You’re working with Coach #1: male, 30 years old, fit, and has been a trainer for a few years now.

He’s hooked in to all the latest technology, sports stuff coming down the internet and Youtube sites. He has an endless list of sites he can share with you. He is coaching (is he a coach or a trainer, really?) a 50-year old female client through burpees and step ups, in Cross fit fashion. She is getting an awesome ‘vertical jump’ and she hates burpees, but she does it because he says so, and, well, everyone else is doing them, so they must be good. But her back often hurts after, and her knees are touchy, so she can’t do them really fast. Not yet. But she promises to work harder at it. But she really wants shapely arms, a tapered back, strong shoulders…can we do some ‘bodybuilding moves?” No, she is told. That’s old school. We don’t do those much anymore. It’s about being functional. Don’t you want to be functional? She says yes, of course, but she really wants to have nice shape, tight butt, bigger biceps, and wider shoulders, but she doesn’t’ want to tell this young man, he might think this old lady is being too vain!

And now she has to do her cardio…she hates that part. But it will get the fat off, right? It hasn’t really worked so far, but she’s hoping…but she really wants to change her shape! She’s getting older and wants that shape back! Can she ever get it back? When she trains with weight, it’s with lighter weights, higher reps, to burn more fat, and to not let her ‘bulk up’ too much. The goal is ‘long and lean muscles’, so this is how we do it, right? Don’t ask, just DO. She’s given a few menu plans to take home, and told that she simply has to eat a certain number of calories, and continue to do her cardio and box jumps to lose the weight. And if it isn’t working, then she’s being non-compliant, and/or it’s because ‘your metabolism has naturally slowed with age”. Or perhaps she’s not using her food app properly…’you ARE using it, right? Do you have the right numbers in there…?

Or, ‘you’re just not training hard enough…you gotta leave it all on the gym floor,’ she is told. But then she wonders why she is always coming down with colds, she feels like she can’t recover. She’s just not doing it right, she’s failing, again…why can’t she progress? She thinks she has ‘metabolic’ damage’, yeah, that’s what it is, everyone is talking about it. I must have it too. It’s not my fault, but maybe I can’t reverse it, or maybe it’s my hormones, they’re out of whack. I’ll go see my GP, maybe he can help, because my trainer, well, he/she won’t know anything about it really.

She's been around long before Muscle Mag and before women were allowed to even compete in bodybuilding, and long before there were protein shakes (she did, the natural way, always natural, never even a diuretic or fat burner, just trained with real food, the good old fashioned way). She has children, is a working mom, and she too is going through hormonal changes, skin changes, has competed (maybe), so she knows that game, and all its pitfalls, but she prefers to live ‘like an athlete, not a competitor’. She eats and trains consistently, intuitively, because she has learned, really learned, to listen to her body. Finally. She has had her time with endless diets, endless cardio, messing up for years, and has learned the proper way to train for her age and genetics and gender, stuff that you can’t really find in an exercise magazine (because she was around long before there even were exercise magazines, pumping it out in the gym, learning ‘on the ground’). She has earned her stripes, to be sure, and walks the walk.

Female Coach #2 turns away from trends, and is not swayed by the latest ‘diet’ plan, or hyped-training protocol, or the ‘latest-and-greatest-eating plan’ because she knows better, she’s lived it ALL. Her teachings have come from real life experience, the only true teacher, in her mind, having lived it all. If ‘the crowd’ is doing it, then it’s a sure-fire reason NOT to do it. She is independent, unique, captain of her own ship. She fuels her body well, and she no longer wars with herself about what, and how much, to eat. She eats intuitively. And she LOVES how she feels and looks, how she can perform in the gym (she LOVES training!) and her body continues to respond to her sound, safe, progressive training programs over the years. In fact, she is STILL making changes to her body in her mid 50’s, and she LOVES it! Her immune system is strong, her recovery is strong, and she feels Powerful in ALL ways – physically, mentally, nutritionally and Spiritually (let’s NOT forget about the spiritual aspect! It is sooo important!). THIS is why she does what she does, and what she passes on to other female clients wanting to take control of their bodies, their habits, their lives. As a coach, she easily passes this knowledge on to other women, just like her, because she IS one of them. Coaching is not what she does, it’s who she IS. And her female clients know this to be true.

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