<\/p>\n
For example, in Motivational Interviewing, an effective communication style used in coaching and counseling, there is something called the \u201crighting reflex.\u201d<\/p>\n
The righting reflex is the instinct to help or \u201cfix\u201d a client, as well as give them directions on how best to change.<\/strong> Often, the righting reflex is particularly strong in people who really, really<\/em> care.<\/p>\n Sounds like a great instinct to follow if you\u2019re a coach, right?<\/p>\n WRONG.<\/p>\n We are now entering upside-down-land.<\/p>\n Motivational Interviewing describes how this (beautiful, well-intentioned) instinct to help can actually hinder<\/em> a client\u2019s progress.<\/p>\n That\u2019s because when we swoop in to fix, correct, or steer, clients often do the exact opposite of what we\u2019re hoping for: They dig in and get defensive.<\/strong><\/p>\n Push someone the \u201cright\u201d way and, paradoxically, they\u2019ll start advocating for the very habits they came to you to change. You end up being the one arguing for<\/em> change\u2014which leaves them to argue against<\/em> it. Everyone walks away a little more frustrated, and the client feels more stuck than ever.<\/p>\n Instead, great, experienced coaches learn to get curious instead of corrective. (They might even encourage the client to explore not<\/em> changing!)<\/p>\n That\u2019s just one example of an upside-down skill that separates a good coach from a masterful one. But it\u2019s certainly not the only example.<\/p>\n Which brings us here.<\/p>\n We asked some of Precision Nutrition\u2019s most seasoned PN Level 2 Master Health Coach Certified<\/a> coaches a simple question:<\/p>\n What\u2019s something you were sure about early in your career that you later had to unlearn<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n Their (honest, and sometimes humbling) answers are below, plus the wiser way forward they adopted, and are now sharing with you.<\/p>\n Our first lesson to unlearn comes from PN in-house coach Jeremy Fernandes, PN2-MHC.<\/p>\n With over 14 years of coaching experience, Coach Jeremy is known for his friendly, comfortable, \u201ctalk to me like I\u2019m your buddy\u201d coaching style. Which is ironic, because as you\u2019ll see, he started off his career leaning heavily on a rigid structure that was actually pushing clients away.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what Coach Jeremy has to say:<\/p>\n At the beginning of my career, when I\u2019d been a personal trainer for a year or two, I had a friend ask if I offered nutrition coaching. And my first move was: Here are all of the forms.<\/strong> And when I say \u201call of the forms,\u201d I mean all<\/em> of them\u2014I probably sent this person 20 pages to fill out.<\/p>\n They didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Three weeks later I had to hunt them down, and we ended up filling them out together\u2014which took two and a half grueling hours.<\/p>\n If not for those forms, we could have started actually coaching, like, 20 days earlier.<\/p>\n Not long after, another friend showed up at my door with this white-hot intensity: \u201cTell me what to do, I\u2019m ready,\u201d they said. And I immediately dumped a metaphorical bucket of ice water on them with those darn forms. It was radio silence after that.<\/p>\n The problem was that I was operating like my sole job was to extract information from a person and then solve the mystery\u2014as if I had some advanced pattern recognition about you that you didn\u2019t have about yourself.<\/p>\n And unfortunately, I kept on that terrible path for a while.<\/p>\n What finally prompted a change was going through the Level 2 Master Health Coaching Certification<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n Going through that course, I saw there was a better framework\u2014one that doesn\u2019t rely on me robotically extracting information.<\/p>\n I learned to let the client take the lead, and then just listen and maybe ask a few good questions. And it works so much better\u2014for everyone.<\/strong><\/p>\n Now I work from the assumption that my client knows themselves better than anyone. One of my most valuable questions is simply:<\/p>\n \u201cWhat have you tried before, what did you like about it, and what didn\u2019t you like?\u201d<\/p>\n When I let people take the floor, they nail the really big stuff more often than not\u2014in a way my paperwork and my detective work never facilitated.<\/strong><\/p>\n Honestly, the forms were me projecting professionalism, because back then I didn\u2019t feel<\/em> like a professional. My identity as a coach never felt natural until after L2. Now, just letting someone talk feels like coaching. We start with a connection, and then I just let them fill in the gaps.<\/p>\n The next lesson to unlearn comes from PN Director of Community Engagement and in-house coach Kate Solovieva, PN2-MHC.<\/p>\n With over 16 years of coaching experience, Coach Kate is known for her honesty and incisiveness. She has a way of dropping realness on her clients that may first feel like a shock, but ultimately ends up getting her clients to the heart of the matter much faster. But one hard truth she had to face was her own.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what Coach Kate has to say:<\/p>\n You know the story: You reach the healthy weight, the habits lock in, and the weight just stays stable on its own. You hit \u201csave\u201d and move on with your happily ever after.<\/p>\n And that is not the case at all.<\/strong><\/p>\n At least most of the time. It\u2019s true, some<\/em> goals really are<\/em> like that. If you want to run a marathon, you can pick a race date, follow a training program, show up to the start line, run it\u2014and then you never have to run again and you will still have achieved that goal. That\u2019s a real destination; you cross the finish line once and check the goal off.<\/p>\n But weight loss, muscle gain, body recomposition, building a habit of movement or eating well\u2014those aren\u2019t like that. Especially when the goal means working against a chronic tendency, like a predisposition to high blood pressure, or to hating exercise, or to living in a larger body than you\u2019d prefer.<\/p>\n Those goals come with a pretty good amount of ongoing and intentional maintenance\u2014daily, weekly, monthly. There\u2019s no save button.<\/strong><\/p>\n This realization didn\u2019t come from one single client or one moment for me. It came through a collection of observations, including observations of myself.<\/em> But once I saw it, it changed how I coach.<\/p>\n I realized that if there\u2019s no real finish line, then my job is to manufacture<\/em> finish lines along the way. That way, my clients continually feel like they\u2019re accomplishing something satisfying.<\/strong><\/p>\n I take the big goal and break it into something specific and daily\u2014and then I insert smaller outcome goals into the journey.<\/p>\n For instance, someone going from sedentary to wanting to lose 100 pounds is facing a huge goal, full of behaviors and identities they\u2019ll have to grow into. So along the way, we might set a goal of running a single mile without stopping. Strictly speaking, that doesn\u2019t have much to do with the bigger goal\u2014but it also has everything to do with it. It\u2019s checkable. Achievable. Ideally it\u2019s also something they\u2019re a little excited about: fun, interesting, maybe even a little scary, but still within reach.<\/p>\n Because here\u2019s the thing: It\u2019s very hard to motivate the human brain to work out three times a week for the rest of their life to \u201cget healthier.\u201d \u201cBeing healthy\u201d isn\u2019t tangible, it\u2019s not immediate\u2014you can\u2019t feel<\/em> that far-off outcome in your body.<\/strong><\/p>\n But striving towards a fun, achievable goal in the next three to six months? That\u2019s real. It also builds in structure, and provides those little spikes of motivation\u2014the hit of dopamine you get from working hard at something and actually accomplishing it.<\/p>\n Health isn\u2019t something we ever fully \u201caccomplish\u201d or check off. So we have to give ourselves these little concrete goals along the way that we can<\/em> feel and see and be delighted by.<\/p>\n The next lesson to unlearn comes from PN content creator Azul Corajoria, CPT, PN2-MHC.<\/p>\n With over nine years of coaching experience, Coach Azul\u2019s coaching fingerprint is empathetic, relatable, and endlessly encouraging.<\/p>\n While these traits always came naturally to her, for a long time, she thought she had to adopt an opposite<\/em> style to help certain clients (and herself) to \u201cget back in line\u201d when habits didn\u2019t go as planned.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what Coach Azul has to say:<\/p>\n Early in my coaching career, I thought that if someone wasn\u2019t following through on what they said they would do, it\u2019s because they needed more structure or just to get their \u201chead in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n I couldn\u2019t understand why someone would invest in coaching and then not<\/em> do the things we planned.<\/p>\n It was especially confusing because most of my clients had \u201cdiscipline.\u201d They were successful, responsible, hardworking people who showed up for their jobs, families, and everyone else in their lives.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, I was also<\/em> \u201cdisciplined\u201d in many areas of my life\u2014yet I also<\/em> struggled with eating well and exercising consistently.<\/strong><\/p>\n At this time, I felt this lack of consistency was my fault, and went straight to being really angry at myself. I thought I was just missing the \u201cperfect something\u201d (the perfect workout, the perfect diet) to help me change, so I\u2019d just move from thing to thing, but each one would bring fresh disappointment.<\/p>\n I was incredibly frustrated by this cycle, and my response was to get stricter and harsher with myself.<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to say when it all changed. It wasn\u2019t an overnight epiphany; it was a culmination of years of getting curious, being open to different methods, like the Body Positivity Movement and Intuitive Eating. I dove into self-compassion and positive psychology research, and I went through the PN Level 2 Master Health Coaching Certification<\/a>.<\/p>\n I applied everything I learned, and I noticed that the more open and curious I was, the better my clients responded. Slowly, that turned into the realization that the more open and curious I was with myself<\/em>, the better I<\/em> would respond.<\/p>\n It changed my world.<\/p>\n I stopped binge eating. I started enjoying exercise more. I took more career risks.<\/p>\n I learned that when we can respond to a setback with curiosity instead of punishment, we\u2019re much more likely to stay engaged.<\/strong> When I allow myself to be disappointed by an action, take responsibility for it, and remain on my own side, I feel safer reflecting and taking risks. The more I do that, the more likely I am to achieve the things I want.<\/p>\n Sometimes the most helpful thing we can teach a client (and ourselves) is not how to push harder or \u201cjust be more disciplined.\u201d It\u2019s how to make a mistake, remain on our own side, and keep going.<\/p>\n Because self-compassion is not the opposite of accountability; it\u2019s often what makes accountability possible.<\/strong> (I call it \u201ccompassionate accountability.\u201d)<\/p>\n None of us will ever be the \u201cperfect\u201d coach, and we don\u2019t have to be. The more human I\u2019ve allowed myself to be, the better relationships I\u2019ve had with my clients. My biggest goal as a coach is to create an environment my client feels safe to come back to with not only their wins, but their losses.<\/strong> The safer they feel being honest and open with me, the safer they\u2019ll feel to try new things\u2014and over time they\u2019ll build the confidence to do it themselves.<\/p>\n The next lesson to unlearn comes from PN in-house coach and Level 2 Master Health Coaching Certification<\/a> instructor Dom Matteo, PN2-MHC, NBC-HWC.<\/p>\n With over 16 years of coaching experience, Coach Dom stands out for his non-judgemental attitude and excellent listening skills. For Dom, these traits are relatively inherent, but they\u2019ve also been carefully developed and honed, in part by letting go of what he calls the \u201ccoach\u2019s ego\u201d\u2014the assumption that he already knew what a client\u2019s success should look like, and that he was the one who got to keep score.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what Coach Dom has to say:<\/p>\n I took that stated goal at face value, and treated whatever number they gave me as the measuring stick, as the most important thing to work towards.<\/p>\n But then, I\u2019d see a client struggling to do their actions even 50 percent of the time, and I\u2019d think: \u2018This person is never going to be happy, because this won\u2019t get them to the goal weight they told me they wanted.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Remember, I assumed the number was the real goal.<\/p>\n However, again and again, those same clients would turn out to be genuinely happy with their progress, not because they hit their exact goal, but because they felt so much better about themselves and their lives<\/strong>.<\/p>\n What I learned is that the stated outcome was almost never the true goal for many of them. When they said \u2018lose 50 pounds,\u2019 what they really meant was: I want to feel<\/em> better.<\/strong> And being consistent even half the time, over a year, netted results they were thrilled with. Because they felt better. They felt different.<\/em><\/p>\n So the thing I had to let go of was my own scorecard. Who am I to tell a client that what they\u2019re doing isn\u2019t good enough, if they\u2019re happy with how things are going?<\/strong><\/p>\n My new definition of progress became less about approaching a specific final number and more about another question: \u201cAm I a little better today than I was yesterday?\u201d<\/p>\n These days, I spend time up front helping a client build what we call a \u201cwellness vision.\u201d We clarify their values, and what success actually looks and feels<\/em> like to them.<\/p>\n Then, instead of assuming I<\/em> know how to measure their progress, I\u2019ll ask: \u201cHow will you know if this is helping? How do you<\/em> want to measure success?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n The result is that even a client who\u2019s fixated on the scale can see other signs of progress long before the scale actually changes. And often, those other signs are the things they really<\/em> wanted to change in the first place.<\/p>\n It turns out the most useful thing I can provide isn\u2019t a judgement about whether a client is succeeding. Instead, it\u2019s to help them determine and notice their own success, by their own measures.<\/p>\n The next lesson to unlearn comes from PN in-house coach and Level 2 Master Health Coaching Certification<\/a> instructor Jason Bonn, PN2-MHC, NBC-HWC.<\/p>\n With over 18 years of coaching experience, Coach Jason\u2019s clients describe him as patient, observant, and deeply dedicated. He has a knack for spotting a client\u2019s potential\u2014though as you\u2019ll read in this story, Coach Jason learned that getting too focused on a specific version of that potential sometimes kept him from seeing other ways his clients could grow and thrive.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what Coach Jason has to say:<\/p>\n For me, progress felt like a puzzle to solve: I\u2019d play with adjustments to exercise volume or intensity, calorie or protein intake, eating more slowly, eating to 80 percent fullness, all the fundamental stuff.<\/p>\n But then, because of one client I still think about, I began to shift how I thought about \u201cprogress.\u201d<\/p>\n He was in our PN coaching program<\/a>. He lost 40 to 50 pounds in his first six months\u2014which was great\u2014but then everything stalled.<\/strong><\/p>\n We tried adjustment after adjustment for the next two and a half years. We added more protein, more cardio, and worked through his particular peccadillo, eating corn chips at night. But none of it moved his numbers.<\/p>\n What got me was that he kept showing up anyway: three straight years, re-enrolling each time, even though the scale had plateaued.<\/strong><\/p>\n That told me something<\/em> was working for him\u2014it just wasn\u2019t something I recognized yet.<\/p>\n In his third year, we stopped looking only at the gym and his diet, and started looking at his whole life. He was a landscape painter, so we built his practices around that instead: make a sketch or work on a painting daily, anything that sparked some joy or interest. Within a couple of weeks, he was getting on his bike and riding out to further places for different scenery to paint.<\/p>\n In part because of this client, I\u2019m now a lot more cognizant of coaching the whole person, and considering their Deep Health<\/a>. Weight and performance numbers are just one piece of a much bigger picture that includes relationships, emotional wellbeing, and what someone finds meaningful.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve also stopped zeroing in on \u201cproblem\u201d behavior.<\/p>\nLesson to unlearn #1: Going into robot-detective mode before getting to know a client<\/h2>\n
\u201cI used to think being a coach meant I had all this information and I was just meant to spew it at someone.\u201d<\/h3>\n
Lesson to unlearn #2: Treating a health goal like a destination you arrive at<\/h2>\n
\u201cI used to think that a goal is a destination. You pick a timeline, you do all the things, you arrive, and then it all becomes effortless.\u201d<\/h3>\n
Lesson to unlearn #3: Applying more structure and discipline when clients aren\u2019t compliant<\/h2>\n
\u201cMost people don\u2019t need more discipline; they need more self-compassion.\u201d<\/h3>\n
Lesson to unlearn #4: Thinking I get to define a client\u2019s \u201cprogress\u201d<\/h2>\n
\u201cI used to think the client\u2019s ultimate goal was the one they named\u2014\u2019lose 50 pounds\u2019, \u2018lose 20 pounds.’\u201d<\/h3>\n
Lesson to unlearn #5: Focusing on client results instead of the whole person<\/h2>\n
\u201cI used to believe that if we kept tweaking exercise or nutrition, we\u2019d eventually find the combination that\u2019d get a stalled client moving.\u201d<\/h3>\n