Even a coach needs a coach

Last week I talked about how important it is to “get ready and stay ready” when it comes to fitness. If you didn’t get a chance to read it, you can check it out here. In that blog, I mentioned that the concept of getting ready and staying ready is much easier said than done, especially when you are in a challenging season of life. Today, I’m diving into the story of why I hired a nutrition coach for myself, even though I have been in the fitness and nutrition industry for over a decade.

What a coach is

Let’s start by defining what exactly a coach is and what a coach does. According to Merriam-Webster, the definition of a coach is “one who instructs or trains.”

Now let me take that one step further:

Coaches motivate
Coaches inspire
Coaches make people better

A great coach not only changes the way someone physically performs, but they change the way a person performs mentally, as well. Anyone can hold a clipboard and count reps, but a good coach changes lives, creates futures, refines goals, and leads the way.

We all need a coach to take us to the next level. A great coach understands what motivates you and has a vision for your future, which means they will help you do the hard things to get you to your goals.

I once read this quote from Tom Landry, former Dallas Cowboys Head Coach and regarded as one of the greatest head coaches of all time: “A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you have always known you could be.” I think he summed up the definition of a coach perfectly.

Now that we have a working definition of a coach, let’s look at why it is so beneficial and crucial to have different coaches in different areas throughout your life.

Why I hired a coach

I have had many coaches throughout my life - in football, wrestling, strength and conditioning, academics, piano, guitar, and business. But I have never had a nutrition coach, and to be honest, I have not had a fitness coach since Rise began back in 2018. I’m not sure if I was being too proud to admit it, or just being too busy to even think about it, but for some reason it was hard for me to step back and realize that I could use someone to provide a fresh set of eyes on my routines and habits, someone to teach me new information, and someone to give me some much needed accountability as I entered a new stage of life.

As I look back, it was much easier to stay on top of my strength training and nutrition before I was married, had three kids, started a business, and so on. My time now is very limited, but I still know just how important fitness and nutrition is. With over a decade’s worth of knowledge in the fitness and nutrition industry, I convinced myself for a long time that I should be able to conquer my health goals by myself. But as my strength training regimen and nutrition habits continued to fall short of where I knew they needed to be, I eventually realized a couple things:

There is always so much more to learn.
1. The older I get, the more I realize I’m just scratching the surface of what is out there. It’s like the old Socrates quote: “The more I know, the more I realize I know nothing.”
You can go a lot farther when you go together.
You can avoid many mistakes when you have someone who is not emotionally attached to your decisions. They can give you facts.
A good coach needs a good coach.

These are all things I knew and applied in other areas of my life, and I finally decided to implement them into my nutrition.

Nutrition coaching and what it has done for me

I hired Coach Megan to help me reach my nutrition goals because I simply was not accomplishing them on my own. More times than not, I found myself skipping breakfast, and sometimes even lunch. Having young kids meant my sleep schedule got altered, so I was often choosing to sacrifice the time it takes to fuel myself with a proper breakfast in order to squeeze in as much sleep as possible. Once I started my work flow for the day, I would often work right through lunch. I would go through the first half of my day without any or very little fuel. Now this isn’t inherently bad. In fact, many people do this on purpose while intermittent fasting. But unlike intermittent fasting, I wasn’t getting enough fuel in the later part of my day, which left me in a calorie and protein deficit.

I noticed that I was feeling worn down and tired, was experiencing brain fog, didn’t have the energy to properly train, and I knew I wasn’t being the best dad and husband I could be. It also led me to have sugar cravings and the urge to snack late into the night as my body was trying to consume the calories it needed. After a while, I explained this to Coach Megan, and as a good coach does, she gave me the hard yet loving advice that I needed. She said “you can’t keep doing this forever Chase, it will catch up with you.” I sat on that statement for a long time and it still sticks with me now. After thinking about our conversation, I came back to Megan and hired her as my nutrition coach.

Megan had me document my nutrition and fitness for a week, and then we sat down together. She showed me the facts, gave me a few adjustments to work on, and guided me with tips, tricks, and tools to be successful in my current stage of life. She takes the time to understand the constraints I have and works with me to set myself up for success. She knows I need to fuel myself properly in order to show up for my family and for my team at Rise. She is also there to give me a kick in the butt when I need it, and other times, to say, “You’re doing great, keep it up”.

A majority of what Megan is having me work on isn’t anything too mind blowing or out-of-the-box, but the real power has come in the accountability that she provides to me. When you have to check in with your coach, it brings something great out of you. Iron sharpens iron, as one man sharpens another.

Just like the Dallas Cowboys former head coach Coach Landry stated, Megan told me what I didn’t want to hear and showed me what I didn’t want to see, so that I can become who I have always known I could be.

Practical Point

My point in all of this is to show you the power of a coach. In all of the scenarios in my life that I’ve had a coach, whether it be in football, wrestling, guitar, business, or nutrition, the coaches helped get me much further than I could have gotten on my own, and they also helped me get there much quicker. If you have a goal that you want to accomplish, I don’t think there’s a better way to get there than to learn from someone who has “been there, done that.” A proper coach has the expertise to guide you to your specific goals so you can get there faster and avoid the mistakes or obstacles that would likely occur without proper mentorship on your side. It doesn’t matter if it’s fitness, nutrition, learning an instrument, or any other skill, the power of a coach is more important than you can imagine.

Challenge

Last week I talked about how if you set yourself up for success with a great fitness foundation, it will be hard to break, and this week I recounted my own shortcomings with nutrition and why I decided to hire a coach, even in a field that I have plenty of knowledge in. So how do these two topics tie together? Well, simply put - a strong foundation can only remain strong for so long if it’s not continually maintained. If structural pieces of your life start to fall apart, at some point, the foundation will start to crack. I hope that sharing my own story in this blog has reminded you that it’s ok if you find yourself in a similar situation, and as long as you’re willing to put in the work, your foundation can be rebuilt.

My challenge to you is to go out and hire the coach, whether it be for fitness, nutrition, or anything else that you need mentorship and direction on. Investing in yourself, and especially in your health, is well worth it to build a foundation that is strong, sound, and will set you up for success.

If you want to connect with an experienced fitness and nutrition coach on our Rise team, sign up for a free fitness evaluation here and we would love to help.