I have a confession to make.

I have been a coach and personal trainer for 18 years. I have helped 1000’s of clients get results with muscle gain, strength, fat loss, athletic performance, rehabilitation and so much more. I have helped many people with their relationship with food, their habits and behaviours, mindset issues and so much more. This has been with my own work and through the students I have taught.

Despite all of this success and knowledge, I used to NEVER be happy with my own physique, strength or mindset.  Furthermore to that, I have been guilty of or have indulged in every negative mindset factor, dietary dogma and  violated every single training principle mentioned so far in this course and my book. Here is a small list of all the principles I have screwed up over the last 17 years:

• Taught all my clients kettlebells after a weekend certification
• Convinced my clients to eat organic and take an inordinate amount of supplements, following the exact same regimen I followed.
• Disputed the value of calorie balance in favour of food quality.
• Told my clients that ‘functional training’ was a better use of time than bodybuilding. Guess how I trained at that time?
• Rewarded myself with ice cream at the end of a long 14 hour day. I used food as a reward.
• Started a new macro or dietary plan with rigid rules and restrictions on a Monday. This was done more times than I can count.
• Had a blow out and followed it with a period of over the top restriction.
• Ate or drank my feelings away. This happened more often than it should have.
• Judged myself as a personal trainer for not being sub 10% body fat all year round. Judged myself for not being big enough at the same time.
• Told people carbs after 6pm would make them fat.  Fruit was also going to lead to fat gain.
• “Diagnosed” different issues with clients and told them exactly what to do to get better. Didn’t involve them in the decision making process or see if the strategy was the right fit for them.
• Given level 1 clients level 3 strategies and blamed them when they couldn’t implement the advice that I had given them.
• Binged and ignored hunger signals, totally disassociated from what I was doing or what I was eating.
• Avoided social events for fear of what was available to eat and how it would ruin all my results and hard work.

So after all those things listed (and more) why do I think I can educate trainers moving forward? How can I after listing every single little thing I did wrong move forward and get back on track with my coaching, my own training, nutrition and mindset?

That is the power of self compassion.

I often consider self compassion to be the missing ingredient of every personal trainers and their clients toolbox. I also have found it to be one of the most misunderstood tools for emotional self management and also ensuring ongoing results and progression.

A lot of people have the perception that self compassion is a wimpy concept. It certainly isn’t something we should have in the gym. We need to go hard or go home, stick to the plan and overcome all obstacles, without wavering  or accepting defeat.

Although that is common motivational advice, it is at best trite and self serving and at the worst, quite damaging advice. People hold themselves to these impossibly high standards (remember how harshly people judge themselves?) and when these standards are not lived up to, people go down the rabbit hole of beating themselves up and indulging in the behaviours of disordered eating.

What has actually been demonstrated is that people who practice self compassion actually get more done and sustain their work better than people who don’t. They also have a tendency to take more responsibility for their mistakes than people who are highly self critical.

So what is self compassion actually about? How does it help us as trainers run better businesses and help our clientele get better results? Self compassion is made up of three separate yet inter-related components that we will break down and understand fully here.

1. Self Kindness

This one is kind of self explanatory - it is the act of being kind to yourself. It sounds so simple in practice yet is exceedingly hard to put into practice.

It requires that we be gentle and understanding with ourselves, rather than harsh and highly self critical. We need to cultivate an understanding of ourselves and our failures rather than just judging them. It is a process that involves actively comforting ourselves when things go wrong and helping ourselves through those moments.

Now at this point you may be asking yourself ,what on earth does this have to do with running a more successful personal training business and getting better client results?

Remember in the last chapter talking about judgement and disordered eating? One thing that is inevitable and occurs to each and every client is that they stuff up their plan. They miss a workout, indulge in some delicious food or drink until they pass out. This stuff happens.

What we need to do is teach them that it is OK when these things happen. They sure won’t derail an entire program (they may set you back a little but but nothing drastic) and progress can still be made. This story below describes what happens in the situation when a client goes off course and they lack the ability to be kind to themselves:

Client A (lets call her Karen) goes out on a Friday night for work drinks. She has planned to only have a few drink (after all she has a training session booked for Saturday morning) but things get messy quickly. A few drinks turns into a night of cocktails, wine, more cocktails, late night fast food and a hangover to floor an elephant.

Obviously the training session didn’t occur. This client wasn’t taught the skills of self compassion and beat herself up mercilessly for this indiscretion. “You are such a failure, you’ve messed up the entire program, what’s the point of trying now? Let’s keep going, may as well as you’ve already failed.”

She then proceeds to go out for a standard greasy breakfast eating food she normally wouldn’t order which turns into a liquid lunch very quickly. That turns into more drinks and the cycle is repeated for the whole weekend. She blows out totally and beats herself up even more.

This leads into the next stage - excessive restriction and control. She promises herself that this week is going to be even better, she prepares all her food and books in all her training sessions and proceeds to punish herself even harder for having a bad weekend. These are all the characteristics of someone showing signs of disordered eating. I’m sure you have had clients play this exact same scenario out many, many times.

Let’s contrast this with client B, Jon. Jon goes out with his friends on the Friday night and someone they haven’t seen for a long time. A casual night out turns into a big event where the same happens as what Lauren experienced: drinks fast food and a hangover.

What happens in the morning is an entirely different scenario. Jon has learnt the concept of self compassion and doesn’t beat himself up. He tells himself  that it is ok because he had a great time and saw someone he hadn’t connected with in a long time. He didn’t make his training session (not everyone can push through a hangover) but doesn’t beat himself up about it: he generally is pretty consistent.

He tells himself it is ok he went out and had fun (everyone does it, which is self compassion component no. 2) and gets himself back on track. He has a decent breakfast, decides to go to train in the afternoon and for the rest of the weekend behaves in accordance with what he wants to achieve and feels good on Monday when the new week begins.

What approach sounds healthier and more likely to cultivate a good relationship with food? Which one will lead to better results in body composition, health and performance? I’m sure we can predict the answer.

The other amazing thing about being kind to yourself is that it allows our clients to develop skills to help themselves when we aren’t around. We have spent a lot of time emphasising the importance of not creating a judgemental space and an environment in which clients feel comfortable being vulnerable as a way to allow them to cultivate change. We also need to show our clients ways to help themselves as the few hours we spend with them per week can barely make a dent for the 168 hours that they have to deal with themselves.

2. Recognition of the common human experience

Sometimes when we are going through our ‘dark nights of the soul’ we feel that our suffering is ours and ours alone - no one else understands what we are going through in that particular moment. It is all our own to deal with.

The truth of the matter is what plays out in our own and our clients lives is the exact same story that has played out countless times before. All humans share the same experiences and feelings over the course of their lifetime. Ironically, people are generally kind to people going through a rough time but not ever themselves.

In the context of personal training, how many clients have missed a session, deviated from a nutrition plan, had a rough training session, suffered unexpected aches and pains and overdid it on the weekend? The correct answer is all of them and I’m pretty sure every personal trainer has done it as well. Understanding that what has happened to you, has happened to so many other people and is ok is a very powerful thing and has a huge impact on behaviour.

Using the above example of Karen and Jon, Jon recognised early on that this happens to everyone. From here he could tell that if it has happened to everyone, what is the point of judging himself so harshly? He was able to understand the situation, forgive himself and treat himself with kindness and then get back on track with his goals.

Karen did not treat herself kindly. She didn’t pause to recognise the fact that this is something that everyone has gone through. If she had the skills to pause, evaluate the situation for what it is, she could of moved forward and gotten back on track. This also would of  helped her develop a better relationship with food and herself.

3. Mindfulness

This refers to the clear seeing and non-judgemental acceptance of what is occurring in the present moment. It allows us and our clients to see what is truly happening, understanding its impact and as we have learnt from earlier in the book, the simple idea of cultivating awareness develops change.

This component of self compassion allows our clients and ourselves to recognise if our behaviour is serving us or not. It empowers our clients to make a decision on what they can do in response to each challenge that they have to deal with.

One of my favourite parts of cultivating mindfulness is it allows us to work on our relationship with food at the same time as developing our self compassion. Here is an example:

Let’s imagine a client who is demonstrating the signs of disordered eating. When they binge, they go straight into a dissociative state and aren’t aware of how much they are actually consuming. They remember their amazing trainer (thats you!) prattling on about mindfulness and how it can help them in these exact same situations. They stop for a moment and sense into hunger cues, emotional states, environment and how the food is making them feel.

They realise pretty quickly that they are actually feeling a bit sick from the amount of food they have put away and decide to stop. The simple act of awareness stopped them from consuming an additional 500-1000 calories and allowed them an opportunity to practice their skills of self compassion.

When they pause and take a moment, they remember the concept of common humanity. They recognise that pretty much every person has binged on ice cream, alcohol or something at some point and no one is perfect. This allows them to talk to themselves in a kind manner, move on and get back on track.

A simple moment where a client was mindful of what they were doing was able to reduce their calorie consumption drastically, improve their relationship with food and feel good about themselves. This is how powerful mindset coaching can be, it does not seem like much when we speak about it, but the many ways in which it impacts our clients behaviour can give far better results than the perfect macro and calorie prescription.

In terms of how powerful self compassion can be, it has been shown to help achieve meaningful changes in body composition. Here are some of the changes and how they can help our clients and our businesses:

• Dieters who practice the skill of self compassion lose more weight and keep it off - We can all see how this is valuable!
• Self compassion can decrease emotional eating and disassociation - Having other tools to deal with emotional stress means clients are less likely to turn to food for solace.
• Self compassion helps people accept and seek out their healthy weight and shape with less shame, rigidity and negative body image - This is especially important as our clients are increasingly being exposed to bodies that may not be achievable to them based on their body type, genetics and a whole host of other factors. Accepting this is important as it allows on clients being the best that they can be, rather than comparing themselves to something unobtainable and beating themselves up.
• Self compassion can help clients regulate their feelings, leading to less reactive behaviour - this will help stop binging type behaviour.

There is a ton of research on self compassion and its many benefits - for an abridged version I recommend all trainers and coaches read the book Self Compassion by Kristin Neff.

These qualities listed above are EXACTLY what we need as coaches to facilitate our clients ability to be vulnerable and improve their lives. If we are really serious about being the best coaches we can be, we need to take our own self development as seriously as we take our program design and other technical skills. When a trainer actually makes the time and effort to invest in themselves and develop their own mindset skills, their business  growth always follow suit.

What happens here is the trainer actually starts listening to the client. By creating a safe space, focusing on client centred coaching, providing social support and teaching real problem solving skills, trust and rapport is deepened and developed. My average client lifespan is around  4-5 years, which is a very long time in the personal trainer game. My longest tenured client is 18 years (yes, since I started) and I have developed these skills over that time to build this type of business.

I want to deviate a little here from our focus on how to help our clients. I also help trainer build better businesses and I have seen self compassion being one of the key skillsets to develop as a coach, not just to help clients, but grow your business. I will illustrate this with two very contrasting stories of mentoring students of mine.

Both of these students came to me pretty much straight out of their personal trainer studies. Both also worked in commercial gyms which can be either an extremely good environment, rich with opportunities to learn and practice or a place that overwhelms you quickly.

One student was almost adamant that I ‘prove myself’ to him to be his mentor. I went and talked to him, asked about his career goals, training and nutrition philosophies, his approach  and to see where he was at. What I seemed to hear as the the main message was that he craved financial stability and was willing to do what was needed to get there. I told him that personal training was a hard career and required a fair amount of grinding - early starts, late nights and required a lot of you to become successful. He said he was ready, so we started a mentoring arrangement.

Early on, their were issues with not showing up to sessions that we had booked or the online material not being looked at. I was actually told off by him for ‘taking it too seriously” yet I wasn’t the student, I was the Coach! I had his best interests at heart and checked in to offer him help as much as I could, as I remember how hard it was starting out.

Unfortunately, he had a tendency to beat himself up and treat himself harshly for any number of reasons - he didn’t have enough clients, he lost a client, he didn’t workout enough, he couldn’t communicate to clients, he didn’t know enough about nutrition - the list was endless.

What his lack of self compassion did was take him from a ‘growth’ mindset, where skills can be developed, things can always be improved and developed into a ‘fixed’ mindset - he just didn’t know enough, client don’t listen because they don’t take him seriously (the irony is not lost on me) and personal training cannot be a sustainable business. He quit after a few months as a trainer to find a stable job because he didn’t have as many sessions as the trainers who had been in the club for a number of years.

The other student was a study in contrasts. He made constant mistakes but learnt from every single one. He realised early on that he was going to have to put in time to become good at this. He never compared himself to another coach or trainer, but instead focused on what he could do to be better.

In all honesty, I have never seen an individual with a more developed sense of self compassion. He never seemed to let anything really bring him down and every single client he worked with loved him as he made everyone feel incredibly comfortable. He also took the concepts that we have talked about in this book and applied them to himself. When I first met him her would not touch a carb out of fear of getting fat and spent the effort to work on himself so he could help his clients out. 

The point of all this is that all these ‘soft’ skills lead to lasting career development. Don’t underestimate them for yourself as well.  Developing these skills will help you push through the hard early days of establishing a career as a personal trainer. You also will make many mistakes in your career so it is very valuable to be able to have self compassion for yourself.