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The first move toward becoming a wellness coach is defining your areas of responsibility. The mission of a health and wellness coach is pretty straightforward: providing support and guidance to people to manage to lead a healthy lifestyle sustainably.
As the name suggests, a health and wellness coach blends two different prerequisites for healthy living. Besides providing people with the necessary insights about physical activities and healthy eating habits, a wellness coach also considers their well-being.
As per the National Consortium for Credentialing Health & Wellness Coach, “coaches support clients in mobilizing internal strengths and external resources and developing self-management strategies for making sustainable, healthy lifestyle, behavior changes.”
To achieve that, the health goals for every client or group (in the case of joint sessions) need to be designed individually based on the client’s wishes, needs, capacity, and treatment prescribed by their health care providers.
Only this way, a coach can map out the proper health and wellness plan that will keep people committed and motivated to stay engaged.
Taken together, a health and wellness coach should bring the following competencies:
The next step toward becoming an online wellness coach requires understanding the difference between health and wellness coaching vs. consulting vs. advising, especially if you’re planning on getting certified. You don’t want to risk getting the wrong certification because you mixed up the terminology, right?
So, let’s start with coaching. People sometimes confuse this word with “bossing around,” which couldn’t be further from the truth. The job of a wellness coach is to help people discover their key to success. You coach them to figure out what’s best for them. It’s like in math class. Remember that your teacher never gave you the answer, only the rules, and formula needed to find the correct answer?
A consultant, on the other hand, will do the exact opposite. He’ll identify the client’s problems, design a plan based on these issues and tell you how to proceed to solve them.
Finally, a health and wellness adviser is somewhere in between the two mentioned professions. For example, while a wellness coach would take you to the gym and wait to realize that you need to start working out, the wellness advisor would take you there and provide advice on what to do.
Technically, you don’t need to be certified to become a wellness coach. But there are many things in life that you’re not required to do, but people still expect it anyways. That’s why it’s safe to assume that most people who hire health coaches want to see a proper certification. It’s their prerogative, don’t you agree?
At this point, it’s essential to weigh your options.
If you don’t know where to start, here are three options that will give you the gist of what opportunities you have:
Pursuing the desire to become a wellness coach online means following current health trends: wellness apps. They give people more control over their health and make sure that they keep up with their lifestyle changes.
Wellness specialists encourage clients to use a fitness and wellness app because it allows them to be more actively involved in their activities and achieve long-lasting results. In addition, having access to their exercise results allows you to notice the ups and down in your clients’ performance and engage on a targeted and more personal level.
Say, for example, your client skips one of your sessions, and you simultaneously observe a decline in their achievements. You can directly contact them, ask what caused the gap, and add a personal touch to your coaching.
inKin’s corporate wellness platform allows users to decide which health metrics they want to track (distance, calories, sleeping time, etc.) and which device they want to connect the app. So whether your client has a smartwatch or a smartphone, it doesn’t make a difference with inKin—it works with both!
As the platform administrator, you have full access to the performance data of every client who has joined the platform.
You can set goals, compare the data for different periods to check the overall efficiency of your clients, keep the motivation going through the chat options, add individual or group fitness challenges, and set rewards if need be.
This will take a load of work off you and render your health and wellness coaching fun by, for example, challenging your client to walk from Paris to New York within six months. Think you’re up for the challenge? Then go ahead and prove it.
To become a health and wellness coach online, you have to mind a few steps. This article covered some fundamental aspects of offering your services virtually, providing you with a springboard to get things rolling.
Photo Credit: Unsplash
