Are You A Trainer Or A Coach?

Since negative connotations abound and coaching is a difficult concept to define in a sentence or two, I wanted to compare it with training to help you to understand my personal definition about coaching.  As you will see, training and coaching are related, but they are not the same thing. 

Here are 12 comparisons to help illustrate the potential difference between a trainer and a coach:

 

A Trainer Lights a fire under someone.
A Coach Lights A Fire Inside Of Someone.

A Trainer affects the hour they are with someone.
A Coach affects the hours they are not with someone.

A Trainer Hopes To Get Through The Session.
The Coach Hopes To Get Through To Someone.

A Trainer Forgets The Job Is Not To Remind People About Problems.
A Coach Remembers The Job Is To Solve Them.

A Trainer Stretches your legs.
A Coach Stretches Your Limits.

A Trainer Counts Your Reps.
A Coach Discounts Your excuses.

A Trainer Is concerned with How Much time you put in.
A Coach is concerned with How Much You put into the time.

A Trainer wants you to do your best.
A Coach wants you to do better than your best.

A Trainer is concerned More With How, Where and When.
A Coach is Concerned More With Who, What and Why.

A Trainer Works For A Paycheck.
A Coach Works For A Passion.

A Trainer Develops and Delivers Your Workout.
A Coach Creates and Cultivates Your Purpose.

Training is Something You Do To Someone.
Coaching Is Something You Do With Someone.


By Martin Rooney

Take 5 Intervals and Call Me in The AM?

Fitness professionals may be the best medical practitioners in the world. We actually do something to deal with the underlying disease as opposed to treat the symptoms. Doctors have been reduced to simply giving us something that masks our symptoms. A friend once hypothetically compared doctors to mechanics. Imagine bringing your car in for service because the “check engine” light was on and getting handed some duct tape. The mechanic looks you straight in the eye and says “put a piece over the light, you won’t see it anymore”. You’d probably laugh and never go back to that mechanic, right?

Why don’t we laugh when the doctor gives us a statin, or blood pressure medication, or Metformin? Does anyone think that statins actually do anything to deal with why your cholesterol is high? If you do, you’re crazy. They just change the test results. The reason you have high cholesterol is still there? ( PS- lets not even get into the whole cholesterol debate, just think symptom and treatment)

High blood pressure? Take this. It will lower your blood pressure. Again, the drug will change the test result so that it appears more favorable. Does the drug deal with why you have high blood pressure? No, the drug just makes you “ignore the light” until something more serious happens.

To stay with our mechanic analogy, you now back a few weeks later and say “my oil light is on now too”. The mechanic says “no problem, have another piece of tape”. You just keep driving until the car stops working, with all these pieces of tape covering your warning lights. What’s the life analogy for that scenario? Not a pretty picture is it?

I’d love it if someday you went to the doctor to complain and they said. “Here’s a prescription for exercise, take 5 intervals three times a week for six weeks and come back. And also, lose a pound per week while you’re at it. If you come back and you’re not down six pounds and have an attendance note from your trainer I’m going to cancel your health insurance”. Now that would be practicing medicine.

We can dream can’t we?

By Mike Boyle

Life's Rules by Bill Bates

Whether  you like Bill Gates or not...this is pretty cool. Here's some advice Bill Gates recently dished out at a high school speech about 11 things they did  not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teaching has  created a full generation of kids with no  concept of reality and how this concept  sets them up for failure in the real world.

     RULE 1
     Life is not fair - get used to it.

     RULE 2
     The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world
     will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you  feel
     good about yourself.

     RULE 3
     You will NOT make 40 thousand dollars a year right out
     of high school. You won't be a vice president with
     car phone, until you earn both.

     RULE 4
     If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a
     boss. He doesn't have tenure.

     RULE 5
     Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your
     grandparents had a different word for burger flipping
     they called it Opportunity.

     RULE 6
     If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't
     whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

     RULE 7
     Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as
     they are now. They got that way from paying your bills,
     cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about
     how cool  you are. So before you save the rain forest
     from the parasites of your parent's generation, try
     delousing the closet in your own room.

     RULE 8
     Your school may have done away with winners and losers,
     but life has not. In some schools they have abolished
     failing grades and they'll  give you as many times as
     you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the
     slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

     RULE 9
     Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get
     summers off and very few employers are interested in
     helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.

     RULE 10
     Television is NOT real life. In real life people
     actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

     RULE 11
     Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for
     one.