For optimal results, stop listening to so many coaches

You’re probably familiar with he saying ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth.’

Even if they’re all great at their job, if you just leave them all do their own thing and add whatever they want to the broth without working and communicating with each other, eventually you’re going to end up with a horrible end product.

And it’s the exact same thing with health, fitness, strength & conditioning, etc.- if you look to too many coaches for help and advice with the same thing you’ll end up getting overwhelmed with information even if all the information is good advice.

Humans can only process so much information so when we become overloaded we tend to just keep doing the same thing as we were doing all along. Think of that. You get all this free information and still end up doing nothing with it.

So who do you decide listen to? Well in my opinion, you listen to the coach you’re paying and if you’re not paying a coach, then you listen to someone you trust and who has a proven track record of delivering the results that you want.

This is a very common problem with social media as we have exposure to thousand of coaches from all over the world (including myself) who are all eager to share their knowledge. But the big problem is that none of them, bar maybe a handful, have ever met you.

They don’t know your history, your past challenges, how you move, how quickly you pick exercises up, your character traits, etc. and because of this their advice could be the last thing you need right now.

I once had a client who had decided to give up alcohol completely in January, drop all the processed food and hit the gym 3-5 times a week. He was committed to finally getting in shape and turning his lifestyle around. No doubt if he had asked multiple coaches if this was the right thing to do they would generally have said that it was- the gym work would boost his metabolism and removing a lot of the excess calories would help with the weight loss.

And that is sound advice……..but not for this client. You see this is what he had done for the past decade and it have never, ever, ever worked. In fact he had gained weight every year because it wasn’t the right option for him.

I got him to leave the gym go for a while and go for a few walks instead. I also told him not to stop drinking and just drink a bit less instead. I decide the best approach for him was to break his old ‘New year resolution’ mindset and focus instead on developing a few basic, ingrained habits that we could build upon bit by bit.

Long story short, he lost 7olbs of junk of fat and completely turned his lifestyle around.

If he had listened to 10 other coaches all trying to advise him of the best approach then he would have gotten too confused and defaulted to his old habits, even if the advice he received from each of them was generally good.

I don’t buy into this idea of someone being the best coach. I believe that certain coaches are the best fit for certain people. So if you find one who has great record of delivering the results that you want and you trust them, do yourself a massive favour and reduce the input from the countless other voices yearning to be heard and just implement what they’re telling you.

You’ll feel less stressed, massively increase your results and will have a lot more time to enjoy the things that are important to you.

Make sense? Let me know your thoughts in the comments sections below.

Steve