Mar 8, 2022
Choosing a coach can be daunting, but we can help guide you with
what to look for and avoid when you're choosing a coach (and how to
evaluate a coach once you're being coached).
Andrew provides some helpful frameworks that may be more familiar
to listeners: hiring an employee or choosing a contractor or
company.
We're essentially outsourcing a part of our life to someone who
should be able to help us move toward our goals. Whether we don't
have the time, bandwidth, expertise, or detachment to coach and
program for ourselves, a coach can enhance our physical
fitness.
A coach's values and experience matter here. People can spout
platitudes, but a person's track record is a better predictor of
future behavior. Do your values align with the coaches? What
athletic experience does the coach have? What types of people does
the coach work with, and toward what goals? Does the coach have
high turnover or churn?
You may have the ability to do an interview with the coach. If not,
you may consider the initial bit of coaching a trial run (and,
let's be honest, even if you're all-in on a coach or coaching
system, it's probably because you've learned about that system or
coach over time, through social media, a podcast, or something like
that).
Some red flags include:
-high churn (not keeping clients for long periods of time)
-inflexibility or rigidity (my way or the highway)
-not asking about circumstances or situations (e.g. how much time
do you have to train, what are your goals?)
It's important to listen to your intuition here. You're inevitably
being vulnerable to come to a coach, so you should build trust with
the coach over time. The coach should not betray that trust. That
coach will need to push you into discomfort, but ignoring your
feedback, fears, or current abilities is a bad sign.
What should you look for in a coach? Pretty much the reverse of the
red flags. A good coach should have a track record of success and
longevity with clients and should have principles and beliefs but
apply them to a client's circumstances.
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