Empower Your Fitness:
10 Strategies for Self-Coaching on Your Fitness Journey 

However, self-coaching is truly the key to creating a sustainable fit lifestyle. It’s about knowing how to pick yourself up when training gets tough or when results aren’t appearing fast enough. Self-coaching can make the difference between achieving long-lasting fitness results, stalling, quitting, or worse yet, yo-yoing.

What type of coach are you? Are you like the middle school coach who gives high-fives and big smiles for all efforts, big or small? Or are you the type of coach who knows when to push, challenge, and promote accountability? 

We can agree that there is a time and place for both types of coaches. Knowing when to be the encouraging coach or the no-holds-barred coach is a delicate balance. Setting yourself up with specific self-coaching strategies will help you improve and sustain a new level of fitness.

1. Define Success

A successful fitness journey lies in understanding what success looks like. Ideally, you want to have a clear vision of the new you: how do you look, and how do you behave? The updated, fit version of yourself will ask the following questions when defining success: How do you know you’ve reached your desired level of success? Gaining clarity about your fitness goals beyond the physical is the foundation for the discipline required to maintain a fit lifestyle. Setting success criteria involves thinking about longevity and the long run. Success in maintaining your fitness boils down to developing a sustainable cadence.

Self-Coaching Tip: Develop a set of milestones that include incremental, achievable actions. These milestones don’t need to be elaborate but should be progressive. For example, if you are at the beginning of your fitness journey, aim to train for 2 days a week for 4 consecutive weeks. This would be an example of reaching the milestone of successful consistency. 

2. The Practice of Setting Realistic Goals

Start with small, achievable goals that build confidence and momentum. Focus on consistency rather than perfection. For example, aim to exercise three times a week initially. Be cautious of false claims on social media about losing an unrealistic amount of weight or gaining an enormous amount of muscle in a short period. Stick to setting SMART goals.

Self-Coaching Tip: Review your goals each morning and set a small, achievable task for the day that aligns with your larger goals. For instance, if your goal is to reshape your physique, commit to completing an entire workout at least one day a week. 

3. Embrace the Practice of Self-Reflection

Get comfortable asking yourself the tough questions, and take the time to sit still for the answers. You know if you are being consistent. You know if your expectations are inconsistent with your effort. You know if your workout efforts are at 100%. Careful not to confuse effort with intensity. Each attempt you make towards getting fit ought to be intentional.  However, not every workout is going to be of the highest intensity, nor does it need to be to bring value. 

Self-Coaching Tip: Spend 5-10 minutes each evening journaling or self-talking about your day. Reflect on what you accomplished, any challenges you faced, and how you felt. This helps you stay aware of your progress and areas for improvement. Reflection will help you develop the discipline to remain consistent in your pursuit of health and wellness. 

4. Get Strong with Visualization

Set yourself up for success by seeing it before it happens. What better way to prepare for a workout than by visualizing your reps and sets before hitting the gym? What better way to have a healthy, whole-food day than by visualizing your meals the day before?

Self-Coaching Tip: Jot down what an ideal day looks like. What will you eat? What will your training look like? How will you feel at the end of the day? Keep this vision in your mind if you find yourself questioning your efforts. Visualize yourself successfully completing your fitness routine and feeling great about it. Imagine the positive outcomes and how they will impact your life. This visualization helps shape your fitness persona by increasing your ability to adapt. The top athletes in the world rely on visualization to enhance performance. Why not you? 

5. Affirm Your Intentions

Affirming your intentions to be fit will be one of your pillars of success. Acknowledging your desire to be a better version of yourself will drive you to stick to your fitness routine and make decisions that support your fitness journey.

The true test of whether your affirmations are working is to consider whether you reflect what you are trying to affirm. What would a stranger say? A friend? Are you walking in alignment with your affirmations or in disconnect? The more aligned you are, the easier the journey becomes. The more attuned you are with your affirmations, the healthier you become.

Self-Coaching Tip: Start your day with 3-5 positive affirmations. Write them in a journal or stand in front of a mirror and say them out loud with conviction. For example, “I am dedicated to my health and well-being.” 

6. Seek Community

Join or create a community of fitness-minded people. Being part of a healthy community will promote your desire to be a better version of yourself and help you develop the mindset required for shifting towards a healthier lifestyle.

Self-Coaching Tip: Use your community as a catalyst for asking questions. You might hear advice about macros or training. Don’t just take their word for it—do your own research and develop a “toss it or test it” attitude. Contribute to your community with questions, updates, and wins. Doing this frequently is a great way to stay on track towards your goals. By sharing your struggles and progress and asking for feedback, you develop confidence in your ability to maintain healthy changes for longer periods. 

7. Celebrate the Wins

Celebrate every single win, no matter the size. Celebrate milestones with healthy rewards. Celebrations can be as grand as you like. Over time, with each win, celebrating yourself will come naturally—and this is exactly what you want.

Self-Coaching Tip: Pre-plan your celebrations. Know that after a full week of completing your fitness program, you will give yourself a facial. After three consecutive whole-food days, you might buy that new water bottle or set of bowls you’ve been eyeing. Perhaps a celebration could simply be posting your journey story within a Facebook community to encourage another person on their fitness journey. Celebrations come in many sizes. You can determine what they are, but just be sure you do it.

8. Manage Stress

Stress is inevitable. How you manage stress will determine your success and the effectiveness of your fitness journey. Take a stress inventory and decide on healthy ways to respond to stress. Actively remove and reduce stressors that are within your control. Even our vices can be stressful. Activities like doom scrolling, drinking alcohol to cope, or overconsumption of your favorite snacks can add stress to your life. Harboring emotions like anger, resentment, or contempt can also generate a stress response in the body. All of these will interfere with achieving a successful fitness journey. Controlling our reactions to stress increases our adaptability, which is essential throughout our fitness journey.

Self-Coaching Tip: Incorporate stress management techniques that mitigate the effects of stress on the body by including slow-tempo training in your workout routine. Embrace stress management techniques like having daily routines and mindful eating. Coaching yourself through stressful situations depends on your ability to stay in a solution-based mindset. Focusing only on the problem and how it stresses you out heightens the stress response. Working with yourself to set up strategies to overcome stress will help reduce the stress related to the problem. This lies in the language you use to define the stress and the language used to describe your response. 

9. Track the Right Metrics

Tracking metrics beyond the scale will keep the momentum in your fitness journey. What good is watching the numbers on the scale go down or being panicked about counting calories if you are tired, hungry, and lethargic? Focusing on metrics like energy levels, mood, sleep quality, and behaviors are metrics that withstand the test of time.

Self-Coaching Tip: Moving with intention and mindfulness is a good way to practice tracking longevity metrics. For example, take yourself out on a date, plan the details, and register your enjoyment metric. If you are sticking to your fitness routine and healthy eating plan, your mood metric will reflect your adherence. Another great example of self-coaching when it comes to monitoring metrics is to do an activity you haven’t done in a while. Tap into how it makes you feel during these activities. Do you have more energy? Are you able to withstand the activity for a longer period?

 10. Enjoy the Journey

Forget about the “No Pain, No Gain” mentality. Your fitness journey is meant to be enjoyed. Celebrate and revel in the idea of creating a new lifestyle. Yes, there will be challenging moments, but if you follow the strategies for self-coaching, you are bound to succeed. The more success you have, the better you will feel, setting the environment for the rest of the physical changes to occur.

Self-Coaching Tip: Keep variety in your training. Create a fun playlist. Try out a new gym or workout. Exercise with a friend. A great activity could be to document your journey on social media. Help another person jumpstart their fitness journey. The act of helping others has a magnificent effect on both the initiator and the recipient.