115 posts
To kick-off a recent Motivator Meetup, Coach Stevo and I reviewed a new study. The researchers of this study asked an important question: What's more important for goal achievement: reducing experiences of temptation or exerting willpower? We summarized the findings below. You also can watch the...
I remember when I thought it was my job as a coach to motivate clients. It was 2014, and I’d been dreaming of playing coach for almost two years. Finally, I found myself coaching a group online. We had 13 men, who all who wanted to look better naked. Perfect. This was going to be my first-ever...
There is a tradition in helping professions. First you are a client. Then you become a coach. Then you create a system that's the one true way and you teach it to other coaches to become a "Coach's Coach." After that, all you have to do is make a cert, and you're a guru. But what the hell is a...
“How am I helping you?” is a simple question to ask a client. A short five words. Only sixteen letters. Yet such a powerful tool for building strong relationships. This friendly question may even startle the client you ask, but it will also make them think. The ensuing conversation will deepen...
By Steven M. Ledbetter and Omar Ganai for Habitry Do you remember the first time you realized an adult was wrong? The feeling in the pit of your stomach when you discovered that your parents not only didn’t know everything, but that they could actually be mistaken? And maybe even be lying to...
I stared at my phone, reading the simple instructions Omar had left for us in the Habitry app during the first Essentials of Habit Coaching cohort. I swallowed hard. No big deal, I said to myself. I got this. He had just asked us to work on a new coaching habit: “I will start group conversations...
When I was studying for a Ph.D. in Psychology, I felt miserable. Focusing only on research wore me down. I felt a gnawing desire to go out and practice. To apply psychology. I famously (infamously?) decided to quit grad school not just once, but twice in the span of a year. Facepalm. The second...
Here are 12 great articles that the Motivate Collective found and put together to help you keep your clients moving forward. An explanation of why the "eat until you are 80% full" rule is commonly confusing and ineffective and gives a more flexible and practical solution. Lots of people think that...
Here are 12 great articles that the Motivate Collective found and put together to help you. Check them out and share one you like with a client or friend! The stories we tell ourselves about our lives become our reality. Since you have control over this, make yourself a hero, or try not to tell...
Coaches, managers, teachers, counsellors are in the business of helping people change. The people we help get a six pack or a pay raise or good grades. Our clients, employees, and students are often desperate for these outcomes. But they don't always want to do the work required to get these...
One of the pieces of business advice I’d heard from Facebook for the last 9 years is, “if your clients are getting results, they’ll tell their friends and you don’t need to market.” In my experience and watching the success of others I’d say that’s about 40% true. I think a truer statement would...
The number one question we get from clients is ‘How can I motivate myself to exercise?’ and it it one of the hardest things to answer because everyone is different. Steven Ledbetter has an MA of Sport Psychology and is the CEO of Habitry. We cover a lot in this interview, so hang on to your boots....
When I start with a new personal training program, there are a few typical steps that we go through. We sit down, chat about the client’s goals, what their experience with exercise/activity has been in the past, what health concerns or barriers they may have, and we even do a little assessment to...
I know what to do, I just can’t stick with it. Sound familiar? Why is it often so hard to make real progress? That’s where Steve Leadbetter aka Coach Stevo comes in. Stevo runs a company in San Francisco called Habitry who focus on teaching people habits and principles to improve their fitness and...
Editor’s Note: Chris Forrest is one of the most humble and client focused coaches we know. Before the Habitry Platform was a thing, we helped Chris start a coaching group on Facebook. A few months into the group we realized he had been running it for free. Coach Stevo’s first free group (which had...
<blockquoteYou don’t know enough. You’re not good enough. You’re just guessing half the time that stuff is gonna work and sooner or later, your clients are going to find out. Your peers are going to find out. And everyone is going to know that you’re not a coach. You’re an imposter.</blockquote If...
For the week of August 24, 2015 Back by popular demand, our Articles for Clients brings you the latest shareable tidbits that fitness and nutrition clients will love. 3 Ways to Use Tracked Data to Meet Your Goals “I recently met a man at a gym where I consult wearing an Apple watch and a Basis...
Almost 9 years ago, my first paying client told me a very simple fact that changed my entire life. Her name was Erin, and she was a 79 year-old Irish woman who had come straight from 6am Mass to hire me. I flashed her a confident smile because my freshly minted certification meant that I had at...
<blockquote "The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change." </blockquote -- Carl Rogers Most of your clients decided to sign up for your services after months or even years of playing a personal mental battle. A battle in which one part of their psyche pressured...
The first weeks of Habitry’s online program, Essentials of Group Coaching, have been illuminating for our coaches. This program is special because it’s discussion-driven rather than content-driven. Keeping the program focused on discussion (rather than pre-fabricated lessons) helps ensure that the...
I want to share with you a system I have found that helps me focus on what matters for moving my online coaching business forward as well as reduce the feelings of anxiety and overwhelm that can creep up all too often. As my days became busier with our growing groups and I had a constantly growing...
Have you been itching to get to a Motivate Summit, but there just wasn’t one close enough to you? Well good news! Soon, there’ll likely be one in your backyard… Last September, I had this crazy idea of bringing a bunch of people with the same problems together into the same room at the same time....
Coach Stevo is back to talk about proven ways to solidify habits, how to build communities from 2 and beyond, making better decisions, finding what you really want, and more!
The average career lifespan of a personal trainer is 3 years. Many of them drop out after 18-24 months. What’s kicking trainers out of the fitness industry? What do they need to survive past this critical time? It’s not about getting more knowledge of exercise science. It’s about developing a...
Our first instinct when trying to make a change is to change ourselves. Or, if we are helping another person make a change, we try to help them change themselves. It’s a mistake. We try to change people as if they exist in a vacuum. But people don’t live in a vacuum. People are like fish, and fish...
Wearables giant FitBit made their initial public offering recently, and the development has ramifications for the entire fitness industry. In this podcast, Coach Stevo of Habitry and Matt McGunagle of StrengthPortal talk about what this news means for coaches and personal trainers and why it's so...
In this episode of the Super Strength Show, Stevo Ledbetter takes us on his journey to becoming a Sport Psychology and Behaviour Change Coach. During this interview Coach Stevo teaches you how to master your life through courage, consistency, and community. More Specifically in this Episode The...
June is going to be a huge month for habit-based coaching. I started Habitry, Co. with Vanessa Naylon in September of 2014 with a mission to "help the most people help the most people." We wanted to create a space where coaches of all kinds could come together and talk about working with clients to...
We love fitness. We love helping people. We love helping our clients reach their goals and beyond. But not all of us are able to make a business doing so, or if we do have a business, we would love to be able to expand without eliminating the precious little time we have to live our own lives. What...
For the week of May 21, 2015 Here’s a new crop of shareables for your social media. Send ‘em to the clients who are looking for a boost today. We’re featuring a video from our Motivation Myth Busting series: And here are 8 more links you should view and strew! Check out the first contribution from...
In this Physique Science Podcast episode, we chat with Coach Stevo about behavior change, working clients, and different coaching methods. Stevo is the nutrition and behavior change consultant at San Francisco Crossfit. He is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist through the NSCA and...
In 1963, Jean Nidetch was desperate. She wasn’t desperate to lose weight. In fact, she had lost 20lbs over the previous year. No, Jean Nidetch was desperate to keep the weight off. So she invited 6 friends over to her house to talk about it. Not to talk about solutions. Or fads. Or calories. Just...
There is a quote, probably apocryphal, that changed how I thought about working with clients when I read it. <blockquote "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. " </blockquote -- Henry Ford Many clients come to us thinking they know what they need to change...
For the week of April 23, 2015 Habit-based coaching often requires us to debunk long-held beliefs about behavior change All of this week’s authors are doing just that — on the topics of food rules, failing to go to the gym, mindfulness, and before/after photos. Let’s start with James Clear, who, by...
In this episode I interview Steven Ledbetter aka Coach Stevo. Steven M. Ledbetter, aka “Coach Stevo” is a bonafide fitness nerd. He has a BA in Philosophy from the University of Chicago, an MA in Sport Psychology from John F. Kennedy University, is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist,...
<blockquote "People don’t want to build a foundation." </blockquote <blockquote "Everyone wants a ‘quick fix.’" </blockquote <blockquote "How do I convince clients that there are no shortcuts?" </blockquote <blockquote "They want to get in shape in no time." </blockquote At every Motivate Summit,...
Well, people. We wrote a damn book. A really awesome book of which we are hella proud. It's 204 pages of the entertaining and evidence-based goodness that you'd expect from Habitry, Co. It's got dozens of tips, lots of great stories, and pictures of Coach Stevo as a 14 year-old. What's it about?...
Motivate OAK, June 27-28, will be unlike any other conference in the fitness industry. There will be no set agenda. No keynote speakers. Like Motivate SLC and Motivate NYC, our one and only goal is to provide a space for the most passionate people in the fitness world to come together and talk...
Crazy good week for client-friendly articles. Thanks to everyone in the Motivate Forum. Our featured article is from the Moms Done Dieting blog and enjoyed a lot of attention and discussion. Check out what Lauren Koski has to say: “I know, you’ve seen the AMAZING before and after pictures, but...
Good habits are, ideally, your life’s work. Translating wellness and fitness goals into habits means focusing on process over results. And like a good ultramarathoner or mountain climber does, practicing a habit also means putting one foot in front of the other, over and over, possibly millions of...
What’s the converse of the Golden Rule? If you treated yourself the way you would like to treat others, what might happen? Being generous with yourself might get you further than judgement. The brilliant Georgie Fear explains : [aesopimage imgwidth="435px"...
In the words of this week’s featured author, “It's so important to take back fitness and allow it to encompass health- mental, physical and emotional.” Here’s a vulnerable, inspiring —and for the fitness industry, unusually rational — story from Michele Burmaster: “About a week after I submitted my...
If you are reading this blog, it’s probably first and foremost because you want to help people. In 2010, I was helping people as a personal trainer and decided I wanted to expand my toolkit to help people change their behavior. So I started thinking about graduate school for Psychology. When I told...
Editor: James Mills might be a candidate for "Most Interesting Man in the World." He is a coach, a Lawyer, and his background is in professional ballet and union contract negotiations. He is also one of the smartest people I know, so when he asked me if he could write an article about his coaching...
This week’s themes: focusing on reality, staying positive, and doing things that work instead of things we feel expected to do. Warm up with a tip from Habit Lab: Fat Loss Habit #173 - Exercise Before Breakfast Kat exercises before breakfast because it feels better that way. It’s important to pay...
At the 2nd Motivate Summit this Saturday in NYC, it was 14 degrees with a wind chill below 0. The weather forecast showed 20mph winds and 3 inches of snow were en route to Mark Fisher Fitness. But so were 2 dozen coaches from California, Denver, Detroit, Boston, New Hampshire, Toronto, and all over...
The Habitry Collective loves books. We ask every new member of the Collective “what is your favorite coaching book that is not a health and nutrition book?” and we’ve kept a list of the 141 (and growing) answers. I also maintain an Amazon Wishlist for books on behavior change that has 22 titles on...
Editor: Sean McBride is one of the smartest people I know, so when he told me he was doing 10,000 swings and using a clicker like Seth Munsey, I knew I wanted to get his thoughts on the experience. Luckily, Sean is also a great writer! Last September I went to Utah at the invitation of Coach Stevo....
Here at Habitry, Co. we make communities. We make communities for the simple reason that communities work better. They work better than one-on-one. They work better than “groups.” Communities change people because humans are social cognitive learners (Bandura, 2001), mirror neurons are a thing...
Editor: Michele, a very active member of the Motivate Collective, contacted me about an outlet to tell her story. I was happy to help because I think that these lessons apply to anyone who's thinking of making the leap to owning their own place and following their passion. I hope you enjoy reading...
One of the best features of the Motivate Collective, in my opinion, is that it is a safe space to get advice about what to do with clients that happens to be populated by the best habit-based coaches in the world. Needless to say, the advice is insanely good. Yesterday, a coach asked for help with...
This weekend, there’ll be a run on snacks at your local grocery store. So it’s time for a snackable edition of Articles for Clients! First, help your clients be prepared to stick to their plans when they shop for Super Bowl Sunday by encouraging them to make a shopping list: Fat Loss Habit #60 -...
First, check out the latest fat loss habit video from the Habit Lab: Fat Loss Habit #173 - Exercise Before Breakfast - Habit Lab from Habitry on Vimeo. And now, from our community…when is fitspiration not inspiring? When it’s overbearing. Your clients see many different messages on their personal...
Steven Ledbetter comes on the show to talk about prevent to work motivation techniques that you can use to help reach your goals or to help others. Includes the biggest mistakes coaches make when motivating others, habit-based coaching, and more!
It’s likely that your clients have made a few resolutions by now. Possibly they’ve even started breaking them. Right now, about two weeks into January, the excitement of the holidays may have worn off and your clients may be looking for some extra motivation and direction. The Habitry Collective is...
I've been working with people to help them meet their health and fitness goals since 2008. I still work with anyone who shows up on my front door at 9AM every morning. I'm a coach, but in 2013 I stopped coaching people and started making a real difference. When I started graduate school for health...
Here are some articles written this week by Habitry Collective Members about habits, motivation, and behavior change that you can send to your clients! And this week you absolutely must read Marc Halpern's post on Lean Body 6 about his late grandfather: "Forget about the benefits I got. My grandpa...
Hey Motivators! We hope you’re enjoying the holidays! Grab some of that leftover eggnog and dive in to this week’s recap of all the happenings in the Motivate Forums. This week, we hazed Marcelino Martinez and Andy Fossett into the Collective. Welcome to the Collective! Habitry, Co. released a...
This month Weight Watchers, the Google of the weight loss industry announced a new ad campaign. With no celebrities. Or promotions. Or promises. Or before and after photos. It's all real people talking about their real struggles, physical and emotional, with weight loss. In an article for USA...
One of the problems that the coaches in the Motivate Collective have discovered about Habit-Based Coaching, is that there is just not a ton of stuff out there for our clients to read. They are deluged with questionable crap from magazine covers, Dr. Oz, and other less awesome fitness professionals...
This article originally appeared on Seth Munsey's new blog, "The Client Centered Coach." Seth is one of the many awesome gym owners in the Motivate Collective who are adding habit-based training and behavior change techniques to the way they do business. You can join our conversations on our...
We at the Habitry Collective got a lot of feedback on our free 167 Fat Loss Habits and the general consensus was, "it's too much awesome information! Make it smaller!" Politely ignoring the fact that our biggest complaint was that we were giving away too much for free, we heeded the call for...
This article originally appeared on Seth Munsey's new blog, "The Client Centered Coach." Seth is one of the many awesome gym owners in the Motivate Collective who are adding habit-based training and behavior change techniques to the way they do business. You can join our conversations on our...
For the past two months, the Motivate Forums have been crackling with amazing discussions about working with clients (Not a member? Why not? It’s free and there’s only mild hazing!). A lot of these discussions have centered on communication, and I have found myself teaching my fellow Motivators new...
Steve Ledbetter, a.k.a. “Coach Stevo” is the featured guest on this week’s show and he shares amazing insight on the power of our habits. Let me tell you now, this is a different kind of interview from things we typically discuss on the show, but the insight is extremely valuable for all of us....
We hear a lot of excuses about why people don’t exercise. “I don’t have the time.” “There’s not a gym close to me” etc. And sadly, most questionaries for the CDC, NIH and other government surveys use these misleading answers on their forms, so most of the survey data on how much we exercise as a...
One of the biggest problems that we coaches face is often not recognized as a problem until it’s too late. Until after a few clients have just stopped showing up. Or maybe never came back after that summer vacation. Or joined a Soul Cycle. But this problem starts on Day 1, often during the...
Months ago, when I announced the first Motivate Summit in Salt Lake City, I was scared. Motivate SLC was the first meet up dedicated solely to behavior change in the fitness industry and the first public UNconference in our industry as well. So not only was it new, not only was it weird, it was new...
Health and wellness professionals are often united by a common goal of wanting to help others adopt a physically active, nutritionally balanced, and mindfulness-centered lifestyle. As many of us know, this is no easy task. We are constantly facing an array of barriers to exercise and adherence to...
My friend and mentor Dan John is famous for a quote that should be a required tattoo in the health and wellness professions. <blockquoteThe goal is to keep the goal the goal. </blockquote Years ago I realized that my clients often have absolutely no idea where they wanna go (yet), and often just...
The average Utahan (a word I very recently learned how to properly pronounce—no small for feat for a boy raised in the derrty south) is 29 years old, married, conservative, white, “barely” male (49% of the population is female), stands 5’8”, weighs 170lbs, lives in a two bedroom house with 2.14...
You’re a really smart person. You know more than most people about at least a few things. You might even be an expert at some of them. And chances are, if you’re reading this, more than a few people look to you for advice (or even pay you for it). Maybe it’s about what to eat. Or what to do at the...
One of the sessions at the Motivate Summit was convened with the question: “How Important are fast initial results in long-term client success?” It was such a great question that we decided to keep the discussion alive on the Motivate Forums. Andrew McGunagle summarized what I think is a very...
Matt McGunagle convened a session at the Motivate Summit with the post-it note you see above. These are his notes from that session and a small glimpse into an optimistic future. I led a group conversation on this topic recently at the Motivate Summit in Salt Lake City and wanted to share my...
In October 2013, I decided to take on the 10,000 KB Swing Challenge by Dan John. If you aren’t familiar with the 10,000 KB Swing Challenge, it involves taking a Kettlebell and swinging it 10,000 times in a month. Simple, yet brutally effective. The challenge is broken down into 500 swings a day for...
On a rainy Saturday in Utah, 41 people with the passion to show up got together in a circle and something happened. "I don't know what 'this' is, but it's something amazing," Bill recapped. 41 people, brought together from all over the USA by Facebook, a few blog posts, and word-of-mouth found out...
Bill Nye is a great teacher. He is witty, smart, and above all, incredibly empathetic. He has an uncanny ability to see the world through his students' or readers' eyes and craft his message to meet them where they are at. And he does this with superhuman patience, as demonstrated in his February...
This week’s guest is Coach Stevo. Coach Stevo has been under the mentorship of Dan John for the past couple of years, but before that he received his Masters Degree in health psychology. I met Steve at the recent Perform Better Summit in Long Beach and knew after only talking to him for a couple of...
This week a coach I’m working with got a message from a client of his that was rather disturbing and he asked for my help. “Going through a divorce. I haven't been as engaged, but I intend to be from now on.” Every coach will deal with this at some point, and it doesn't even have to be this...
“Every relationship you will ever be in will fail,” begins the advice of Dan Savage, “until one doesn’t.” I have a lot of different ways to try to communicate complicated ideas simply, but one of the most effective ones I’ve found so far is to reframe my clients’ questions using the sage wisdom of...
Coaches love tools. We have our "teach the squat" cues, our "fix the squat" correctives, and our "nice squat!" congratulations high-five. But what about when the client leaves? What tools do you have for the other 167 hours? One of my favorite tools for promoting behavior change is a simple...
Modeling relationships between self-determination, past behaviour, and habit strength (Gardner & Lally, 2013) Clients hire coaches because they want to make progress on their health and fitness goals. At the same time, they have limited willpower and motivation. Given this constraint, how can...
I went climbing for the first time three weeks ago. And like most people who start, I started off doing something called “top-roping”, which is a way to climb the face of a mountain without using most of the tools. So of course I got curious and asked, “How do all those other tools work?” If you...
As a Fitness Professional, we accept that most of our coaching is client centered. We hope to develop a trusting relationship with the individual so as to build the foundation for change. We provide a program, training, nutrition coaching and our own support all with the goal of helping the client...
Many of us in helping professions are familiar with the legal term, “scope of practice,” but there is more to the idea of scope than covering your ass against lawsuits. Scope means “the extent of the area or subject matter that something deals with or to which it is relevant,” but it also means,...
Yesterday, a friend of mine sent me a link to Wrzesniewski et al. (2014). I was excited to see what might be the largest longitudinal study on motivation to date, but as I read further, I began to notice some problems. In the 1970s, two brilliant psychology researchers noticed something pretty neat...
Trigger Warning: This article has some hurtful words that people called me as a kid. If words hurt you, maybe you should skip this article. I played baseball as a kid. Ok, I technically played baseball. I wore a uniform and people threw balls at me while I was holding a bat. I hated it. I hated the...
A lot of really awesome people have signed up for Motivate: A One Day Health and Behavior Change Summit that we are hosting in Salt Lake City on 9/27. How awesome? Last week, a few of those people got so excited about the possibilities of this Unconference and wrote an eBook. In a week. This...
Dan John should go down in the annals of strength training history for many things, but chief among them is the line, “the goal is to keep the goal the goal.” I am very lucky to have a clear and concise mentor because when I look out into the world of coaching, it’s obvious that Dan’s focus is more...
Matt McGunagle is one of the many awesome people attending Motivate: A One Day Health and Behavior Change Summit. Sign up if you don't want to miss out on awesome conversations about psychology, health, fitness, and technology on 9/27 in Salt Lake City! It’s sad to say this, but the tech community...
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...
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...
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...
Sometime between 62-67 CE, a new bishop was setting up a new church in Ephesus. The bishop, Timothy was new as well and received a number of letters from his mentor Paul with advice about how best to establish the congregation there. Paul warned him against getting involved with the petty squabbles...
I was very excited for Death by Food Pyramid by Denise Minger to come out. As a dietitian, I do not accept much of the common practice today as fact. I think many of the nutrition protocols we use today are built upon faulty science. Some of these faults are because of limitations in research due...
My friend Kristin Newman wrote an excellent post about the problems she sees with her clients and the kettlebell swing. Granted, she is teaching a CrossFit or "American Style" swing and I teach a "Hardstyle" or "Russian Style" swing, but the movement is basically the same from the shoulders down....
Fitness professionals can be so enthusiastic about getting clients to their goals. We have all sorts of cool tricks, exercises, tips and habits to offer. Yes, eating more protein, drinking water, adding vegetables and getting exercise in are all pretty much indisputable habits to go after. However,...
By JC Deen JC Deen, also no stranger to the Coyote Point Kettlebell Club, has a hilarious style and a great system for keeping people on the path to health and fitness. His online coaching is all about “stacking the deck” to make healthy decisions easier to make until they become habit, which is...
One area of debate in the behavior-research community is the interaction between habits and goals. Wood and Neal (2007) proposes an interesting model (above) that depends on three principles that have been fairly well established in prior research: 1) “Habits are cued by context,” 2) “Habit...
Arthur C. Clarke, the famous science fiction author, is one of a small handful of people to have a set of laws named after him. Clarke’s Three Laws are simple, profound, and provide an excellent framework for understanding the the very edges of what is possible. 1. When a distinguished but elderly...
This month’s book is another rare gem in pop science reading, which is to say a book written for lay people by a scientist who did most of the research in the book and who is at the forefront of his field. Brian Wansink, Ph.D. directs the Cornell Food and Brand lab and was Executive Director of...
This month's UNSEEN DEGREES is all about the environment. In this issue of UNSEEN DEGREES you'll find: An editorial about Habit-Based Coaching featuring Arthur C. Clarke and Penn Jillette A round up of articles by JC Deen and Krista Scott Dixon featuring some great habit-based coaching ideas....
I spent two years and a tiny fortune in graduate school learning everything I could about health and exercise psychology. Now that I'm out, I want to share what I've learned (and am continuing to learn) about habits, motivation, and creating environments where clients feel safe to truly and...
One of my first clients as a personal trainer was Erin, an 80 year old Irish woman who came into the gym, straight from Mass on a Tuesday, only to find her previous personal trainer had stood her up for the 3rd time. She was hopping mad, and just wanted a personal trainer who would show up. “My...