Here's a test I keep coming back to, fifteen years into doing this.
Can you name your client's partner?
Their kids?
What they actually do for work, Monday to Friday?
What's been going on in their life the last few weeks that might explain why they showed up flat today, or trained harder than usual?
If the answer's no, I wouldn't call what you're doing coaching.
It might be instructing. It might be programming. Both are real skills. Both have their place. But coaching is narrower than that, and harder to fake. It's a relationship where you and the client both understand what you're working toward together. You can't build that with someone whose life you know nothing about.
Most coaches don't set out to skip this part. It just slips.
Six sessions back to back. The client in front of you wants to get through their sets and get on with their day. The easiest thing in the world is to run the session well and move to the next one. Nobody's a worse coach for it in the moment. The reps get counted. The form gets corrected. Everyone leaves having done something.
Over months, that adds up to a client who's been well managed and never actually known. Clients can tell the difference, even when they can't say why. They stay because the programme works. Right up until something in their life changes and the relationship isn't strong enough to hold them through it.
Then, they quietly stop coming. You're left wondering what happened. The honest answer is nothing dramatic happened. There was just never enough there to hold onto.
This isn't about being warmer for its own sake. Knowing someone's life isn't small talk you tolerate before the real coaching starts.
It's the information you need to coach them well. The person whose knees ache more than they let on. The person quietly anxious about a daughter's wedding six months out. The person whose motivation has nothing to do with fitness and everything to do with wanting to still be independent in ten years.
None of that shows up on a movement screen. All of it changes what good coaching looks like for that person.
So the test stays simple.
I'd rather it stay uncomfortable than get diluted into something easier to pass. Not certifications. Not how sophisticated the programme looks on paper. Just: do you actually know them?
Worth checking yourself against this week. Before the next session, not after.
If you want to build this properly into how you run a first conversation, rather than leaving it to whether you happen to remember on a busy day, that's most of what I'm teaching live on 29 July. Not the point of this post. Just flagging it's coming, for anyone who wants the fuller structure behind it.
Cheers!
Paul
(Get your seat to the Relational Coaching Method here)
