One of the most common goals and resolutions that people set every year is to “get healthy”. This can be worded in many ways including “lose weight” or “exercise more”. How you word the goal doesn’t really matter, what does matter is the fact that we all know that our physical health is important. Exercise and eating right help us to be stronger, healthier, and feel better about ourselves. But, why is it sometimes we just can’t achieve those fitness goals even though we are using a personal trainer? What are we missing? Why is it “not working?”
We know the right things to do, but we still struggle to change things in other areas of our life that are needed in order to achieve our health and fitness goals.
Life coach to the rescue! Working with a life coach on your mental health in conjunction with a personal trainer on physical health creates the ultimate package.
A life coach can help you determine where your fitness goals fit into your life goals so that you are able to achieve both. This requires working on your mental health. Adding a life coach to your team to help you manage your mind can help you make your fitness goals part of the bigger goal of leading a purposeful, successful life and/or business. Good mental health is necessary for good physical health.
Why the personal trainer/life coach team is important
You can get in shape at home by yourself, so why do you need a personal trainer? There are a LOT of reasons. Your trainer will:
- talk to you about your current fitness situation and help you identify what your goals are and then how to reach them. You may know you want to look good before bathing suit season, but a trainer can help you determine what that actually means and create a plan to get there
- provide accountability to make sure you are sticking to your plan
- provide you with the support and motivation you need to get through the bumps in the road.
- show you the right way to do an exercise
- answer all of your questions like “Are my arms lined up correctly when doing my burpees?” or “What should I be feeling with this exercise?”
You can also read self-help books by yourself, so why would you need a life coach? A life coach helps do the same thing a personal trainer does for you but works in the areas of your life that require sound mental health. Your life coach will:
- help you examine your current life/work situation and determine what you would like your life to look like in the future. She will guide you in formulating your vision.
- help you gain clarity on the changes you need to make in order to make that vision a reality.
- help you determine the path you need to be on to achieve your vision.
- help you learn to recognize and track your successes.
- help you learn from failure to create better future outcomes.
- guide you to prioritize and schedule your day to allow time for all that creates the change you are looking for.
How a life coach fits into your health and wellness plan
Multiple studies have found that personal trainer clients that work with life coaches are more likely to stick with their fitness goals. If physical health is the only area you are focusing on you will eventually become out of balance and run into challenges that you don’t know how to face.
For example, think of what a busy day looks like. It could involve waking up early to get ready for work, lunches packed and the kids on the bus in time. Then, you race off to the office where you are surprised with a project you are unaware of. This causes you to work through lunch and stay a little longer at work than normal. When you leave you have to rush off to pick up the kids and get them to their practices. You spend the next several hours running around to make sure everyone is where they need to be. When you get home all you want to do is eat and crash. How do you make wise food decisions and get your workout in? That’s where a life coach can help.
Health is more than just physical wellness
Physical health and fitness are important, but they are only one piece of overall life wellness and success. Retired NBA player, Julius Erving (you might know him as Dr. J), once said, “The key to success is to keep growing in all areas of life – mental, emotional, spiritual, as well as physical.”
A life coach will help you take the work that your personal trainer is doing a step further into your life. It’s easy to make improvements in just one area of your life. You can pinpoint exactly what it is you want to improve and put all your focus on that one thing. But, what happens to the other areas of your life? It becomes easy to neglect them. When we laser focus on one thing, it’s hard to also take care of the things that are in our peripheral vision. That’s where utilizing a life coach can help you with your personal fitness goals along with the goals that you have in the other areas of life.
The principles that you learn with your life coach are easily applied to your fitness goals: time management, priorities, productivity tips, organization, vision, and goal setting.
Both personal trainers and life coaches assist you with your growth and development. When you combine the benefits of a personal trainer with that of a life coach you are on a path to life balance and success.
What else can a life coach do?
Life is already busy and only becoming more so. There are lots of things and people that are vying for your attention. Along with busyness, we have another epidemic happening all around—people are discontent with their life situations. We know that there is something greater out there. We know that there is a potential within us that is not being tapped into. When we begin to unlock what our desires, passions, and goals are in life our confidence and self-esteem increase and we find a true sense of joy in life. What is happiness? It only comes from managing your thoughts. A life coach is an essential part of learning just how to do that.
If you have trouble reaching your fitness goals, whether or are attending your workouts or not for whatever reason, let’s jump on a call and talk about it. I can offer you some help on getting there and beyond.
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