How to Help Clients Who Self-Sabotage

Client check-in days can be a good time. 

Your clients share their wins with you and talk about how excited they are that they've been consistent with their nutrition and training, and they're eager to keep going and making progress. 

It would be fantastic if every client check-in was like this, but, unfortunately, it is not. We also often deal with check-ins with clients who struggle with self-sabotage. Helping clients who struggle with self-sabotage can be challenging, but it is possible to help them when you understand the psychology of the behaviors leading them to this struggle.

What is Self-Sabotage

Self-sabotage can prevent your clients from reaching their full potential and achieving their goals. It shows up as a pattern of behaviors, thoughts, or actions that undermine one's own progress and well-being, often leading to frustration, disappointment, and missed opportunities.

Recognizing Self-Sabotaging Behaviors

There are many ways self-sabotage can show up, so it's essential that you, as the fitness coach, can recognize the common signs and patterns.

Self-sabotage involves engaging in behaviors that go against one's best interests despite the desire for positive outcomes. These behaviors may appear in various forms, such as procrastination, self-doubt, perfectionism, avoidance, or negative self-talk. It may also include setting unrealistic expectations, fear of failure or success, engaging in self-destructive habits, such as overeating or substance abuse, self-sabotaging relationships, or consistently avoiding opportunities for growth and advancement.

There are many forms of self-sabotage, so you need to stay vigilant during your client check-ins and really pay attention to their behavior during calls and how they speak about themselves, their goals, their progress, etc.

Everyone has negative thoughts from time to time, so you'll have to pay attention to whether your client is speaking negatively because they feel overwhelmed or are having a stressful day or if their negative self-talk is constant and related to self-sabotage or a greater issue altogether.

Causes of Self-Sabotage

Self-sabotage often stems from deeply ingrained beliefs, fears, or past experiences that undermine someone's confidence and sense of worthiness. Clients who have low self-esteem or poor mental health are more likely to engage in self-sabotaging behavior.

Self-sabotaging behavior may come from things like fear of rejection, fear of change, low self-esteem, perfectionism, or unresolved past traumas. Identifying and addressing underlying triggers is crucial for overcoming self-sabotage and creating personal growth.

One of the root causes of self-sabotaging behavior is a fixed mindset, which is why it's essential that you know how to help your clients navigate their mindset as well. The best way to stop self-sabotaging is to teach your clients to embrace a growth mindset.

Health and fitness coaches need to help clients address self-sabotage because it can have serious implications on various aspects of their lives outside of their health and fitness progress, including career, relationships, and overall happiness. It can hinder professional advancement, sabotage meaningful connections, and perpetuate cycles of dissatisfaction and stagnation.

Help Clients Put an End to Self-Sabotage

As a fitness coach, your role extends beyond prescribing workouts and meal plans. You serve as a guide and mentor on your client's health and wellness journey. Self-sabotage is a barrier that can derail even the most well-intentioned efforts.

While helping clients overcome self-sabotaging behaviors like negative self-talk or negative thinking is more complex than what I can cover in a single blog post (in fact, we have a whole certification dedicated to this stuff!), I wanted to share some starting points to help your clients embrace self-compassion and increase their self-confidence.

Cultivate Self-Awareness

People who self-sabotage don't necessarily realize that they are standing in the way of their own success. And there's no way for them to move in a positive direction if they don't realize they have this negative behavior.

You should encourage your clients to develop self-awareness by reflecting on their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors related to their fitness journey. Help them identify patterns of self-sabotage and understand the underlying triggers that lead to these behaviors.

Addressing destructive behavior such as negative self-talk takes rapport and tact, so be mindful of how you approach this topic with a client who self-sabotages. These five free lessons in mindset and behavior change are a good place to start.

Help Clients Embrace a Growth Mindset

Chances are that your client wants to stop self-sabotage and embrace a growth mindset, but they don't know how to do that themselves. This is likely why they hired you in the first place (even though they may not realize that at this moment).

You need to guide your clients in reframing their negative beliefs and self-limiting thoughts into more empowering and constructive narratives. Instill confidence in their abilities to overcome challenges and make progress toward their fitness goals.

Embracing a growth mindset means getting ready for some uncomfortable feelings about what's been going on. Maybe the negative behaviors are your client's default setting, so helping them cultivate a growth mindset to get out of their own way will take trust, time, and effort.

You can learn how to help your clients embrace a growth mindset and ditch limiting beliefs through my Health Mindset Coaching Certification. I'll teach you to develop the skills to effectively help your clients stick to their fitness plan, stick with you, and achieve long-term success in their health and fitness goals.

Set Realistic Expectations With Clients

Being a fitness coach means you have a relationship with your clients. A great relationship means more honesty, collaboration, and success. So, you have to start looking at each client as a person with whom you have a relationship rather than as a number or contributor to your bottom line.

Once you have a relationship with your clients, you can make true progress.

Collaborate with your clients to establish realistic and achievable fitness goals that align with their values, priorities, and capabilities. Break down larger objectives into smaller, actionable steps to foster a sense of progress and accomplishment. They may have a distorted view of what's realistic in terms of progress, so it's your job to ensure they are being reasonable with their goals and expectations.

You should also help your clients navigate their fear of failure or success by normalizing setbacks as part of the learning process and emphasizing the importance of resilience and a growth mindset. Encourage them to reframe failures as opportunities for learning and growth.

And don't forget, client success relies on you creating a supportive and non-judgmental environment where they feel safe to share their struggles, fears, and setbacks openly. This is where the importance of having a good relationship with your clients comes in once again. You can also create a sense of community and belonging within your coaching program to enhance motivation and accountability.

Clients Who Self-Sabotage

Truth time: As a health and fitness coach, learning how to program for progressive overload and how to set macros for fat loss didn't prepare you for helping clients overcome self-defeating behaviors or negative emotions. It certainly didn't prepare you to teach your clients how to embrace a growth mindset. ⁣

I'm going to guess that one of the struggles you've faced as a fitness coach is dreading certain check-ins because you know your client didn't stick to the plan this week, and you're out of ideas for how to help.⁣ You're probably exhausted after a week of check-ins with clients who say they're motivated and ready to go, just to see them fail to follow through again.⁣

It's normal to be frustrated by your lack of strategies to help clients who struggle with self-control, all-or-nothing thinking, and negative thought patterns.⁣ You're also likely losing confidence in yourself as a coach because you have clients who continue to sabotage their progress, no matter how you adjust the plan.⁣

⁣It's draining.⁣

And your nutrition and training certifications didn't prepare you for this problem, but that's okay because you've got me!

Like I said, I can't teach you everything about how to help your clients in a single blog post, but I can do a LOT if you spend 13 weeks with me in the Health Mindset Coaching Certification.⁣

Is the Health Mindset Coaching Certification Right for You

The Health Mindset Coaching Certification is your opportunity to truly learn how to cultivate a growth mindset yourself and in your clients. Nowadays, it feels like everyone wants to be a mindset coach, but few people have formal training in the subject.

I have a Ph.D. in psychology and have spent nearly five years researching mindset and health behavior change. My expertise and approach to mindset is what gives the KJO Coaching clients so much success. My fellow coaches and I implement these practices within my coaching business, and I can teach you to do the same for yours.

You'll learn how to help clients overcome issues like low self-esteem or negative self-image, and you'll teach them to embrace a growth mindset and push themselves to achieve more goals and get more out of life.

A growth mindset isn't just about changing your client's adherence to their nutrition plan and workouts. It's about every aspect of their daily life, and you can be part of the reason why they become more successful in every way.

Click here to get on the waitlist for the next round of Health Mindset Coaching Certification, and you'll get immediate access to five FREE primer lessons you can implement in your coaching practice today.

How to Help Clients Who Self-Sabotage

I'm not here to just reel you into this post and tell you to enroll in the Health Mindset Coaching Certification⁣.

Here's a quick tip you can implement right now to help your clients get out of their way:⁣ Ask your clients questions instead of telling them what to do.

You should be enrolling your clients in the “hunt for the solution” rather than coming up with solutions that you think will stop their self-sabotage.⁣

Here are some examples of how this could sound:⁣

• What do you think is causing the self-sabotage? What's triggering it?⁣⁣
• Can you describe a time that you were able to overcome self-sabotage? Even once?⁣
• ⁣Do you have any ideas for how we can tackle this?⁣
• ⁣What makes the difference between times you do self-sabotage and times you don't?⁣

Remember, you're the nutrition and fitness expert, not the expert on your client's life, preferences, strengths, etc.

Once you see the coaching relationship as that, a RELATIONSHIP, and something that requires collaboration (a core tenant at KJO Coaching!), you'll be better at addressing self-sabotage (P.S., I have a 5-day free workshop series on all aspects of self-sabotage, too!).⁣

⁣And the more often your clients feel like they're helping create a plan and make decisions, the more likely they are to be successful.

Become a Better Fitness Coach

You're already a great coach who wants to help your clients become the best versions of themselves, so why not become the best version of yourself? 

The Health Mindset Coaching Certification is perfect for fitness professionals who are constantly struggling with non-adherent clients and feel unable to help those with self-sabotaging behaviors, all-or-nothing thinking, and/or mindset barriers.

Through this 13-week program, I can help you become more confident in your abilities to help your clients with the psychological aspects of health and fitness. You'll be able to help your clients with mindset, habits, goal setting, willpower, self-efficacy, confidence, negative thought patterns, and more!

Click here to join the waitlist for the next round of the Health Mindset Coaching Certification and get 5 FREE primer lessons to get you started!

Want more ways to help your clients put an end to self-sabotage? Check out this and this episode of the Not Another Mindset Show podcast.

Check out my original Instagram post here.

Connect with us

Email: [email protected] 

IG: @coachkaseyjo @kjocoaching