can lean on when the old habit could kick in. For bonus points, write down why the new action is good for you. For example, “no soda” can be turned into “tea break,” with the following: “Tea is calming, it has antioxidants, and there are lots of flavors I can try. I can even drink it in the mug my daughter made in pottery class.”

STEP 3

Turn “performance goals” into “mastery goals”

What are “performance goals” and “mastery goals”?	“Performance goals” are a lot like outcome goals, but they’re usually associated with external validation—wanting to win a competition for the prize money or wanting to beat a record time. You’re shooting for a specific performance, particularly one that will give you kudos, applause, and/or something good to post on social media. “Mastery goals” are about learning, skill development, and the intrinsic value of becoming excellent at something, or understanding something deeply.
Why not performance goals?	These have limitations because so many things can influence performance like tough conditions or just feeling bad on race day. They can push you to achieve your best, of course. But they’re demotivating if you don’t achieve them.
Why mastery goals?	Mastery is about the process of continued skill development, which almost always leads to better performance in the long run. Mastery also allows you to focus on the joy of learning, which is gratifying no matter what others think or what time the clock says.
What it looks like in practice	Say your client wants to set a half-marathon personal record. Well, that’s both an outcome and a performance goal. To help them transform it into a mastery goal, you might consider working on running with a smooth, efficient stride and better controlling breathing. This could involve watching video of the client running, identifying technique elements to improve, and turning those into behavior goals.
Remember	Again, you can begin by writing down the performance objective. But don’t stop there. Continue by listing the skills required to help achieve that objective. Then turn those skills into a series of behaviors. This process makes the goal about progression, not performance.

I worked with two-division UFC champ Georges St-Pierre for a decade. He’s a case study in mastery. For example, back at UFC 111 in New Jersey, the crowd saw GSP completely dominate his opponent Dan Hardy for five grueling rounds and twenty-five minutes of fighting.

What the crowd didn’t see was that Georges was dissatisfied. When given the opportunity, he failed to submit his opponent and the fight went to a decision. Immediately after, at midnight, following a long day and a long fight, while twenty people waited in a private room to take him to a big party in his honor, Georges spent an hour working on submissions with his grappling coach, so he’d get it right next time.

Another example comes from former client Jahvid Best, an elite NFL running back who retired from football and started competing as a sprinter. When asked about his track and field goals, he replied simply: “To master the technique of sprinting.” He didn’t talk about winning a competition or going to the Olympics. He didn’t even talk about his 100m times. He talked about mastering his craft. And, yes, he did go on to compete at the 2016 Olympics.

If behavior goals, approach goals, and mastery goals are what propel the world’s best athletes, shouldn’t you be using them with your clients too?^*

When our daughter started gymnastics—at eighteen months old—I got the chance to look at coaching in a whole new way. On the one end of the gym were these toddlers in my daughter’s class, with little bodies and big heads, bobbing around, barely able to run in a straight line. On the other end of the gym were the “older girls,” six- and seven-year-olds doing mind-boggling aerials, flipping around over high bars, and doing crazy stunts on a balance beam.

I became fascinated with the process. How does a good coach take that clumsy toddler and turn her into a graceful gymnast? I decided to find out for myself. I signed up for private lessons with the gym’s head coach and we established a few outcome goals for me: walking handstands and a competent backflip.

However, as mentioned above, outcome goals are insufficient on their own. That’s because “do a backflip” isn’t a reasonable instruction. As a coach, you can’t just demonstrate a flip and then tell your athlete to copy you. They’ll surely fail, maybe even get hurt. That’s why teaching a backflip means breaking the complex movement down into smaller, simpler movements, teaching your athlete those in a logical progression, and then adding them together over time.

So that’s what my coach and I worked on. We broke down handstands and backflips into smaller movement units (skills). Then we came up with specific things I could practice to build up those skills, which would eventually lead me to trying my first walking handstands and backflips.

As I went through my own skill development, I watched our daughter go through hers. They taught her to do back handsprings by starting with 1) back bridges from the floor, then 2) falling into back bridges, then 3) kicking over with one leg from a back bridge, then 4) kicking over with both legs from a back bridge, then 5) doing that with an octagonal tube that guided her smoothly over, and so on until, months later, she got her back handspring. Next, back handsprings on a balance beam.

This idea of progression isn’t unique to sports. The best piano teachers use it to help people eventually play Rachmaninoff. The best yoga teachers use it to help people eventually do inversions. And the best language teachers use it to eventually help people become fluent. On some level these teachers realize that accomplishing advanced outcome goals is never done through heroic single efforts. Rather, outcome goals are accomplished through the mastery of a series of basic skills. And those basic skills are accomplished through regular practice.

Here’s how I teach coaches and clients to visualize the process.

Let’s now translate this into a common health and fitness example: weight loss.

Say a client has an outcome goal to lose weight. Sure, write that down on a piece of paper as the desired outcome. But don’t stop there. Your next job is to help them come up with behavior goals to accomplish the outcome, one of which might be: Eat better consistently.

That’s a great start, but it’s still more of a goal than a skill. It’s sorta like the back handspring in that it needs to be broken down into smaller chunks. So you have to ask yourself: Which skills are required to eat better consistently? At Precision Nutrition, we identified that better awareness of hunger and appetite is the primary skill for making progress in this area. (There are others, of course. But we always start with this one as it’s fundamental.)

Yet that’s still not totally actionable, so we break it down into practices like eat slowly at each meal (for the first two weeks) and eat until satisfied instead of stuffed (for the second two weeks). Both naturally lead to better hunger and appetite awareness.

There are also secondary skills, like learning to get back on track when you forget to eat slowly or catch yourself rushing. A related skill involves bringing oneself back to awareness, staying calm, and returning to slow bites, without panicking or getting self-critical.

As you can see, the whole point here is that daily practices (eating slowly at each meal, eating until satisfied instead of stuffed) lead to new skills (better hunger and appetite awareness). New skills are the only way to reach behavior goals (eating better consistently). And accomplishing behavior goals is the path to producing our desired outcomes (weight loss).

Here’s what that looks like on our worksheet.

This is just one example. The cool part? The practices-skills-goals model can be applied to every area of coaching. And it’s fairly simple to comprehend. Break goals down into the skills required to accomplish those goals. And break skills down into daily practices that help develop those skills.

To create the best daily practices, you can use Precision Nutrition’s 5S Formula:

PRECISION NUTRITION’S 5S FORMULA FOR GOALS

SIMPLE:

The best practices are small daily actions that can be done in the context of real life. If you ask your client, “On a scale of 0–10, how confident do you feel you could do this practice every day for the next two weeks?” the answer should be a 9 or 10. Anything lower and the practice is too challenging or intimidating.

SEGMENTAL:

Most goals are too big, or complicated, to try for in one go. Most skills are the same way. So break them down into defined and organized segments.

SEQUENTIAL:

Breaking things down into segments is great. But you also have to practice those segments in the right order. If you do “thing four” before “thing one” you’re less likely to succeed. So have clients start with thing one, then do thing two, then thing three, and so on. Do the right things in the right order and success is a reliable outcome.

STRATEGIC:

Think this process sounds slow? Fact is, if your practices are strategic, the whole process goes quicker. That’s because strategic practice addresses the thing that’s in your way right now. Focus on that one thing—and only that thing—and a difficult process becomes easier and faster.

SUPPORTED:

Practices work best when they’re supported by some form of teaching, coaching, mentorship, and accountability.

That moment I watched our daughter in gymnastics, it triggered a whole new area of exploration—to learn about how people learn. What I discovered has completely transformed how I think about coaching (and learning new skills).

It’s even opened up a new world for my own fitness as I started competing in Masters-level track and field after twenty-five years off. At nearly fifty years old, if I approached this goal haphazardly, I risked getting hurt, not performing well, not having any fun. So, instead, I followed the practices-skills-goals model. It’s kept me relatively injury free for five years now, my times are dropping every year, and I’ve even medaled at the Canadian national championships.

Oh, and as for my backflip? Nailed it.

If you had a lifestyle prescription that you knew, with 100 percent certainty, would transform someone’s entire life if they were to follow it for a full ninety days . . . but you also knew that—even with the best of intentions—they could only follow it for ten days . . . would you still offer it?

Really think about that. I bet you’ve been guilty of it at some point in your career, just as I’ve been. We’ve written “perfect” diet, workout, or lifestyle plans for people when we knew they’d never be able to follow them.

It’s the dilemma health and fitness professionals face every day. Yet it’s not just health and fitness clients who struggle. It’s well-known in medicine that, on average, patients prescribed life-saving medication will take it less than 40 percent of the time. That’s why, when people talk about clients wanting “a magic pill,” I often joke, “That’s nice, but they wouldn’t even take it half the time.”

There is, however, a surefire way to increase that percentage: confidence testing.

Before deciding on a course of action or recommendation, simply ask a client: On a scale of 0 to 10—where zero is “no chance at all” and 10 is “of course, even a trained monkey can do that”—how confident are you that you can do Practice X every day for the next two weeks? If a client gives you a 9 or a 10, proceed with the practice. If they score an 8 or lower, work with them to “shrink the change.” This means coming up with different practices until they’re confident enough to give you an honest 9 or 10.

Coach-centered relationships are about instructions. Do these exercises. Eat this food. Take this medication. The outcome of this kind of coaching is predictable: low compliance. Sure, a few people will do what you say because you act like the boss. Most won’t. And it’s not just because they don’t like being bossed around, but because you never bothered to ask whether they thought they could do it in the first place.

A coach-centered instructor thinks: “This practice is easy. My client should have no problem following it.” A client-centered one thinks: “Once my client and I come up with the next practice that feels right for them, we’ll make sure it’s something they feel confident they can do for a few weeks.”

Even if a practice seems easy to you (Eating only one extra vegetable a day? That’s a joke!) remember that coaching isn’t about you. If all your client can do is muster up the confidence to eat one extra veggie a day, even if it’s just the parsley garnish, so be it.

Having positive experiences with health and fitness—experiences where they don’t feel like a total failure—will lead to more confidence and bigger challenges down the road. Besides, what’s the alternative? Asking them to eat five extra veggies, knowing they won’t? And then what? Chastising them for being weak even though you knew they wouldn’t do it in the first place?

Taking on too much is always a problem—for all of us. When I decided to learn to play the guitar, I came up with ambitious practice schedules (an hour a day!) that I’d never be able to follow. And it paralyzed me. I waited for months until “things got less busy” to get started. Of course, things never got less busy.

That’s when, frustrated, I changed the expectations. I told myself that I had to play just five minutes a day, and I’d do it when I was putting my daughter to sleep for the night because she loves music. Sure, five minutes a day wouldn’t build my skills at the same rate as an hour a day. But I was doing zero minutes! Surely, five was better than zero. The funny thing is that, many nights, once I got the guitar in my hand, I ended up playing for an hour or more.

Don’t we all do this, in some way, in our lives? We get too ambitious in the beginning. Then, when we fall short of those ambitions, we practice “all or nothing thinking.” We think: “Well, I can’t go to the gym, so I might as well do nothing,” when fifty air squats and some stretching is better than nothing. We think: “Well, I blew it with this meal, so I might as well eat whatever I want and start over next Monday,” when getting right back on track with the next meal is a better option.

The irony here is that “all or nothing” doesn’t get us “all,” it usually gets us “nothing.” Which is why I like to practice “always something” instead. This means committing to less than I’m capable of on my best day, but something I’m sure I can do on my worst.

When I decided to learn guitar, if I would have confidence tested my one-hour-a-day goal, I would have quickly realized it was too much. And I wouldn’t have spent months “not-starting.” I would have simply adjusted the expectation down until I got a 9 or 10 on the confidence scale and begun the scaled-back practice the very next day.

Some days I think the most profound thing I ever learned in health and fitness is that the most passionate coaches, folks with hearts of gold and beautiful intentions, are often the worst offenders in terms of ruining the change process and making clients less likely to change.

This blew my mind. I mean, I knew that some approaches were less effective than others. But I assumed that a well-intentioned coach’s efforts would, at worst, have no effect.

It never dawned on me that passion itself could be moving people further away from their goals. Now I see it every day: caring, devoted, committed coaches speaking to clients in all the wrong ways and talking them out of change.

Early in my career, I was meeting with a renowned athlete to talk nutrition. We started with a review of her last three days of eating, which she recorded in advance.^* As she talked me through it, I couldn’t help but make my “I’m concerned” frowny face. Maybe you have one of those too? It’s the one that says, Wow, this is pretty terrible. With some better choices here, not only can we turn your performance around, we’ll fix your health too, without you actually saying it.

Her immediate defensiveness was palpable—and understandable. Here I was, a young but passionate upstart, mentally judging a three-time Olympic gold medalist because she’d eaten a few fast-food meals and wasn’t getting enough protein.

On its face, it was kind of laughable. I mean, how much better did she need to be?!? She’d already won the biggest, baddest competition on the planet three times. But, in my passion for “correct” living and eating, I couldn’t help but judge her for “falling short” of my expectations.

While the words I said were pleasant enough, my energy said something different. After getting red in the face, she proceeded to list all the good and plausible reasons for why she wasn’t getting enough protein and why she ate fast food a few times that week.

I’d lost her trust. And the more I contorted myself to offer suggestions for improvement, the more she argued in favor of McDonald’s and Subway and low-protein breakfasts. Couldn’t I see?!? There were no other options. She did the absolute best she could, given her circumstances. Whether that was true or not was irrelevant. I had backed her into a corner, turning a change moment into a moment of resistance.

When we want so badly to help clients, we often find ourselves preaching, lecturing, pushing, cajoling, and prodding. When on the receiving end of all that pressure, clients do what humans do: they push back. That’s why the more we argue for change, the more clients will argue against it. Paradoxically, it’s only when we relax, when we allow for non-change, that our clients become more ready, willing, and able to do it.

But how do you relax and allow for non-change? Check out the following coaching scenarios. They’ll show you how to use questions and curiosity to facilitate the change process, not sabotage it.

FOUR COACHING SCENARIOS

SCENARIO 1

The Change Talk Wedge

When someone is expressing ambivalence about change, you start by reflecting on why they might not decide to change. It sounds weird but often leads to proposing their own solutions.

[Your client is ambivalent or resisting change. Don’t condescend or patronize. Be sincere and compassionate.]

YOU: “Wow, it sounds like you have a lot on your plate. I can see how tough it is to schedule exercise time.”

OR

“I know it can be hard to resist those homemade brownies. They’re so good.”

[Tap into your own busy-ness or love of brownies to offer genuine empathy. Then wait. Be quiet and patient. Let your client speak first. When they do begin talking, they’ll likely start telling you why they should change. This is “change talk,” and it’s a great step. It means they’re not arguing against change, but for it.]

CLIENT: “Yeah, I do have a lot going on. But I really should get to the gym. I know I’ll feel better.”

OR

“Honestly, I don’t think I need three brownies. I’d probably be happy with just one.”

[Once you hear them suggesting change on their own, you’re getting somewhere. Using their language, simply reflect and gently imply a next action in the form of a question. Look inquisitive.]

YOU: “It sounds like you’d feel better if you went to the gym?”

OR

“It sounds like maybe one brownie would be enough for you?”

[Now wait again. They may be silent for a bit. Eventually they’ll likely keep talking about what they want and how they can achieve it. Let them lead the discussion. Once you feel like they’re ready for a next action, go there.]

[Your client shares a few ideas for what she wants.]

YOU: “Given all this, what do you think you’ll do next?”

[Notice how you’re not playing expert or guru. You’re simply using questions to lead them through an articulation of the challenge, then to arguing for change, and then to their own solutions.]

SCENARIO 2

The Continuum

You can use this after listening for change talk. This can help your client move up the continuum of behaviors from worse to better without taking an “all or nothing” approach.

[The client has decided, through Scenario 1, that they want to eat less fast food. But they’re not confident that they can give up fast food totally.]

YOU: “Okay, so it sounds like you want to eat less fast food, but eliminating fast food entirely feels like too much, which makes sense. What could you do to just move a tiny bit toward your goal instead of all the way? What would that look like?”

[Notice how you’re suggesting the possibility of a third option between “all” or “nothing.” And empowering them to come up with the option themselves.

At this point, clients often propose something smaller than “no fast food ever” but something still too difficult to do consistently.]

CLIENT: “Well, what if I went cold turkey and ate no fast food for the next two weeks?”

[Although you haven’t confidence tested yet, you have a gut feeling that the change is too big. So you might shrink it a little and see how they feel about it.]

YOU: “Okay, no fast food for the next two weeks. You know, I think that’s awesome. But that feels like a pretty big challenge. What about no fast food for just a few days this week? Say, three of the days? Or maybe some days you pick another thing from the menu that’s slightly better? What do you think?”

CLIENT: “I can totally do that, Coach—9 out of 10 on the confidence scale! I’ll make Monday through Thursday my ‘no fast food’ days. Or if I go to [insert fast-food restaurant], I’ll get the chicken wrap and a salad.”

[(This sounds promising!)

At this point you layer in some accountability. And you make a fun “what did you eat instead” game out of it.]

YOU: “That’s a great idea. I’m wondering how I can help?

Would you text me at the end of each day to let me know you were successful? Even better, send me a picture of the meal you chose to eat instead!”

SCENARIO 3

The Crazy Questions

If someone is struggling with ambivalence, resistance, and change, it can be really effective to ask some unconventional questions they may not expect.

YOU: “For starters, it sounds like [reiterate what they just said about their understanding of the problem they’re struggling with]. So I’m going to ask you two crazy questions. I know it’ll sound really weird, but humor me.”

CLIENT: [Raises eyebrows]

YOU: “Question #1: What is good about the nightly gallon of ice cream? In other words, how does it help you or make you feel better in some way?”

“And question #2: What is bad about giving up the nightly gallon of ice cream? In other words, what will be the biggest bummer in that? What might you have to lose?”

[Notice how you’re probing for more information about what purpose the “bad habit” serves in their life. And why they might be so attached to it.

At this point, you should be listening closely. They may talk about stresses in life, pressures, and the reasons why they find comfort in the things that are ultimately unhealthy for them. Let them get it all out without judgment.

Now you normalize and empathize, first arguing ever so slightly in favor of not changing. This helps prevent you from judging the behavior and causing them to push back against you even though they want to change in the first place.]

YOU: “Wow, yeah, it sounds like there’s lots going on there for you. I think I’d want to eat ice cream in that situation too!”

CLIENT: “Thanks for saying that. But I really should find a better way to deal with this.”

[(See how they proposed change, not you?)

This is where you can negotiate the next action, confidence test, and plan for the client to check in with a photo that shows them walking instead of eating ice cream.]

YOU: “Well, tell you what. There’s no rush to do this. When you’re ready, do you feel confident that you could try going for a walk instead of eating the ice cream—at least a few nights for the next two weeks? Or maybe you have the ice cream—but after a walk?”

SCENARIO 4

The Self-Solution

As discussed above, when we help clients develop their own solutions, they’re much more likely to feel confident in them and follow through. That’s what this option helps with.

[After exploring change and learning about a client’s struggles, it’s time to affirm, validate, hear, and normalize.]

YOU: “I totally hear you and understand what you’re experiencing. It’s quite normal. Lots of people feel that too.”

[Here you leave some space for the client to respond. Whether they do or they don’t is fine. Now it’s time to see how the client might solve their own problem.]

YOU: “It sounds like you already have a good sense of the key issues. Knowing this, if you were the coach, what would you recommend?”

[If you feel like they’d be resistant to self-coaching, you can add to it:]

YOU: “Of course, I have some ideas here. But I’d like to hear yours first.”

[Let them work through some concepts. Don’t be afraid to ask follow-up questions or help shape the recommendations.]

YOU: “Great ideas. I’m wondering, on a scale of 0 to 10, how confident are you that you can do each of them for the next two weeks?”

[They’ll rank the ideas. Listen for the ones that score a 9 or 10. If none do, help shape up solutions that they feel really confident they can do.]

YOU: “Awesome, it sounds like we have a winner here. At this point do you mind checking back with me in a few days to share how it’s going? What day and time is best for you?”

[Set a time for follow-up and hold them accountable to it.]

In the end, notice how each scenario demonstrates the power of good questions, compassionate listening, and change-oriented dialogue. Always remember this: When a coach argues for change, clients argue against it. So don’t argue for change! Instead, get clients arguing for it themselves. Bonus points if you help them propose their own solutions too.

Mary Kate is a well-known strength coach who’s worked with some of the world’s most elite athletes, top coaches, and top programs. Most of the coaches she’s collaborated with were disciplinarians. Do this. Don’t do that. Gimme another. I don’t care if you’re tired.

Once she learned and started practicing the coaching techniques I outlined above, her success skyrocketed. She told me she wished she had a time machine to go back and work with all the people she failed to help over the years.

Many people who learn and use these coaching principles feel that way. They stay up at night thinking about the people they left behind—the ones they desperately wanted to help but couldn’t. They think about “difficult” clients and realize that they weren’t difficult at all—they were people with real problems, roadblocks, and frustrations. The “issues” were the coach’s own because they simply didn’t (yet) have the coaching skills needed to help these folks. Even more, they start to realize that, in some cases, their coaching was making clients less likely to change.

If you’ve found yourself in this situation before, try not to dwell on it too much. Or at least find a way to be compassionate with yourself. Now that you know better, you’ll do better.

Coaching is a two-way relationship. If clients are resisting something, that something is probably you. However, with a new kind of commitment, your coaching life will change. That commitment: Take 100 percent responsibility for your advice and your client’s ability to follow it. Lead the horse to water. And make it very thirsty.

* Young coaches are often guilty of this, perhaps because they’re trying to hide some of the insecurity they feel about their lack of experience. Yet information dumps, overconfidence, and bluster aren’t the solution. The solution is openness, curiosity, authentic dialogue, and putting the client first.

** The other part, discussed later in the book, is based on helping clients become more self-aware and make better decisions. If you provide value in this way, you automatically promote yourself to a higher role in the relationship and become viewed as a highly valued consultant vs. a dime-a-dozen taskmaster.

* For example, if a client occasionally binge eats, perhaps you could look for clues on how to not binge eat by examining their no-binge times vs. binge times and noting the differences.

* By the way, “mastering the craft” applies to you too. You can set yourself up for success by outlining the behaviors you’ll need to work on in order to develop your coaching skills, coaching practice, and business.

* Back then we used a standardized three-day diet record in which the client would weigh/measure and log everything they’ve eaten for three representative days of the week. Nowadays, to make it easier for folks, I just ask them to take pictures of the food they eat instead.