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For you to determine if you need a wellness coach, it’s crucial for you to understand what wellness is. The preamble to the World Health Organization constitution defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of diseases and infirmity.” The definition of health, therefore, will help you understand wellness.
Wellness is the dynamic process that enables us to become aware of and make choices toward a healthy and fulfilling life — preferably in the absence of illness. A wellness coach is, therefore, a professional who helps you through the process of optimizing your well-being.
What Is Wellness Coaching?
According to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), there are eight dimensions of wellness. These include the emotional, environmental, financial, intellectual, occupational, physical, social, and spiritual aspects.
Through wellness coaching, you will be expected to optimize your ability to cope effectively with life and develop a sense of connection to others. You will also learn to manage your financial situation, identify your creative skills and expand your knowledge base. Lessons will include engaging in the right physical activities and resting well. These will enable you to find satisfaction in what you do. An excellent wellness coach will also help you determine and expand your sense of purpose.
A Deeper Look at Wellness Coaching
Wellness coaching is not a guessing game. This process of getting help from a certified professional uses evidence-based strategies that include clinical intervention and conversations. They also include collaborative problem-solving and goal-setting. Additional strategies will involve honest assessments and psychologically motivational tools. These will equip you to take charge of your life and improve every dimension of your well-being.
You should not consider yourself a failure if you feel that you need a wellness coach. Celebrities use wellness coaches to help them become the best version of themselves. Billionaires like Oprah Winfrey have had coaches. So have actresses like Nia Long and actors like Hugh Jackman. The same case applies to athletes like Chuck Liddell and Von Miller. The list is endless.
Get a wellness coach if you need one. The elite across multiple industries use wellness coaches and are open about it, so why not you? Wouldn’t you like to achieve the same levels of success as they have?
How to Find the Right Wellness Coach
There are several criteria that you should use to determine the right wellness coach. One of those criteria is the kind of work the wellness coach does. Does this professional work with individuals or groups? If you are part of a team, you need wellness coaching that addresses team needs, which are entirely different from individual needs. Some coaches can work with both. These would probably be the best fit for teams that need guidance at both the group and individual levels.
Find a certified and trained wellness coach. You could start looking at such professionals from organizations like the International Coach Federation (ICF), which trains, certifies, and accredits reputable coaches. You cannot afford to hire a quack.
Be on the lookout for a professional with a background in what ails you the most. For example, if you need to manage stress, then a wellness coach with stress management certification and training is a great option. Life Coach Spotter is also another great online tool you can use to find the right wellness coach.
Your budget also matters. Wellness coaches have wide-ranging charges. Their charges depend on how long the session is, whether they are new or experienced, their location, their training, and their overall reputation. For the most part, many of them will charge $30 to $200 per session of about an hour.
You also need to consider chemistry when trying to determine which wellness coach to hire. Select a coach that gets you. It should be someone with whom you have an excellent rapport because you will need to confide in this person and work together for long. It would be challenging for you to enjoy a positive sense of well being if you are forced to take instructions from someone you don’t like, right?
The Incredible Benefits of Hiring a Wellness Coach
While wellness coaching does not come free, it does offer tremendous benefits. Understanding what these benefits are will enable you to take the final step in deciding whether you should hire one individually or as part of a sports team.
1. Physical and mental health
A wellness coach is an asset. This professional can help you pinpoint physical, emotional, mental, financial, and even social issues that you need to address based on lifestyle assessments. They are well positioned to tell you what you don’t want to hear from those within your social circle because that is what you pay them to do.
If you aim to be an elite athlete, then expect increased pressure and the stress that goes with it. It is not uncommon to see athletes who end up having substance abuse issues, which in turn cause them to crash and burn.
In recent times we have had the likes of former NBA star Lamar Odom, and footballer Johnny Manziel as great examples of how seemingly successful athletes can end up with physical and mental health issues that destroy their careers and endanger their lives.
Perhaps if these two athletes had functional wellness coaches, they would have undergone physical and mental health assessments early enough. These assessments would have helped them identify potential problems. They would have equipped them with the tools they needed to cope with pressure and the effects of success that came with playing the game at the top levels.
2. Provide external perspective and guidance
A recent report by Edelman shows that people have more trust in technical and academic experts than they do in other types of professionals. It’s safe to say that your brain is wired to pay attention to what experts are telling you.
When someone in your social circle tells you something, you may end up ignoring that person even if what is said is relevant. Sometimes you need an expert opinion to shake things up and help you take steps toward achieving a healthy sense of well being.
A wellness coach will provide you with an external perspective that those you train with regularly may not. You are also more likely to pay attention to what such a professional says to you. This makes you more amenable to making changes to your lifestyle based on wellness coaching guidance.
3. Create tailored plans for team members to attain goals
There is a huge discrepancy between the number of people who set New Year’s resolutions and those that achieve them. Did you know that 90.8 percent of people fail to fully achieve their resolutions by the end of each year?
Just because you are already a successful athlete does not mean that you will succeed in achieving every goal that you set. Perhaps you no longer have a sense of purpose. Maybe you have issues bonding with your teammates and working together. It could be that your sports coach is not good at identifying your unique sets of skills and helping you capitalize on them. Another of your teammate could be going through financial or emotional issues as well.
Whatever the issue you and your team may be going through, a wellness coach is equipped to help you identify your issues. A well trained professional will help you set attainable goals and teach you how to celebrate each milestone that you achieve. By the end of a successful wellness coaching period, you should have the tools that you need to help you identify the obstacles in your path and deal with them.
4. Provide a training buddy or extra training voice
Your regular coach cannot be everywhere at once. Sometimes, you need extra help in getting the training that you need to achieve your fitness goals. Studies show that having an exercise companion who is emotionally supportive can help you work out more.
At the beginning of your wellness coaching, you may be able to train together with your coach. But remember, the role of a wellness coach is to equip you to improve in all dimensions of wellness. If you receive the tools that you need to improve the social and emotional aspect of your own wellness, then you would have a better bond with your teammates. Therefore, you will be able to form great relationships with them and train together to improve your overall individual and group performances.
5. Provide motivation and enhance consistency in training
It is one thing to get started on a sports training program, and quite another to complete a program successfully. You will deal with issues such as self-doubt, team conflicts, financial mismanagement, work-life balance, and poor leadership. All these things can affect your performance and that of your team and cause everyone to fail.
There is plenty of research that shows that having a virtually present partner helps improve performance across multiple workout sessions. Additionally, research also proves that people who work out with their friends have a 95 percent success rate in completing their weight-loss program. They also have a 66 percent success rate in continuously keeping that weight off for the long term.
Therefore, having a wellness coach by your side can be instrumental in helping you accomplish your fitness goals. A successful wellness coaching strategy, however, will help you develop lasting friendships with your team members. These friendships will be instrumental in helping your entire team consistently work out and stay motivated so that you can succeed together.
6. Monitor team members to keep them as healthy as possible
There is more to health than what we see on the outside. Many times, the physical health struggles that you are going through are a symptom of what is going on in your head.
A good case in point is Monica Seles. She was one of the top tennis stars of her time. In 1991 and 1992, she was the top-ranked player of her time. But that all came to a grinding halt in 1993. While playing in a match in Hamburg Germany, against Magdalena Maleeva, a mentally unbalanced fan of her rival Steffi Graf stabbed her. That incidence ended her superb top-form and would continue to haunt her for the remainder of her career.
One of the biggest issues that she had after the attack was weight. Seles used food as a way to cope. She had the best fitness trainers and nutritionists around. But all of them were only treating the symptoms of the problem.
It wasn’t until Monica realized that she had the power, that she finally got a grip on her weight. And since then, she has continued to maintain a healthy weight.
Perhaps if Monica Seles had been able to get the right wellness coach, she would have dealt with her weight issues earlier on. And that would have helped cement her legacy as one of the best tennis stars of all time. That is what wellness coaching does: it helps hand back the empowerment tools to you and ensures that you fully take charge of your life. By so doing, you will be able to stay as healthy as possible.
7. Enhance team positivity
It is possible to be successful in your chosen sport and yet unhappy overall. That tends to happen when you are in conflict with other members of your team. When there is conflict within the team, the overall performance will be affected negatively. And that is bad all around.
Group wellness coaching can help enhance well being for everyone on the team. A wellness coach can help everyone identify and develop their skills to be an asset to the team. Coaching can also help team members form positive relationships that will enable everyone to work together for the betterment of the team. You will also learn from a wellness coach how to handle individual and group stress. And all these lessons will enhance team positivity that will lead to better team performances.
Why You Need Wellness Coaching
A wellness coach should be an essential part of athlete training. Everyone will benefit tremendously at both individual and group levels. You will all learn to find your sense of purpose, manage your stress, and optimize physical workouts. You will also learn to manage your money, deal with team conflicts, and work together as a cohesive unit. Wellness coaching will, therefore, enhance individual and team performances and everyone will be happier and healthier for it.
