[Christina]

Margie,

I am nearly through my Wellcoaches program and I am amazed at what I have learned! For those who do not know what fitness coaching is I will explain from my organization's perspective. Coaching is a system of accountability. Your main job as a fitness coach is to find out what motivates your clients and help them overcome the obstacles that stand in their way. The client does most of the talking; you're a guide. Your client creates a fitness vision and together you determine a series of goals that will help them inch closer to success. When they stumble (which is inevitable since we are human) the fitness coach gets them right back on track. I don't know about other coaching programs, but Wellcoaches uses the Transtheoretical Model to determine which stage of readiness to change the client is currently in. The huge benefit of coaching (at least for me) is that it shifts the responsibility of achieving success away from the personal trainer to the client. The client comes up with the goals they want to achieve. THEY own those goals, not YOU.

Now a few questions...
Do most coaching organizations work the same way? Would I benefit from looking into another organization sometime down the road?

Thanks for the insight! I am all over this stuff.

Christina

[megfit]

Hi Christina,

Oh my; what a wonderful question. And I WILL try to not turn this into a book...

As you can tell, your own entire perspective has totally changed as a result of the training, huh? When I completed my FIRST coaching school, I was amazed at the results my clients were seeing. In school, long before coaching school, I was trained, very thoroughly, to be the 'expert'. However, what we forget is we may be experts, but we are NOT experts of other people. THEY are experts in them!

I highly recommend coach training for anyone in a health/fitness field.

First, most coaching schools (of any credibility, and more on that, below) do follow a roughly similar method. There are some great resources for anyone who would like to immerse themselves into the coaching world. Just one example would be to join Coachville (http://www.coachville.com). They have communities, and wellness is one. I haven't been on there in a LONG time, but membership used to be free. There's also a listserv of new and experienced coaches, and also a community for all coaches from everywhere. If people want other resources than the Coachville one, just contact me.

Now, to answer your last question, you want to determine what YOUR goals are with coaching. If it's to improve your wellness coaching services, one thing you can do is go all the way through certification with Wellcoaches (all schools offer their own certification program, which, as you've probably learned, Christina, is an extra cost and education). If that's the case, then just getting involved with such organizations as ICF (more below) and going to various workshops, etc, and to their international conference, etc, might be plenty. The key, as you know, is to always challenge yourself to continue to improve your skills. Again, I know of an excellent program that is just participants meeting once a week to practice and improve their coaching skills. I never have the time to re-join myself, but when I'm done with school, they know they'll see me back.

However, if you want to progress to the 'ultimate' in life coaching, then ICF certification is the way to go. ICF is the International Coach Federation. They are the gold standard for professional life coaches around the world.

Now, I'll stop here for a moment to point something out. I have noticed various 'new' coaching schools pop up and most of them always mention that ICF accreditation is NOT necessary. Well, they're right, but isn't it interesting that they have to mention that to justify their existence? And, when a company says 'oh, we don't need that' in their marketing, it should send out a red flag. There are MANY new coaching schools popping up, offering wellness coaching because they see the $$$$$$$$$$ in it! Anyone can open a coaching school, just like anyone can open a personal training business. It's buyer beware and do your homework. Determine what your goals are. If it's just more skills to help your clients, then no problem; go with what feels right. But if your goal is to expand into the industry of professional coaching, then it's important to know what you're getting for your time and money.

So, if a person has decided that they might like to expand BEYOND just the wellness aspect of a person's life, then a school that focuses on 'life' coaching (as opposed to 'wellness' coaching), or wants to focus on perhaps some other type of coaching (business, writing, speaking, finances, there is no end), then a full experience of coach education may be in order.

I'll share my experience, here, now: Back in 2003, I realized I wanted to get involved in coaching, but although my personal training and nutrition practice was going strong, I wasn't sure that's ALL I wanted to provide. So, I did do my homework and learned about ICF. When I made the decision to get into personal training, I also did my homework and made my decision on which organizations to certify through, based on my goals and what each organization could provide in my growth. I did the same thing with coaching.

Although Wellcoaches is one of the TOP wellness coaching (out of two, honestly - the other is Intrinsic Coaching -http://www.totallycoached.com) organizations, I realized I wanted ICF certification as my ultimate goal. I'm not sure if WellCoaches is ICF-accredited, yet, but back then they weren't. So I continued to look. I did take two other programs along the way, considering the portfolio route to ICF certification. I researched and researched other schools and although CoachU (an ICF-accredited school) had a great reputation, something continued to lead me to hesitate.

But I also read an incredible book that I would recommend to EVERYONE, Co-Active Coaching, by Whitworth, et al, back in ~2004. What I did not realize, until literally last year, was that this book is the basis for what is taught at CTI (Coach Training Institute) another ICF-accredited school with a great reputation. As soon as I realized that, I signed up and completed that training last fall. Now I don't have to go the portfolio route and am working towards my PCC certification through ICF. I qualify for the lowest level, which is ACC, but until I'm out of school, I'll continue to add my hours for the second level. I should mention that ICF certification is based on hours of qualified education and number of hours of paid coaching services from clients. You have to keep very detailed records, so that if the committee wants to check on your previous clients, they can contact them. Very early on, I started logging my hours.

So, Christina, my suggestion to you is, when you're all done with WellCoaches and start reflecting on what's next, to help decide, definitely spend some time on ICF's site, http://www.coachfederation.org/ICF/ to investigate the different schools to see if that's indeed the next step. WellCoaches is VERY affordable, comparatively. So, this won't be a decision you take lightly. But it's also not anything you have to rush into, either.

Margie

[rbd]

Christina,

I thought you brought up some great points about what is wrong with most personal trainers and our industry - we are coahces and that is the way we should have always been approaching our clients, but most do not.

Clients should always own their goals - they are theres and not ours and it is their responsibility, not ours to make the changes to achieve their goals. We are not babysittter and to many trainers are and just there to count reps for them.

I think the problem is that this info seems to be new to most trainers, when to be honest this is exactly how we should be handling our clients. I don't know about these various coaching programs and credibility, but we learned the TTM back in undergrad back in the mid-late 90's. Im not knocking the organization or what you have learned, but just pointing out that this is where we are failing in the fitness industry and not sure why this info should be new for trainers. If this is helping you, then good for you for contninuing our education, but can't comment on just how good or reliable these wellness coaching or coaching organizations. This (coaching) seems to be the new buzzword, when coaching has been around for ever, but for some reason we have not been utilizing the conepts in personal training - never understood that. Maybe you bringing up this info will start to get some of the trainers on this site to rethink the way they approach personal training.

[Christina]

Hi Margie,

Thanks so much for the lengthy reply! So I guess that ICF is more life coaching? Do I have it right?

Currently I am going through the Fitness Coaching certification and after that I am looking at the Wellcoaching Certification. (I know it probably sounds confusing to people who don't know what I'm talking about.) I don't know if you know this, but Wellcoaches is now endorsed by ACSM. Personally, I think ACSM should make the fitness coaching certification part of their CPT and HFI certification requirements.

Several years ago I wanted to pursue a PhD in social psychology but I lost interest when I started getting into personal training. I have found that my interest in psychology is starting to resurface since studying for my coaching certification. Who knows... maybe sport psychology is calling my name! There was a guy who joined our LinkedIn group last week who has a PhD in performance psychology with an emphasis in exercise physiology. Very cool.

I'll keep you posted as I progress through the Wellcoaches program.

Christina

[Christina]

Hi Jeff,

You are right on in my opinion. The Transtheoretical Model is nothing new but no one ever really talks about it or applies it. Neither one of my certifying organizations got into it too deeply. The ACSM probably more so than the NSCA. (The ACSM went way more into psychology than NSCA.) I think this is one of a few major areas where pt certifications fall WAY short.

Christina