WHAT IS A WELLNESS COACH?

The overlapping terms fitness, wellness, and well-being are often confused within the fitness industry and the public. Wellness can be defined as “an individual’s personal journey toward the mental, physical, social, and emotional betterment of life.”

Translation: it’s not only someone’s healthy behaviors or habits, but the process of making ongoing choices which in turn make that person’s life better, healthier, more connected, and emotionally satisfying.

A wellness coach’s job is to support an individual in the process of making those choices; not only telling someone what to do but helping that person examine their relationship with the choices themselves. That coaching role is unique among health, fitness, and wellness professionals.


In the case of wellness, the coach creates a safe environment for a client to examine not only their habits but also their relationship to the domains of their lifestyle that affect their wellness.

These include established fitness domains such as nutrition, sleep, movement, and recovery practices as well as emotional health, stress management, psychological recovery, mindset, and more. Wellness coaches help clients to establish subjective and objective goals related to their wellness and then explore the obstacles and areas of challenge on the pathway to those goals.

Wellness coaching is unique in the fitness and wellness space because the client isn’t told what to do but given information and empowered to examine their choices and make their own decisions on how to move forward.

Coaches typically meet with their clients for either one-on-one or small group sessions. During their sessions, they support clients with a variety of tools to examine not only their behavior but their mental and emotional reactions to that behavior.

Together coach and client create action plans, brainstorm solutions, and troubleshoot potential obstacles to the clients’ long-term success. Though the coach is supportive and provides information the onus is on the client to decide what works for them.

Coaches are not therapists and therefore do not diagnose or treat mental or physical disease or dysfunction. However, sub-clinical challenges are likely to come up.

Certified coaches are trained in how to support the client through examining their emotional or behavioral challenges and can teach clients related mental and emotional skills. These problem-solving skills don’t only help the client to reach their current goals but are ongoing tools that propel clients forward long after the current session.

These skills might include in-the-moment reframing of internal dialogue and self-talk, how to break down goals, examine and understand emotional reactions to behavior, dealing with shame, focusing on strength, or finding motivation when

Change can be hard. According to the Boston Medical Center, an estimated 45 million Americans go on a diet each year and Americans spend $33 million annually on diet products yet nearly two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. Similarly, the CDC reports that in 2015 68% of smokers said they wanted to quit and in 2018 55% of smokers attempted to quit but only 7.5% were successful.

The CDC also reports that only 1 in 4 American adults gets the recommended amount of physical activity and 31 million Americans over 50 are sedentary, costing $117 billion annually in elevated health care costs. People often know what to do, but struggle with how to fit healthful behaviors into their lives in lasting and positive ways.

Over the last few decades, research has evolved techniques for how to positively support change. Coaching allows for a neutral party in one’s life to provide evidence-based information, reflect on current behavior, and brainstorm possible solutions.

They do so with unconditional positive regard, the judgment-free position of supporting their client to make lasting changes that work for them. Wellness coaches are trained not only in coaching but have information on lifestyle practices related to wellness. This is a unique combination of physiological understanding with psychological tools that support the betterment of one’s life.

This unique combination of tools also allows a coach to support the client in priming compounding positive change.

Leveraging phenomena such as the transfer effect, where a positive change in one area of life creates positive change in another, or upward spirals, where the emotional boost from meaningful changes creates the opportunity for more difficult changes to occur. By understanding how these mechanisms work and how to spark a wellness coach supports their client not only in the immediate future but in building lasting changes which create the opportunity for a transformative lifestyle change.