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Originally posted on Hello Healthy, the MyFitnessPal blog Did you know: gyms are at their highest capacity in March, not January? Why? Because, no matter how ambitious we get with our New Year’s resolutions, it takes the weather getting warm and the thought of wearing that bikini or a pair of...
Your new, overweight, sedentary client wants to run a marathon. “I’ve already signed up! It’s 6 months away so I’m really motivated!” Some time in the next 6 months your client is going to fail, but that doesn’t mean you can’t prevent a massacre that might turn her away from a healthy lifestyle...
Originally posted on Hello Healthy, the MyFitnessPal blog You’re home on a Saturday. You’re hungry. Your kids are hungry. So you go to the pantry to make a healthy snack and the only thing you have is a box of stale Lucky Charms and soon-to-expire milk. It takes a series of less-than-stellar...
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. People often intend to partake in physical activity. Yet, just as often, they find themselves frustrated at their failure to act on these intentions. Why is it that people remain inactive despite forming intentions to be active? A study by Conroy et...
One of the most powerful words when people are talking about motivation is the word, “should.” “Should” usually means “if I don’t I’ll feel guilty” and is a hallmark in Self-Determination Theory research of what is referred to as introjected motivation. Introjected motivation is internal, but...
By Josh Hillis Josh Hillis has been at the forefront of habit-based coaching for years. In this article, Josh does an excellent job of articulating “identity-based goals” which promote internal motivation (“I am doing this because it is who I am”) versus external motivation (“I am doing that so...
<blockquoteMe: What would you do with a client who was so untrained, that they couldn't do anything? Like not even a movement yet?Dan John: I’d teach them to plank. Me: Ok, but what would you do for the other 59 minutes in the session? </blockquote I started coaching 6 years ago and in that time I...
When our clients come to us, many of us are quick to ask, “what are your goals?” It’s one of the first questions we learn to ask as fitness professionals. But the obvious follow up question to, “what are you goals” is often left out of our education: “Why?” Why do you want that? Why are you here?...
There is a small revolt going on in the world of willpower research. Baumeister’s dominant “resource-limited” or “strength-model” of willpower has come under some hard meta-analysis in the past 4 years. Chief among them is Robinson, Schmeichel, & Inzlicht (2010) meta-analysis of neuroscience...
[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="704.0"] 789[/caption] In the early 1990s, Professor William R Miller, Ph.D. and Professor Stephen Rollnick, Ph.D. developed a simplified form of counseling that could be taught to professionals in health care, social work, and many other fields where...
<blockquoteA young woman came to me at the gym one March for her free assessment. She wasn't overweight, but she was by no means fit. She'd never trained before and her movement assessment showed it. She was a blank canvas, starting from scratch. "I'm a strength coach. If you train with me, I can...
There was an appropriately large hullabaloo this week when CrossFitHQ decided they were not going to let Chloie Jonsson compete in the CrossFit Games Open as the woman she is and she responded to their rationale with a $2.5mil lawsuit. Instead of weighing in on the argument about the legality of...
When I do workshops on habit-formation, people react to the information in a number of ways that I’ve gotten used to seeing. One type of reaction (that I see a lot with fitness buffs) is what I call the, “Tim Ferriss Reaction,” aka “how do I hack this?” These people love the system for fostering...
By Dan John I don’t know how I’ve made it this many issues without posting a link to an article by Dan. In this article for Men’s Health, Dan discusses the very heart of what habit-based training takes: other people. All the science from Self-Determination Theory, to Willpower, to Habits points in...
As mentioned in the Research Review this month, I have long used choice in my coaching relationships as a way to foster autonomy in my clients. This can be scary for many new coaches who think that their value comes from programming their clients’ every moment, but as we saw in Wulf, Freitas, and...
David Dellanave has a radical answer. It’s not The Answer, he qualifies, but it’s certainly the best answer he knows for helping people improve their general strength. “I’ve done my job if I’ve gotten that person to lead themselves.” Mr. Dellanave’s answer might even ruffle a few strength-coaching...
One of the most interesting thing about a lot of habit-based interventions is that many don't do wildy better than other interventions in randomized control trials. They seem to do the same or maybe a tiny bet better. 12 weeks, however (the usual length of time for a nutrition or physical activity...
<blockquoteAn expert is a [person] who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field. </blockquote - Niels
<blockquoteWe learn from each other and grow together. </blockquote - Dan