Coaches have to watch for what they don’t want to see and listen to what they don’t want to hear.
John Madden

Did you know all communication isn’t the same?  As a coach that has worked with hundreds of people throughout my career this is a key point I learned quickly! Understanding how I can communicate with you, the individual has always been a focus of mine.

Communication is one of, if not the most important part to getting success, building rapport and relationships, ensuring we are on the right path towards your goals and creating the environment for good movement, health and longevity with training.

Let me take you back to our hunter-gather days, we as human beings had to use communication to hunt and conquer our pray, we had to work in unison, delegating roles, positions, weapons, tools and creating a plan to eat, to live. Communication has driven the human race forward, with the ability to speak being considered a key difference separating us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Without communication we could not teach, pass down information from generation to generation so we can build upon our previously learned knowledge.

Communication I could argue as one of the fundamental life skills. The ability to communicate, spread knowledge between one place or person, to another can be the difference between friendship or loneliness, being employed or unemployed, being understood or misperceived. We use communication throughout our lives to inform, express, influence and covey our thoughts, feelings, emotions and perspectives to those around us.

Within the context of health and fitness when communicating we see this between trainer and client, between colleagues and businesses. The act of communicating or not communicating is a valuable skill for a coach to attain, it is what separates success in their goals and habits to low adherence and separation.

So, the question remains, how do we even communicate?

Well, I could probably write a book about this concept but I will keep it brief.

We all communicate in a manner of ways, we have styles that work best, some use multiple, some use all and some are bias to particular types.

We can communicate in 4 main modalities:

Auditory / Listening:

These types of learners are best communicated with through breaking down a movement for example:
“Today we will be running through a squat, I want you to set up your hands to the appropriate length, get under the barbell un-rack it and then prepare to squat.”

Here I have told you what to do.

Demonstrating / Seeing:

This type of learner prefers to watch, they will observe me doing the movement and then try to emulate the movement themselves. Monkey see, monkey do type of scenario.

Kinaesthetic / Doing:

This is my personal preferred style, the hands-on approach. I can watch people do it until the cows come home but until I have done it, I struggle to connect. As you can figure, the kinaesthetic approach is one where we practice through experience, repetition of the movement so we can learn and improve.

Visual / Reading:
Lastly another of the four main modalities is the reader / visual learner. This is where you may read a text book around cue’s, set up, movement arms and so on to understand the movement and what’s required.

As I said earlier, each individual with be a mixture of each learning style. Take a moment now to think about how you learn, how you understand people better, I’ll wait.

Done? Great

Now you are equipping with this knowledge to ensure you get the most out of your relationships whether it’s personal, business or with your coach trying to improve your health, knowing how you understand is a valuable tool, one that you should let others know so road blocks and miscommunication are avoided or at least minimised in the time you spend with each other.

Some people reading my blogs week in week out will resonate with the reading style, others prefer other mediums such as Instagram where they can view videos and photos of the education material, others prefer the face to face in one on one or group class settings or resort to our Online services if they just need to do it.

Whatever the case, Move Right has a goal of developing relationships with you, yes you! We endeavour to understand, connect and help you reach your goals by valuing communication.

Want help? Reach us at @ moverightep@gmail.com.

We look forward to communicating with you!

Check out our new book ‘Move Right. Live Right’. Available on Amazon, Booktopia + More! A book to empower you to take control of your health, lifestyle, training + more!