What is health and fitness coaching?

Coaching is the art of supporting people to get where they might want to go, when they might not get there alone.

Traditionally in the health and fitness world, a coach might support someone in achieving a concrete goal like a running event, reaching a certain goal weight by building muscle or losing fat, or being able to lift a certain amount of weight in a squat, bench or deadlift

These types of goals are things we can move you towards, but I think about things, and do them a little differently too.

You may have more abstract, subjective or playful goals like feeling stronger - but don't mind how you get there,
feeling more confident in your body or fitting into your clothes better
changing your relationship with food to support your health
or even (god forbid) just wanting to find out how to have more fun when exercising.

Whatever your goal is, your coach wants to make sure you are moving towards it with intention

Some coaches also want to ensure the way you achieve your short-term goals is beneficial to our lives holistically over the long term.

The style of coaching that repatterns life 
It is not just what you do, but the how and why you do it.
There is no point dreaming an ideal, if it's going to mean you are always working and never actually living.

Each individual is part of a broader ecosystem, with varied life experiences, levels of privilege, knowledge, amount of resources and relationships that keep us happy and healthy.

So, how do I approach the art of coaching?

Exploration-focused
There is always more than one way to get somewhere, and that includes health and fitness goals. By taking an exploration-focused approach we support you learn what works best, for you, while being guided by what has worked for others, and what the latest and best available evidence from both academic research and proven alternative modalities suggests.

Habit-based
What matters most is not what is ideal or perfect, as life can be a bit messy.
What matters most is what you can and want to do consistently - habits.
Building habits creates a system that sticks and adjusts when life gets hard rather than relying on external rewards, we use a variety of tools to build the internal motivation and rhythm for a life that gives you energy and builds your health sustainably over the long term.

There are some things we may have been working on our whole lives - everyone knows exercising more or eating more fruit and veg is something we can do to improve our health, and rather than approaching it in an all-or-nothing way we will start small, building on habits that you already have

Holistic
Everything is connected, and having someone to zoom out and look at the big picture with you helps identify barriers that you might not have seen.
Or, recognise how well you are doing managing your health on-top of everything else.

My approach is about making it easy for health and fitness to integrate into the rest of your life

When should I see a coach?

There are three main times you might want to see a coach:

• You need a little check-in - whether that is refining your exercise technique (e.g. squats, deadlifting, running, pull-ups) or wanting to try out and build a skill (headstands, handstands, bridges, cartwheels, muscle-ups)
• You have a goal you want to achieve, or a desire to make a difference; but you aren't sure exactly how to get there, or you want accountability and reassurance you're on the right track. This might look like us creating a monthly exercise plan or exploring building better stress management tools so you can stay on track with your health, or what are the food related habits that will look after your health.
• You aren't sure where you are going and need someone to help create a path forward

Some of the things that we can work on together are....

• Feeling stronger and building strength
• Sport, exercise skill performance (running, strength and fitness sports like CrossFit, Hyrox, bodyweight and gymnastics skills like hanstands, pull-ups, muscle-ups)
• Achieving a body composition related goal or working towards build muscle or losing weight
• Feel more confident in your body and fitting into your clothes better
• Changing your relationship with food
• Having more fun when exercising

There are three ways you may want to connect with coaching which is

• Ad-hoc: great for when you want some reassurance or perspective on how you a moving or approaching your health and fitness
• Monthly: ideal for people who have a lot of experience and a session once a month can support to work through barriers that are coming up, keeping you accountable or for a skill/technique refresher
• Weekly/Fortnightly: for those who want to have a regular touch point to go through a gym/exercise session or a coaching conversation to work on any barriers or issues that are stopping you from living your best life

What can I expect?

• Initial consultation to explore your health and fitness goals and design an approach to meet them
• This might look like:
  • A new exercise program each month tailored to your wants, needs and preferences
  • or, creating a habits-based plan to increasing your ability to manage stress or improving your nutrition over time to build the foundations of your health
• Check-in's a frequency that aligns with your goals. This might look like:
  • Fortnightly 20min coaching calls to celebrate wins, and navigate barriers that are stopping you from living your best life
  • Sessions via zoom in the gym/on the field getting some work done, improving exercise technique and skills

The cycle looks something like this:

1. Sense & Align - Understand Current Conditions about where you are at right now, and the direction in which you want to go
2. Prioritise & Plan - Co-create and Decide: a plan of how we get there that is sustainable over the long term
3. Explore & Test: put things into practice - go back into life with a focus to build new habits and skills that will move towards your goals, while reflecting and adjusting as you go
4. Sense & Realign: Check-in fortnightly and adjust the approach based on what is working and what isn't, navigating challenges along the way together

Ready to transform your health and fitness, and repattern your life?