Why is coaching better than instruction?

I started personal training 12 years ago now, I created theses fancy training plans and nutrition plans with all the marco nutrients and the micro-nutrients and recipes and reasons and stuff. 

It was awesome. Fancy. 

Follow this, get great results. The end. 

and they did. 

Some for 19 days, some for 21, some even 28. 

After that people started to drop off, revert back to previous habits. Almost none would continue with the same habits, not even those they found easy. 

After a while that starts to mess with your head. 

What's wrong with these people? 

No will power,

Don't want it enough,

Self sabotage,

Clearly this isn't as important as they say it is. 

After a few years of this, chatting to other personal trainers you get this weird sort of othering affect. 

"Those guys aren't like us, clients, they are weak".

Othering is caused by fear or lack of understanding of another 'group'. 

It's also a sure sign that you have lost your way somewhere. Humans are humans. 

Let me tell you if there is a 'group' of people that doesn't have all their ducks in a row when it come to health you don't have to look much further than personal trainers. 

So I started to look for a different approach, one where people made the changes they wanted make rather than the ones that we were told to. 

I noticed that when people tried to lose weight they tended to use the same method and have the same failure point every time. 

Like doing a google search in their brain and using the same key phrase to find what they were after. 

Like the Einstein quote: 

"You cannot fix a problem using the same thinking that caused it." 

This is how we all try to solve problems, we input the search question into our brains and that key phrase searches our memory and produces the same answer. 

If we look at great innovations like the iPhone they tend to come from someone who is coming to the field from a different route to the norm. 

It isn't that the search terms generate different results. They are using different search terms completely. 

They are asking better questions. 

I have had a lot of clients over the years and not one of them eats the same way, has the same life, exercise the same way or attaches the same meaning to things. 

They innovated their own way.

It's hard to slip from your own innovation. 

We spend a lot of time reading books and searching for formulas that suit us but in most cases they aren't out there. 

The best formula for us comes from using our own memories and skills and way of seeing the world to produce something that evolves for us and with us. 

and the only way to do this is to ask different questions, better questions and create new definitions where your current ones are leaving you stuck. 

You can absolutely do this on your own. 

Coaching is a luxury. 

Luxury meaning more fun and more effective. 

But for now. 

The first step to getting unstuck could be as simple as asking a different question. 

Ed Ley