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This is one of the main reasons why your clients stagnate, which also leads to a lot of frustration (for you and for them). If your clients don't feel like they're making progress, they'll often start to ask other people for their opinions or advice. The more conflicted they become, the more likely it is that they'll end the coaching relationship with you (sometimes with an excuse, like that they can't afford it). I'm sure you've experienced this. One of the main reasons I started to question my coaching in the early days is because I could tell how frustrated my clients were getting when they weren't progressing. I was asking them to do exercises that they weren't ready for, and I didn't realise it; I just hoped that they would improve as we went through the coaching process. I want to remind you at this point that wherever you are in your career right now, I've been there too. I didn't just skip the coaching mistakes that everyone makes; I had to learn just like you. My therapist should cure me without my having to change. Action Plans are trivial and won't get me better. If I think about my problems, I'll feel worse. If I do Action Plans and get better, my life will get worse. Below are some strategies you can use for several types dysfunctional cognitions. Negative Predictions When clients are in psychological distress, and particularly when they're depressed, they tend to assume negative outcomes--as LENNY does when considering whether to fill out an application for work. These predictions can interfere with starting or completing an Action Plan. When you find that clients haven't completed an Action Plan, ask them if they still think the Action Plan is a good idea and then have them predict obstacles to completing it in the coming week. LENNY: I didn't fill out the job application this week.

Because of what kind of world you grew up in, if you are reading this article and connected to at least some of the stuff you've done, you're definitely someone who, as a teenager, had a lot of pressure on you. This burden is hurting and I'm sorry. The burden of trying to surprise your friends or peers with your good grades too badly, feeling upset with yourself when you don't live up to their expectations, the pain you get in bed late that night, worrying about all the things you might easily have done just a little better. If you'd just been working a bit harder; It's awful to feel like you have failed the people you care for, and want to be the most proud of you. Live with the remorse of what you know is making those men, those role models, unhappy in you, is something I would never want for anyone because I do honestly recognize the emotion, I like to think. If you're reading this, you may never have conquered the shame about letting down your parents and teachers, so you've continued to try. You kept trying and you were busy for years and years trying to satisfy them. Maybe as you grew older their standards increased, and with them you were forced to grow faster and faster. You may have lost a little bit of your youth to that addiction and now you like that obsession a little bit of your adult. As parents, we have responsibilities--little people who rely on us to provide for their needs. If you pass away will your spouse and your children be able to take care of themselves financially? And it's not just the breadwinner who needs to be insured. Who would take care of the children if something happens to a stay-at-home parent? Would the surviving spouse need the help of a nanny or some other form of paid childcare? What would happen if both you and your spouse die together? Will your children's guardian have enough money to care for them? Buying a life insurance policy can be the difference between leaving your loved ones in a financial lurch or on solid ground when you're no longer around. There are two types of life insurance, whole life and term insurance. Whole life, including variable life and universal life is an investment product and insurance policy combined.

As a coach, my goal is to see my clients continually moving forward. As my career progressed, I'd regularly end up with a client for over three years and they'd be making some level of progress at every session. If you're reading this and thinking, `How is that possible? So, if you're struggling with your clients right now, don't give up - there's another level that you can go to. You just need to start asking more questions and then commit to finding the answers. A coach who is skilled and understands biomechanics will have a clear understanding of exercise execution (the way we perform an exercise), how muscles are supposed to be recruited when performing an exercise/movement (movement execution), and stabilisation (how to maintain control of the body, both statically and dynamically). They will also be able to appreciate and understand forces and loading that occur (to joints and muscles) through movement and exercise, such as when the heel strikes the ground when running or when a machine chest press is performed . As I mentioned in the `Developing a coaching eye' section, in recent years the term `exercise execution' has become popular in the physique development world, with many people assuming that biomechanics simply refers to how exercises are performed on machines or when dumbbells/barbells are used. But it's important to remember that biomechanics is the analysis of human movement. If your clients are recreational runners, play a sport, or want to lose weight or develop their physiques, understanding biomechanics will help them to minimise injury risk and enable them to perform at their best, whatever their goal. PAULINE: Do you still think it's a good idea? LENNY: (Sighs. I really need to get back to work. PAULINE: What got in the way this past week? Was there a practical problem? Did you have enough time? LENNY: I had plenty of time. I'm not sure why I couldn't get myself to do it. Then I did a form of covert rehearsal. Make sure you or the client records on the new Action Plan whichever statements seem helpful to the client.

It hurts feeling like you are doomed to fail them no matter what you do. I understand the pain. Please know that, no matter what happens today, people will always be proud of you. You should be proud of yourself, above all. For so long, you've come so far and done so much for yourself, suffering and fighting tooth and nail just to keep up with peers. That's why, on the one hand, you have done what you have. The fascination has made you grow up to be competent and acclimatized to stressful environments in a macabre way. On the other hand, doing just that and tempering your competitive spirit has not only exercised your intellect and helped you to deal with stress, anxiety and other people's expectations, but has done the opposite in the process as well. While it made you become more competitive, it pulled you down until you didn't have to be competitive any more. When there were no more expectations for you to follow in school or at home, you were left with that obsessive nature that guided you to always do well and to ignore everything that you had already achieved. The monthly premium you pay is divided. Part of it pays for insurance coverage and the other part acts like a savings account, building a cash value that has tax benefits to be used in retirement. Whole life insurance covers you for the duration of your life versus term life insurance, which covers you for a fixed period of time, usually twenty to thirty years. Term life is straight up insurance coverage that pays a death benefit, or money to your beneficiary if you die. There's no investment side, so the money you pay into it is gone for good if you outlive the policy. So which one should you get? It depends on who you ask. Whole life agents will sell you on the fact that the premiums you pay for a whole life policy stay the same every month for your entire life whereas term premiums remain the same for only the fixed period. After that, the term policy ends or the insurance company may raise the rate every year until it's no longer affordable and you decide to terminate it. Most financial planners will recommend you purchase term and stay away from whole life polices.

I was first introduced to biomechanics back in 2008 when I studied the work of Gary Gray (a respected physical therapist from the US). I studied a system that he created which looked at the body as a `chain reaction' (the idea that the body works as one complete unit). To this day, it is one of the most complicated courses that I have ever taken (six months of work just to learn the content), but it gave me a brand-new set of eyes. I was able to appreciate how muscles create force and movement, how the body creates stability around joints, how and why muscular imbalances occur, and how to create optimal muscle recruitment through movement and exercise. This allowed me to see what was going wrong when I looked at exercise/movement being performed. It also gave me a road map to create effective programming, which also helped my clients to make a great deal of progress. For hours, those of us on the course would sit and watch our case studies walk up and down a room, highlighting to our assessor what we were able to see. For example, when the left heel hit the ground in gait, we had to know what the muscles were doing at the same time around the opposite scapula. When our case studies were performing an exercise such as the barbell bench press, we had to explain what was happening to the muscles and joints around the chest. After all, the body works as a complete unit; PAULINE: Do you think you might have the same problem filling out the job application this coming week? LENNY: Yeah, probably. PAULINE: Can you imagine doing it? How are you feeling? LENNY: Down, kind of tired. PAULINE: What's going through your mind? LENNY: I might make mistakes on the application. Then they won't give me the job. PAULINE: No wonder you were having trouble getting started. In fact, maybe we should have had you start filling it out right here in session.