Lifestyle fitness coaching is an off-shoot of overall health and fitness coaching and training that focuses on taking a more holistic, well-rounded approach to health and wellness. It’s all-encompassing and takes a lifestyle-based approach to training clients, working with them on a highly-specialized and individualized basis.
What this means is it’s a step above your regular personal training services and often more demanding too. There are some key differences between lifestyle fitness coaching and personal training, including the following:
It takes a much broader approach than personal training
Personal training does take an individualized approach to training and fitness goals, but lifestyle wellness and fitness coaching take it to the next level. It’s an approach that looks at health as a complex, diverse area of focus that comprises everything from basic fitness levels and physique to mental and emotional health and finding ways to enrich and improve them all.
The general philosophy and approach that lifestyle fitness training takes is more detailed and all-encompassing, which is why it’s a field of work that draws in many potential trainers and wellness enthusiasts looking to help their clients.
You will have the opportunity to work with your clients on addressing many deep-rooted issues and barriers to their health, getting involved in their lives in very detailed ways, and spending a lot of time developing a close working relationship that is fostered around helping them.
You will focus on diet, nutrition, eating habits, and patterns
A large part of your job as a lifestyle wellness and fitness coach will include focusing on nutrition and diet, helping your clients eat healthier, improving decision-making, and making better choices. You will be doing more internal work with them to identify what triggers their food choices and decisions and come up with effective strategies that will help them in the long run.
It helps to obtain a specific training or certification in nutrition, in addition to your personal trainer certification, so you have the right tools, knowledge, and insights into the science behind it. You will also be helping them develop more customized meal plans and ideas that align with their goals and creating sustainable habits that they can follow through on even after they’re done training with you.
Personal training is more limited in that capacity, and trainers can’t create or recommend meal plans due to 1) regulatory limitations, 2) lack of specialized knowledge 3) the general focus being on physical movement and training.
Mental health and stress management are central to it
Another aspect of wellness that is central to lifestyle fitness coaching but not necessarily focused on in personal training is mental health and stress management. While you’re not going to double as a therapist or mental health counselor, you will be working with your clients on lifestyle adaptations and wellness strategies to manage their mental health.
This includes dealing with emotional eating and regulating emotional responses, stress management via meditation, journaling, or even empowering them to decide to see a therapist. It’s a fairly broad role that acknowledges how your mental health isn’t isolated from your physical health, and both things impact the other.
The focus is significantly more on behavioral changes
The biggest difference between the approach of lifestyle coaching and personal training is that the former focuses on behavioral changes. Personal trainers do work on their clients’ behaviors and decision-making within the scope of their training sessions, but lifestyle coaches help their clients develop independent skills and behaviors that benefit them. Since it’s not restricted to achieving a certain aesthetic or statistical goal such as a different physique, a drop in pounds, or dress sizes, goals can be more intangible too. Wellness coaches will encourage their clients to adapt and change behaviors that hurt them and instead develop habits that will benefit them in the long run. Habit building and emotional management can be a lot more time-consuming than we realize, and coaches will have to work consistently with their clients to achieve that.
You’ll work on motivating them rather than just planning workouts
Another significant difference between working as a certified fitness trainer and a lifestyle coach is the approach to fitness. While you might be designing workout programs for them to follow, that’s not the central focus of their fitness journey that you’ll be working on. Instead, your job will be to motivate, encourage, and guide them as they work out.
Essentially, you’ll be there in more of a supportive role than instructional, and depending on the scope of your expertise and the services you’re offering, you could be doing this alongside full-fledged personal training. It gives you a more significant and deeply involved position in their physical health and wellness, which means you’ll also have to be attuned to when they need to rest, stop, and take a break and when they need to power through, progress, and increase their load.
The career options for lifestyle wellness coaches are more flexible
While there’s no end to the types of work you can do as a certified personal trainer, especially with how rapidly the industry is changing, lifestyle coaches do have more flexibility. They can work on a freelance basis, offer services to individual clients or companies, work in traditional fitness facilities, and much more since they have a lot to offer.
Learn more about fitness instructor certifications and lifestyle fitness coaching through at W.I.T.S. Education, where they have some of the top fitness trainer programs for you to join. You can register for their in-person training and certifications to add stackable skills to your resume, build a niche alongside your personal fitness trainer certification and increase your market value as a specialist.
About the Author
Kierra F. is a lifestyle fitness coach who works long-term with fitness clients on mapping out and achieving their goals. Her specialty lies in helping students and young professionals who struggle to make time for their health and identifying ways to make healthier choices and decisions that benefit them.
