What YOU Deserve From Your Coach
Being a health and fitness coach is not easy. It requires a functioning knowledge of Cardiology, Biomechanics, Biochemistry (Nutrition), Hormone Response and even Psychology. No fitness certification or even single task focused degree alone can supply the wealth of knowledge required to cover it all. A good coach, with your best interest at heart, will have surrounded themselves with available mentors in all these fields and will continue to study all of these disciplines throughout their time working to better other human beings.
When you walk in the doors to a fitness facility, step out of your car at a park, or invite a trainer into your home, with the expectation to walk away being a better version of yourself then you were before, you should get just that. Your coach should already have established reasonable, responsible goals with you, and have a calculated plan they plan to supervise to get you there.
There are three basics to the physical that every coach should start with; postural strength, mobility and neuromuscular control/movement efficiency. There are also basics to the behavioral; nutrition, sleep and time management. This is all to establish health and correct/prevent injury. Even training as an athlete, there is a very small calculated risk for injury, and in the interest of generating health, there should be extremely limited tolerance. A good example, your coach should always ask how you are feeling whenever you first meet, and be capable of adjusting accordingly if you were to respond with “I haven’t slept well for the past two days.” If you are unable to get into an uncompromised position because of either lack of postural strength or mobility, the movement either should be decreased in difficulty or the mobility worked to correct the error.
You and your coach should always look to challenge your current abilities to make you better, but the whole point of having a coach is to have an educated supervisor to insure you do it without risk to your well being. Your body was meant to run, jump, swim, carry a load, move objects, etc, but with today’s modern sedentary lifestyle, in most cases we have to be taught how to do these things again. If you are paying for a coach/trainer, and they are complacent, don’t adhere to your current abilities, and are just making you sweat to take your money, you are not getting what you deserve.
We as coaches are here to make you the perfect balance between your primitive athletic self and the intelligent evolved homo sapien you are today. We are also here to make you happy, or why else would we choose a profession based solely on bettering other people. You deserve someone who will not allow you to routinely compromise with movement and will gradually guide you to sustainable healthy living practices. If that is not what you are receiving, then you should question what you are receiving, and if you are with the right coach. Not only do you need to consider if you are getting what you are paying for, but more importantly, you need to consider if you are being supervised in the direction of creating better overall health with a near zero tolerance for allowance of injury.
We should be here to bring you to your goals and build you up to new ones. We should not be here to simply see you as a source of revenue with minimal effort and supervision. You deserve to have your better interest be our best interest.
-Coach Dale
