The majority of life is based on habits. People eat the same breakfast every Monday morning. They take the same fitness class every Wednesday afternoon. They drink the same milkshake every Friday night. As humans, people are inclined to develop habits. People thrive on them. But sometimes these habits can be detrimental to one’s health.
Habit Coaching is a tool to help clients create and maintain healthy habits. By establishing targeted goals and consistent check-ins, you can guide clients toward a new routine that will benefit their overall health.
As you consider adding habit coaching to your business, it’s important to understand:
1. What is Holistic Coaching?
2. How Does Habit Coaching Work?
3. Why is Habit Coaching So Effective?
4. How Does Someone Become a Habit Coach?
1. What is Holistic Coaching?
Holistic Coaching is a style of coaching that looks at a client’s entire condition: mind, body, and spirit. In contrast to traditional physical training, Holistic Coaching cultivates personal development and helps clients assess growth potential.
Habit Coaching is a subset of Holistic Coaching that focuses on setting goals and crafting routines for clients to follow. The most central component of Habit Coaching is accountability. Coaches are responsible for outlining progress benchmarks and monitoring client adherence. When properly implemented, Habit Coaching can generate lasting change within clients and result in major success stories.
2. How Does Habit Coaching Work?
Habit Coaching is a science-based, effective method of helping clients commit to bettering themselves and achieving their health goals. There are three core principles of Habit Coaching:
1. Discover
2. Reward
3. Repeat
Discover
Humans have an innate desire for comfort, safety, and pleasure. That’s why people often fall into bad habits such as eating too much or exercising too little; they prioritize immediate comfort over long-term health. Habit coaching helps to disrupt this pattern by first addressing the desire behind a habit. For example, if a client wants to start stretching more, a coach would explore this goal further and help the client discover that perhaps they want to stretch more because, deep down, the client wants to feel safer in their body as they age. When a Habit Coach can get a client to discover the root of their goal, that client is much more likely to achieve the goal.
Reward
Habits, good or bad, persist based on expected reward. If someone knows that eating chips is satisfying, they’ll continue to eat chips. Similarly, if someone finds that running gives them an addictive endorphin high, they’ll keep running. People chase after rewards. Thus, the goal of Habit Coaching is to create rewards for healthy behavior. These rewards will often come in form of praise from a coach or internal satisfaction when a client marks a task as complete. Either way, Habit Coaching develops a new set of rewards that encourage clients to achieve their goals and remain consistent.
Repeat
Habit Coaching reinforces healthy behavior by repeated interaction. Coaches check in with clients on a daily (or weekly) basis and provide immediate feedback on performance. This regularity helps clients develop a rhythm and conditions clients to seek the reward of their coach’s approval – helping to develop a habit. As this process continues day in and day out, habits gradually become more and more subconscious until they are fully engrained in a client’s lifestyle and the Habit Coaching can be considered complete.
3. Why is Habit Coaching So Effective?
Habit coaching has become vastly popular in the fitness community – and for good reason. Habit coaching is a systematic way of keeping clients accountable and helping them reach their goals. No more guesswork. No more assumptions. With Habit Coaching, coaches can actually see (and comment on) a client’s daily routine. This is exactly what makes Habit Coaching so effective: clients can receive personalized input on their entire lifestyle. And everyone knows that lifestyle is the most important factor when it comes to reaching goals.
So, should you invest in Habit Coaching? The answer is most likely yes. Habit Coaching can add a new dimension to your business and make you an even more successful coach. Clients will appreciate the opportunity to set clearer goals and accelerate their progress. And you’ll have the satisfaction of helping clients take actionable steps towards a healthier life.
4. How Does Someone Become a Habit Coach?
Personal trainers, nutritionists, and any other fitness/wellness professionals can become Habit Coaches. When coaching, a trainer may want to tailor their services towards a specific category (such as exercise habits, mindfulness habits, nutrition habits, etc.) or keep things broad-based and allow any client to approach the program with their own goals in mind. Habit Coaching can be a standalone business or it can be combined with existing training programs to create a more robust set of offerings.
Ready to Start Habit Coaching?
Now is the time to help your clients achieve their biggest goals! To learn more about Everfit’s Habit Coaching capabilities, head to All the Ways Everfit Can Help You Start Habit Coaching.
