Coaching Metrics: How to Know When You’re Making an Impact

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Coaching Metrics: How to Know When You’re Making an Impact

For many new clients, weight loss is a primary goal. A number on the scale, however, is only a glimpse of what’s shifting in your client’s body (and mind) and offers limited information to inform his or her progress. This article explores alternative metrics that you, as a health and exercise professional, can use to assess your clients on their behavior-change journey.

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Creating a Safe Space for Behavior Change

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Creating a Safe Space for Behavior Change

To foster healthy, sustainable change, it’s not enough to simply offer nutritional education or exercise programming. Rather, clients need to feel safe discussing and dismantling their fears around changing their eating, movement and other lifestyle habits. This article explores the challenges many clients face when addressing their health behaviors and offers strategies health coaches and exercise professionals can use to navigate them.

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Coaching Metrics: How to Know When You’re Making an Impact

| by
Coaching Metrics: How to Know When You’re Making an Impact

For many new clients, weight loss is a primary goal. A number on the scale, however, is only a glimpse of what’s shifting in your client’s body (and mind) and offers limited information to inform his or her progress. This article explores alternative metrics that you, as a health and exercise professional, can use to assess your clients on their behavior-change journey.

Read More

Creating a Safe Space for Behavior Change

| by
Creating a Safe Space for Behavior Change

To foster healthy, sustainable change, it’s not enough to simply offer nutritional education or exercise programming. Rather, clients need to feel safe discussing and dismantling their fears around changing their eating, movement and other lifestyle habits. This article explores the challenges many clients face when addressing their health behaviors and offers strategies health coaches and exercise professionals can use to navigate them.

Read More

Spinal Stability: To Brace or Not to Brace?

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Spinal Stability: To Brace or Not to Brace?

Abdominal bracing cues like “Stomach tight!” and “Squeeze your core!” tend to encourage an abdominal bracing strategy in which individuals produce large amounts of muscular force to stabilize the spine. When used too often or in the wrong context, however, this strategy becomes problematic. This article explores the effectiveness of core bracing cues and offers alternatives for achieving spinal stability during movement.

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Core Training: Don’t Forget the Diaphragm

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Core Training: Don’t Forget the Diaphragm

Core stability—and the muscles and methods to achieve it—are hot topics in the health and fitness industry. We program corrective exercises designed to facilitate the transverse abdominis or activate the spinal erectors, but pay little attention to the dome-shaped muscle between them. If you want to help your clients develop core stability that comes from the inside out, it’s time to turn your attention to the diaphragm.

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Spinal Stability: To Brace or Not to Brace?

| by
Spinal Stability: To Brace or Not to Brace?

Abdominal bracing cues like “Stomach tight!” and “Squeeze your core!” tend to encourage an abdominal bracing strategy in which individuals produce large amounts of muscular force to stabilize the spine. When used too often or in the wrong context, however, this strategy becomes problematic. This article explores the effectiveness of core bracing cues and offers alternatives for achieving spinal stability during movement and sport

Read More

Core Training: Don’t Forget the Diaphragm

| by
Core Training: Don’t Forget the Diaphragm

Core stability—and the muscles and methods to achieve it—are hot topics in the health and fitness industry. We program corrective exercises designed to facilitate the transverse abdominis or activate the spinal erectors, but pay little attention to the dome-shaped muscle between them. If you want to help your clients develop core stability that comes from the inside out, it’s time to turn your attention to the diaphragm.

Read More

Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

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Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

Your clients and participants look to you to be the fitness expert, but do you ever feel more like a fitness fraud? Imposter syndrome is especially common among newly certified health and exercise professionals, but even those with years of experience are not immune. This article explores these uncomfortable feelings and highlights the strategies other health and exercise professionals have used to overcome them.

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Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

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Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

Your clients and participants look to you to be the fitness expert, but do you ever feel more like a fitness fraud? Imposter syndrome is especially common among newly certified health and exercise professionals, but even those with years of experience are not immune. This article explores these uncomfortable feelings and highlights the strategies other health and exercise professionals have used to overcome them.

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Cueing for Safety vs. Self-efficacy

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Cueing for Safety vs. Self-efficacy

As a health and fitness pro, one of your most important jobs is keeping your participants safe and helping them develop proper exercise form. However, when offering safety and form cues, you could be inadvertently worsening participants’ confidence in their ability to perform the exercises. Rather than ignore potentially unsafe situations, use the following strategies to improve participants’ perceptions of their own abilities, while also providing them with safe and effective workouts.

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How to Personalize the Group Fitness Experience for Your Participants

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How to Personalize the Group Fitness Experience for Your Participants

All participants come to your class looking for a great workout, but they also arrive with unique goals, preferences, limitations and fitness levels. Faced with such diversity, it can be difficult to create a class that is safe, motivating and challenging for every individual. Learn the keys to creating a health-enhancing experience by looking beyond the masses and personalizing your clients’ group fitness experience.

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7 Keys to Long-term Weight-loss Maintenance

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7 Keys to Long-term Weight-loss Maintenance

Losing weight isn’t easy, but keeping the weight off often proves even more challenging for most people. Fortunately, researchers have uncovered some of the traits and long-term strategies that can help increase your chances of successfully keeping the weight off. Here are seven keys to achieving and maintaining a healthy weight over the long term.

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