Why Hiring a Coach Will Change Your Life

I have hired coaches in a lot of areas of my life over the years, including personal finance, career transition, online business building, and personal nutrition / fitness. So I have a ton of experience being coached in addition to doing the actual coaching.

They have not all been home runs, but the majority have worked out well. And as long as you pick the right one, I am very pro-coaching overall.

Working with someone who's several steps ahead of where you want to be in any area of life is one of the most impactful things you can do to reach your goals.

Here are several benefits of working with a coach:

Peace of Mind Accountability Save Time Save Money

Peace of Mind

I started working with a Nutrition and Fitness Coach a few months ago to help guide me through my muscle building phase, and it's already one of the best decisions I've ever made.

I committed to 6 months up front, and I'll be surprised if I stop there. Baby Stella will be arriving right around the 6 month mark, but I think I'll still keep it going.

I knew I'd enjoy it but I'm loving it way more than I thought I would. And I think it's the peace of mind element that is my favorite part.

While you can lose fat in a relatively short timeline (you can make a ton of progress in a 3-6 month time frame with the proper plan in place), building muscle is an entirely different ball game. And I knew that to a degree heading in - that it was going to take a lot of time. But I don't think I realized quite how much time. You have to be thinking in years on a muscle building plan.

There are no shortcuts to building muscle, unless you plan to take steroids. Building real muscle requires an intense, full body weightlifting routine paired with a high protein diet while consuming a slight to moderate calorie surplus, over a very long period of time. There is no other way around the long timeline.

To illustrate that, here's the plan I outlined with my coach. My goal is to build ~10 pounds of muscle across my entire body. If I'm honest I thought that might be possible over the 6 month period I committed to. And if you are a beginning lifter, it would be possible to do so over that time period. But I came into the program after being on a very advanced lifting program for a full year and half beforehand, and already in very good shape. The newbie gains were well behind me. So the first thing my coach Charlie made clear was that there's absolutely no way you will put on 10 pounds of muscle in 6 months. But it is of course possible to do so over the right timeline.

So here's the plan we laid out:

Nutrition Program: - High Protein diet (~200 grams per day) - Slight calorie surplus (~2900 calories, which is ~200-300 above my maintenance)

Training Program: - Customized, full body weightlifting program - 4 lifts per week, 2 upper / 2 lower, ~1:15 - 1:30 per lift - No cardio or group fitness classes required as part of the program

Other Lifestyle Elements: - Sleep: 7-8 hours per night - Alcohol: as little as possible - completely counterproductive to the goals

Weight Gain Goal and Timeline: - During a bulk you want to gain at least ~10% of your bodyweight before thinking about a cut - Started at ~183 pounds, so 10% is 18 pounds gained - Targeting ~0.5 pound gained per week - Will take until October / November of this year to gain the 18 pounds - Once weight is gained, will do a cut to remove excess fat and reveal the muscle built

This approach is also known as a "lean bulk". The alternative is a more aggressive bulk where you target a considerably larger calorie surplus. But you gain way more fat than is necessary that way. While gaining weight you obviously want to maximize muscle and minimize fat. You accomplish that by taking the lean bulk approach. But it also therefore takes way longer, which you just have to accept.

By the way, even while maximizing the muscle gain / minimizing the fat, the weight gained will still be somewhere around 50% muscle / 50% fat. So therefore I will likely gain at least 9 pounds of fat by the end of this year.

And I will not be interfering with the plan by working in some sort of silly summer shred. That would be counterproductive to my primary goal and likely completely offset any progress I had made in the bulking department. So I won't be quite as shredded this summer as last summer as a result. Who cares. I'll still be crazy jacked. And next summer will be absolutely insane.

Accountability

This benefit of working with a coach should be obvious but sometimes it's not. And what I can also tell you is that as someone who used to think he may not need the accountability because I'm so disciplined, I was dead wrong. Everyone benefits from any form of accountability no matter how advanced they are.

Professional athletes have coaches. Olympians have coaches. Their coaches are a critical element to their success.

There is simply no way I am going to miss a workout while working with Charlie. I cannot imagine having to report to my Sunday check in that I missed one of my training sessions. I just will not allow it. That's the power of accountability.

Save Time

I alluded to this element earlier, but you are 100% paying for your time back by hiring a coach. Time is the most precious commodity we have. We cannot get it back. You will save hundreds of hours over the long term by hiring a coach.

A huge part of a coach's responsibility is to get you to your goals in the most efficient manner possible. And set you up for life to keep you on track after the coaching is done.

Save Money

As coaching services obviously cost money, you may be surprised I included this one, but it's 100% true. I tackled the fat loss portion of my journey years back without a coach. I wasted thousands of dollars on various personal trainers, nutritionists, supplements, and random fitness programs / services along the way. And it of course took 2-3x the amount of time it should have.

If I had hired a health coach (I didn't even know they existed), I would've spent half the amount of money overall and reached my goals much quicker.

Wrap Up

Working with a coach is a lot of fun. Whether it's in the health and wellness arena, or another area of life where you're looking for direction, I would highly recommend it.

Stay well this week, Hal the Health Coach