Motivational Interviewing in Fitness Coaching

I used to think motivational interviewing (MI) was a hiring technique.⁣ ⁣The word “interviewing” really threw me off!

When I heard about motivational interviewing for the first time, I figured it must be some sort of business/management world tactic for hiring new employees.⁣ ⁣I honestly ignored it for a while, until the first year of my PhD program, when I found it popping up in research related to health behavior change,⁣ and since then, I've been hooked on using it in my fitness coaching practice.

I've received extensive training over the years, included aspects of motivational interviewing in my own research and coaching, and spent some time facilitating multi-day trainings in the corporate world (where I eventually learned that self-employment is my true calling).⁣ ⁣

I'm also a big fan of motivational interviewing because it's a beautiful example of science applied to the real world.⁣ ⁣ Many other theories and “understandings” in psychological science were used in the development of motivational interviewing (e.g., self-determination theory, positive psychology, growth mindset, and self-efficacy, all of which I discuss in more detail in the Health Mindset Coaching Certification)⁣ ⁣

Before I get deeper into motivational interviewing, it's very important to note⁣ that it is not a quick “technique” you learn in one sitting.⁣ ⁣ It's a skill that requires practice over time and is a bit like learning a new language —⁣ you might hire someone to help you and practice with you, you probably should read some books, and you'll stumble and feel awkward for a while.⁣ ⁣

As a fitness coach, leveraging motivational interviewing in your practice can make a massive shift in your business when it comes to client retention, adherence, and success.⁣⁣ I'm HUGE on cultivating connections with clients, and motivational interviewing is a large component of this.⁣ ⁣

But what if you're not a fitness coach?⁣ ⁣Motivational interviewing can be helpful for you, too.⁣ ⁣ It's an awesome skill to have when it comes to helping others in your life (friends, family, team members, colleagues) navigate through behavior change, resolve ambivalent feelings, set future goals, and make decisions.⁣ ⁣

What is Motivational Interviewing?

First, a common misconception is that motivational interviewing is kind of like motivational speaking.

It's actually more like a trust-building style of coaching or counseling that you can use to guide others to become their own sort of motivational speaker. A person's motivation can come from many different places, and this method is a great way to help your clients create their own motivation.

Motivational interviewing is an evidence-based approach to helping others increase motivation toward behavior change and resolve feelings of uncertainty. I highly recommend it to any practitioners and coaches in health settings to draw out your client's ideas rather than trying to impose your own opinion on them.

William Miller and Stephen Rollnick developed motivational interviewing based on principles of humanistic psychology. It is especially effective for overcoming habits and behaviors that are hard to change, like addiction, alcohol abuse, unhealthy eating, and lack of exercise.

The main goal of motivational interviewing is to help clients resolve ambivalence about change and strengthen their commitment to their personal goals. By exploring their motivations and barriers, motivational interviewing empowers clients to take control of their own change process.

Motivational interviewing is widely used because it is effective and respectful. It’s particularly helpful in fitness coaching, where clients often face significant challenges in changing their habits and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

It helps your coaching clients create their own opinions on change rather than relying on following your thoughts and beliefs. By using motivational interviewing, fitness coaches can better support their clients in making lasting, positive changes.

It will allow you to better help your clients achieve their health and fitness goals, which is also great for your client retention!

How to Use Motivational Interviewing as a Fitness Coach

Motivational interviewing in fitness coaching can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your coaching by empowering your clients to find their own motivation.

While I can't fully teach you how to implement motivational interviewing in a single blog post, I can share some guiding steps to help you get your client's behavior more aligned with their ideal self. But if you want the real deal and to learn how to apply motivational interviewing to your fitness coaching practice, I highly recommend joining the Health Mindset Coaching Certification, where I will go in-depth on details of how you can use these evidence-based clinical skills to improve your coaching practice and encourage more positive health behaviors in your clients.

I strongly believe in motivational interviewing because simply telling someone what to do or how to do it is a sucky way to help them grow, learn, and develop.

Components of Motivational Interviewing

We can break down motivational interviewing into three components: skills, guiding principles, and foundations.

Understanding these components is like understanding a plant (a sentence I never thought I would write but am excited to be writing).

The Foundation of Motivational Interviewing

The foundation is the spirit of motivational interviewing. It resembles the proper soil and pot a plant needs as a healthy base to grow from.

In practice, this looks like partnership, acceptance, compassion, and evocation.

The Guiding Principles of Motivational Interviewing

The guiding principles are like the stake a plant might need to stand up straight and grow in the right direction.

Applying this in your coaching practice means resisting the urge to automatically fix or provide answers when your client is struggling. You must understand your client's motivations to change or not change, listen with empathy, and empower them.

The Skills of Motivational Interviewing

The skills are similar to what your plant needs to keep flourishing and thriving (e.g., water, sunshine, pruning, fertilizer).

The skills you'll need as a fitness coach are asking open-ended questions, giving affirmations, expressing empathy, practicing reflective listening, recognizing behaviors as part of a normal human experience, asking permission, and summarizing.

Motivational Interviewing Techniques

As I mentioned earlier, motivational interviewing is a skill that requires training and practice. You will most likely feel awkward at first, but you'll become confident doing it with the proper training and implementing what you learn.

The first step in motivational interviewing is to build a strong rapport with your clients. Establish a trusting relationship by showing genuine interest in their lives and goals. Use open-ended questions to encourage them to share their experiences.

I'm not saying you have to be their best friend because boundaries are important, but you do have to genuinely care about the people you're helping.

Once you've built rapport, you should help your clients set clear, specific, and achievable goals.

You might already use the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) method, but I actually prefer the SMARTER goal framework.

Specific

Measurable

Additive

Rewarding

Timely

Efficacy

Reverse engineering

This is the Health Mindset Coaching Certification's updated goal-setting framework based on behavior change research and years of coaching experience.

We swap out a few concepts from the⁣ SMART framework and add a couple more.⁣ Ultimately, the biggest issue I have with SMART goals is that they don’t account for fixed mindset tendencies.⁣

Once your clients have set SMARTER goals for themselves, you want to explore ambivalence.

Clients often feel ambivalent about change. Use reflective listening to understand their mixed feelings and explore the pros and cons of their current behavior versus their desired changes.

Next, highlight the discrepancy between your client's current behaviors and broader goals. This reflection can help them realize the need for change.

You'll also want to support self-efficacy. Encourage your clients to believe in their ability to change. Acknowledge their strengths and past successes to build their confidence.

As I mentioned above, reflective listening is a required skill for motivational interviewing. It involves paraphrasing what your clients say to show understanding and encourage them to express more about their thoughts and feelings. Your ability to express empathy is very important here, and it will help build further rapport with your clients.

Then, you'll want to summarize the discussions you've had to ensure you're understanding them and to highlight key points. This is when you collaboratively develop a plan of action that your client feels confident about.

Regular follow-ups are crucial to maintaining motivation and making necessary adjustments to the plan. Make sure you're asking the right questions during your client check-ins to get a solid understanding of how your client is progressing and where they might be struggling.

These motivational interviewing techniques can create a supportive environment that enhances your client's motivation and leads to better adherence and sustainable behavior change.

Use these strategies to help your clients unlock their potential and achieve their fitness goals.

How to Incorporate Motivational Interviewing in Your Coaching Practice

By now, you might be pretty keen to start incorporating motivational interviewing into your coaching practice. While I gave you some pointers above, it's important to remember that this method is more complex than I can teach in a single blog post.

If you truly want to make the most of motivational interviewing to help your clients improve their physical health conditions and potentially even improve their mental health, I strongly encourage you to sign up for the Health Mindset Coaching Certification.

The Health Mindset Coaching Certification is a 13-week program for health and fitness professionals that equips you with the skills needed to help your clients end self-sabotage, break through mindset barriers, and make behavior changes for good.

It will help you develop the skills to effectively help clients stick to the plan, stick with you, and achieve long-term success in their health and fitness goals.

Throughout this live 13-week program, you’ll learn how to leverage the science of mindset and health behavior change to better encourage a growth mindset in your clients to promote increased retention, connection, adherence, and success.

Best of all? Health Mindset Coaching Certification is recognized by the National Academy of Sports Medicine, the Athletics and Fitness Association of America, and the American Council on Exercise as an approved continuing education provider.

Join the waitlist now, and you'll immediately get access to five FREE lessons in mindset and behavior change so you can start implementing these methods in your coaching practice right away!

Studies on Motivational Interviewing

There are several studies that show that motivational interviewing is effective for encouraging behavior change in a variety of health and fitness areas.

Here are some of my favorites:

Motivational interviewing to increase physical activity in long-term cancer survivors: a randomized controlled trial

This study looked at the effectiveness of motivational interviewing in increasing physical activity among long-term cancer survivors.

Fifty-six inactive adult cancer survivors were randomly assigned to either a motivational interviewing intervention group or a control group. The motivational interviewing group received one in-person counseling session and two follow-up phone calls over six months.

Results showed that the motivational interviewing group significantly increased physical activity, especially those with high self-efficacy for exercise. However, there were no significant differences in aerobic fitness, health, or fatigue between the groups.

The article indicates motivational interviewing may be especially beneficial for those confident in their exercise abilities.

Pathway to health: cluster-randomized trial to increase fruit and vegetable consumption among smokers in public housing

This study investigated how effective an intervention was at increasing fruit and vegetable intake among smokers living in public housing. The trial involved 20 public housing developments, with 10 assigned to receive the fruit and vegetable intervention and 10 to a smoking cessation program.

The results showed that the group focused on increasing fruit and vegetable intake boosted their consumption significantly compared to the smoking cessation group.

Motivational interviewing and trying new recipes were listed as being particularly effective strategies in helping the participants increase their fruit and vegetable intake.

Motivational interviewing to improve weight loss in overweight and/or obese patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials

This study looked at the effectiveness of motivational interviewing for weight loss.

By analyzing data from 11 randomized controlled trials, researchers found that motivational interviewing significantly enhanced weight loss in overweight and obese individuals. Participants who received motivational interviewing lost more weight and had greater reductions in body mass index (BMI) compared to those in control groups.

Motivational interviewing was shown to be an effective strategy for weight management in this population.

If you read my blog post on how to identify high-quality research studies, you'll appreciate this study as using the most robust research methodology and having high real-world application.

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Sources

Ahluwalia JS, Nollen N, Kaur H, James AS, Mayo MS, Resnicow K. Pathway to health: cluster-randomized trial to increase fruit and vegetable consumption among smokers in public housing. Health Psychol. 2007 Mar;26(2):214-21. doi: 10.1037/0278-6133.26.2.214. PMID: 17385973.

Armstrong MJ, Mottershead TA, Ronksley PE, Sigal RJ, Campbell TS, Hemmelgarn BR. Motivational interviewing to improve weight loss in overweight and/or obese patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Obes Rev. 2011 Sep;12(9):709-23. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-789X.2011.00892.x. Epub 2011 Jun 21. PMID: 21692966.

Bennett JA, Lyons KS, Winters-Stone K, Nail LM, Scherer J. Motivational interviewing to increase physical activity in long-term cancer survivors: a randomized controlled trial. Nurs Res. 2007 Jan-Feb;56(1):18-27. doi: 10.1097/00006199-200701000-00003. PMID: 17179870.

Miller, W. R., & Rose, G. S. (2009). Toward a Theory of Motivational Interviewing. The American Psychologist, 64(6), 527. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016830