Use Your Smart Phone to Boost Your Wellness Quotient

Today the avid use of smartphone technology has completely changed how health coaching works and has ensured that coaches have a much better chance of succeeding and getting results with their clients. Here are four key areas where the smartphone has changed for the world of health coaching.

1. More efficient time management

A lot of people are hesitant to sacrifice 2 to 3 hours of their day to go and meet a health coach. Alternatively, smartphone technology allows people to conduct video calls, ensuring that a consultation can be done remotely and in a time-efficient manner. Whilst we still recommend that the first consultation is done face-to-face, the video call format ensures that follow up consultations and periodic check-ins can be done conveniently, efficiently and more regularly.

2. Better rapport building

History has shown that getting people to change habits that they have followed for a long time is very difficult. The coach needs to continuously educate the client, support them and build a rapport with them. This rapport and support is very difficult to do in one-off consultation. However, a smartphone messaging service allows continuous communication which helps build trust and a rapport. The coach can also share regular articles or videos to educate the client about good lifestyle tips such as intermittent fasting to convince the client to adopt the habit.

3. The use of apps as supplements and coaching aids

There are a plethora of apps that can help the coaches introduce good habits into their clients’lifestyles and ensure that incorporating good habits becomes easy. For example, there are various apps offering short guided meditation routines and apps for offering workout regimes that can be done at home, outside, or in a gym. This makes the life of a coach a lot easier.

4. Wider Database of clients

Technology ensures that coaches can work with more clients and a more diverse client base. This means that coaches become more experienced automatically as they start to see what works on different groups of people and have more data points to see the most effective ways to reverse/manage certain conditions.

(Written by: Ankit Ruia, co-founder of The Health Concierge, an innovative Dubai-based wellness company that offers 1 on 1 health coaching to help people become healthier and happier)