Strong Goals Lead to Strong Results!
You are ready to make the commitment towards achieving your personal workout goal, but where and how do you begin the process? The answer is simple! Hire a certified coach to work with you one-on-one to help you create custom fitness goals and recognize your success by measuring backwards.
Here are 5 benefits you will realize when working with a coach to create your customized fitness plans:
Stay Focused with A SuPeRSMART Goal
Collaborating with a coach to strategically develop a SuPeRSMART custom fitness goal will help you to remain focused throughout the coaching process. During your first one-on-one meeting with a coach, you will be asked to share why it is important for you to achieve your desired fitness goal. Additionally, a coach will verify your level of commitment towards accomplishing your fitness goal to ensure that you are ready and willing to make this a top priority in your life. Having these initial conversations with your coach is critical to not only build a trusting relationship, but it will also be advantageous while developing subgoals to your SuPeRSMART goal.
To keep you motivated and focused throughout your journey, a coach will help to breakdown your primary SuPeRSMART goal into subgoals. First, a coach will ask you several open-ended questions to help you brainstorm and identify subgoals. Below are a few examples of SuPeRSMART questions that a coach might ask you:
Self-Controllable: How in control are you with your short and long-term goals?
Public: In what ways could you share your goal and get support from your network?
Reward: What will the rewards be for reaching each of your short and long-term goals?
Specific: What actions do you need to take to achieve this goal?
Measurable: How can we measure your progress?
Adjustable: If something happens to prevent you from achieving this goal, then what will you do?
Realistic: What are your concerns with fitting these goals into your daily life?
Time Specific: When is this going to happen?
Once you have established and clearly defined your SuPerSMaRT subgoals, you are now ready to work with a coach who will support you through the good and challenging times of your fitness journey.
During your goal planning conversation, a coach will learn about your relationship with change and how you react and behave when things do not go as planned. Gathering this information will allow a coach to understand your personality and how to create an effective strategy that will enable you to overcome possible barriers in the future. Therefore, if or when you do encounter barriers that negatively impact your progress, you can remain focused on your fitness goals and not shift your attention to identifying a solution since you have a coach that already has a plan prepared for you.
Scheduling weekly check-ins with a coach will keep you accountable to stay focused on your action plans to ensure that you are making progress towards your SuPeRSMART goals. During each weekly coaching session, you will provide updates on the status of your action plan and how you are feeling about the progress you have made thus far. Additionally, a coach will provide you with feedback to increase your awareness of your behaviors and motivate you towards your desired change. By having one-on-one weekly meetings with a coach, you are more likely to be successful in achieving your daily action plan goals.
Celebrate Milestones with Realistic Subgoals
After you have identified your primary custom fitness goal (lose 20 pounds, build muscle, run a 10k, etc.), your next step is to develop daily and weekly realistic subgoals. You and a coach will breakdown your personal fitness goal into smaller pieces, called subgoals. This is an important step in the process of designing your action plan because it will allow you to track your progress throughout your journey while strengthening your confidence as you complete each subgoal. Co-creating your personal subgoals is beneficial in allowing a coach to clearly understand how to best support you through the successful and challenging times of your fitness journey.
When collaborating with a coach to create subgoals, it is important to make them realistic by verifying that they are challenging, but also attainable for you. Co-creating realistic subgoals with a coach is particularly important while reflecting upon your progress and focusing on your personal reason of how the subgoal relates to your fitness journey. Although subgoals can be challenging, it is beneficial to work with a coach who continuously supports you throughout your fitness journey while still holding you accountable to achieve every goal.
Co-creating realistic subgoals is a comprehensive process that enables a coach to effectively hold you accountable throughout your journey. You may be wondering why it is more suitable to invest in a coach instead of turning to a friend or family member to hold you accountable in achieving your fitness goals. You could ask a friend of family member, but if you really wanted to take this route, you would have already asked by now. Plus, it can be difficult to be completely open and transparent about your personal goals with someone you already know. On the other hand, working with a coach will allow you to have honest conversations and build a trusting relationship to clearly communicate each of your personal goals. Similar to a close friend or family member, a coach will hold you accountable by supporting you from the beginning to the end and everywhere in-between.
The ability to have easy access to a coach can play a large role in whether or not you will be successful in achieving your subgoals. For this reason, it is incredibly important to partner with a coach who will be accessible to you especially during times of uncertainty. Whether you are struggling with self-doubt or want to celebrate your success, a coach is just an email or phone call away. Knowing that you have continuous support from a coach through the good and challenging times of your journey will strengthen your confidence to reach your goals. Also, whenever life happens and adjustments need to be made to your action plans, you already know that you can rely on a coach to guide you through making those modifications.
A certified coach is trained and prepared to handle situations where adjustments need to be made to your specific action plans. Being honest and having open communication with a coach regarding your progress is critical. Discussing your true feelings and thoughts about your subgoals with a coach is what will make them realistic for you. Remember, a coach is there to continuously support you by not only co-creating your realistic subgoals, but also teaching you how to track your progress throughout your personal journey.
Track Progress Using A Custom Fitness Planner
Investing in a certified coach includes access to an online fitness planner that will allow you to track your progress daily. Online fitness planners are a convenient and easy way for you and a coach to maintain effective communication throughout the process of working towards your own custom fitness goals. By inputting all of your daily activities into one place, a coach can regularly analyze your progress and provide you with valuable feedback. Lastly, using a personal fitness planner daily is an excellent tool to hold you accountable while also keeping your information organized to display a clear representation of your accomplishments throughout your journey.
To accurately track your progress, you need to closely pay attention to a few key elements during your fitness journey. For example, while using an online fitness tracker, you will indicate the amount of weight you used, the number of repetitions and sets you did, the length of your rest periods, and the level of difficulty for each workout. A coach can easily access your fitness planner to gain a deeper understanding of your overall progress and where to make proper adjustments to your action plans. Additionally, a fitness planner is a great way to communicate with a coach outside of your weekly one-on-one coaching sessions.
Your interaction with a coach is made simple and convenient through the daily use of a fitness planner. Tracking your progress and asking your specific questions to a coach will positively contribute to the overall success of accomplishing your fitness goals. As a coach receives and reviews your questions, being able to have access to your personal fitness planner will give a coach confidence in tailoring answers towards your specific needs. Accessibility and open lines of communication with a coach will not only keep you motivated, but it will also strengthen your level of confidence.
Tracking your daily goals while using a fitness planner will not only help to advance you forward, but it will also illustrate how much progress you have already made. Instead of focusing on how much farther you still have to go to reach your fitness goal, a certified coach can encourage you to reframe your thinking to focus on how far you have come from when you first started. Once you make that mind shift to focus on what you have already achieved, your self-confidence will improve immensely. As a result, the personal fitness planner is an incredible versatile tool that can be used to clearly illustrate your progress when looking forward and back.
Gain Knowledge & Skills with Custom Fitness Goals
There are several factors that you should consider before choosing to work with a credible coach. First, I highly recommend that you find a coach that has received formal educational training to ensure that you receive credible information. Two acceptable forms of education are a relevant Bachelor/Master’s degree or certifications through accredited organizations. Secondly, I strongly encourage you to work with a coach who will be accessible to you throughout your journey. A coach who is committed to making the time to focus on your personal fitness goals and answer your questions will not only help you now, but it will also benefit you in the future.
If you find a coach who tries to sell you a program with a one-year minimum requirement, please be thorough in conducting your research on both the coach and program. Certified coaches are passionate about sharing their expertise and enjoy teaching skills that will make a positive impact on your short and long-term custom fitness goals. Ultimately, it is in your best interest to invest in a certified coach who makes it a priority to share credible resources and knowledge with you on a regular basis.
Weekly one-on-one check-ins with a coach is one of the ways in which you can obtain valuable knowledge and skills. An established coach will offer you unlimited access to a database that includes resources such as; workout guides, healthy recipe ideas, video demonstrations, blogs, etc. Whether you feel confused about proper form for a particular exercise, need inspiration to change-up your workout routine, or are looking for a new tasty recipe to try, you can log in to this database to find the answers for free. Additionally, with access to a database, you will be provided the appropriate education needed to navigate through false, inaccurate, nonscience-based information that is sadly polluting the internet. Taking advantage of the free resources that are available in a database to help you learn and develop new skills will help you to feel more comfortable being uncomfortable.
When it comes to making a life change, one of the most dangerous places for you to stay is within your own comfort zone. Comfort zones are not easy to break out of and can have a negative impact on your progress in reaching your fitness goals. Fortunately, a certified coach is trained on how to aid clients in creating individualized action plans that include accessible resources and skill development. A top priority for a coach while working with a client to make a life change is to share credible knowledge that aligns directly with your personal goals. Although stepping outside of your comfort zone can be difficult and scary, partnering with a coach who is trained to guide you through the process while celebrating your accomplishments, will be one of the most rewarding experiences of your life.
Develop Consistency Long-Term with Custom Fitness Goals
During the process of designing action plans associated with each of your subgoals, a coach carefully considers how sustainable each plan is for you in the short and long-term. Instead of rolling the dice on a random plan that you quickly found on the internet, you should work with a coach who will help you to find what will work best for you now and in the future. A certified coach will gather information from you by asking a series of open-ended questions to determine your level of commitment and confidence. Your unique answers will provide a coach with a deeper understanding of how to effectively partner with you to create an action plan that will enable you to make a permanent healthier lifestyle change.
Although you and your coach create customized action plans together, there are times when you must be patient and trust the process. When it comes to making a long-term healthy lifestyle change, there is no such thing as a quick fix or instant gratification. Your ability to demonstrate patience while working through your action plan will enhance your ability to sustain consistency in the future. During the times when you feel impatient, you can depend on a coach to give you encouragement and remind you of the purpose behind each of your fitness goals. Nonetheless, a coach will always be there for you, especially during the times of uncertainty.
A coach will have you try new things to see if it something that you truly like. This trial and error approach requires you to be patient throughout the process since you might love one thing, but strongly dislike another. Discovering activities that you actually enjoy will increase the likelihood of you continuing the action in the future. Lastly, a credible coach will encourage you to keep an open mind as you explore new activities and understand the connection between consistency and long-term success.
Unfortunately, there are many fitness programs that are for sale on the internet that use false claims as a marketing strategy to attract/trick people into purchasing their products. Even though losing 20 pounds in one month guaranteed sounds like a great plan to try, please keep in mind that these programs are NOT tailored towards achieving your personal fitness goals and are focused on the broad population of people. On the other hand, investing in a certified coach will enable you to build customized action plans that are directly correlated to your custom fitness goals that will lead to consistent long-term results rather than quick temporary solutions.
As stated above, there are many benefits that validate the reasons of why it is worth the investment of hiring a certified coach to assist you in developing your personal fitness goals and action plans. Everyone has to start somewhere, and partnering with a certified coach is the best way for you to begin your lifelong fitness journey.