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Why Pay for Coaching? What My HYROX Coach Taught Me About Coaching
Why Do I Pay for a Coach?
I'm a coach.
But even I have a coach.
Someone I pay to help me.
And here's why.
In a world where information is available in the palm of my hand, and we have turbo-charged AI reasoning to help answer the most random of questions (not necessarily correctly!), I often wonder if I need to pay for coaching.
I can ask Copilot to write me a recipe. ChatGPT can give me a gym plan. Claude could work out a quiz for assessing how to help parents who are carers. Even Google now gives you a semblance of a helpful answer without having to click into twenty different websites.
So why would I pay someone to coach me when I can get so much information for free?
Because information isn't really the thing I'm paying for.
About a year ago, my husband came home from the gym and announced he was going to take part in a HYROX event. A week or two later, that had somehow morphed into "we're doing a mixed doubles together."
Erm. Nope.
I was quite happy working out in my garage gym.
I'm not a gym person. I'm not naturally sporty. I hadn't run for years. I'd never looked at myself and thought, I'd really like to spend my spare time training for a fitness competition. I mean I wanted to do something that wasn't caring but Hyrox was not on my carer's free time bingo card.
But I'd built myself a little gym at home because, for me, it was the easiest way to exercise around having a daughter with Type 1 diabetes.
Living on a hair-trigger of Dexcom alarms meant that going too far from home could feel like a risk. If I went for a run, there was always the possibility that Abigail would go hypo while I was several miles away and couldn't get back quickly. Even going to the local gym ten minutes away could mean checking the Dexcom between sets and wondering at what point I should jump in the car and sped home.
So being able to work out metres from where she was had become a bit of a security blanket.
But Rob was adamant we were doing HYROX.
And, eventually, I agreed.
Partly because I'd started to think differently about exercise.
I'd had enough reminders over the years that my own health wasn't something I could keep putting off. My mum passed away at 68 after struggling with complications from obesity, and I'd spent years dealing with my own gynaecological problems. Then came the hysterectomy and the rather uncomfortable realisation that I needed to take my health seriously.
Not because I suddenly wanted to become a fitness person.
Because I wanted to be around.
My daughter needs me.
And if I'm going to keep caring for her for as long as possible, I want to be as physically capable as I can be.
I watch Abigail deal with things that are difficult every single day because of Type 1 diabetes. So if I have to put myself through a bit of discomfort in a workout in order to become stronger and fitter, well, I can probably manage that.
The first HYROX wasn't exactly spectacular.
We hit the wall at the wall balls.
Literally.
So a plan was put in place to improve.
And this was where I realised I couldn't just carry on doing my own thing in the garage.
I needed the proper environment. I needed to practise the things I wasn't good at. I needed someone who could see what I was doing rather than me deciding for myself what I thought I was doing.
So I started going to a HYROX class.
And this is where my coach, Aden, comes in.
Because I could have bought a HYROX training plan.
I could have asked ChatGPT to write me one.
I could have watched YouTube videos about technique.
I could have spent hours reading about how to improve my SkiErg.
Instead, I had someone standing there watching me.
One day I asked Aden what I was doing wrong on the SkiErg.
He didn't give me a completely different technique.
He didn't give me a ten-point action plan.
He noticed one small thing.
Reach higher.
That's it.
One tiny adjustment.
But it made the movement better.
And that's the bit I think is really easy to miss when we talk about coaching.
The value wasn't in some piece of information that nobody else knew. I could have found plenty of information about SkiErg technique.
The value was that Aden had been watching me over time.
He knew how I moved. He knew what I'd been struggling with. He knew what I'd already tried. He could see something I couldn't see myself, and he knew that one small change was enough to make what I was already doing work better.
He didn't need to reinvent everything.
He just needed to spot the thing that would make the difference.
And then, of course, he could remind me about it the next time.
And the next.
That's what I pay for.
Not information.
Someone who knows me well enough to notice the tiny things that I can't see for myself.
Someone who can help me work out what needs to change, without throwing the whole plan in the bin.
Someone who can make a small adjustment rather than telling me I need to become a completely different person.
And someone who is still there next week.
That's what makes it stick.
And it made me think about my own coaching.
Because the parents I work with don't generally need another list of things they should be doing.
They know they should make more time for themselves.
They know they shouldn't always put themselves last.
They know they need some space outside the caring role.
They know they'd probably benefit from doing something that is just for them.
They can Google it.
They can ask AI.
They can download a checklist.
The difficult bit usually isn't knowing what they should do.
It's working out what will actually work in their life.
And then making the change small enough, realistic enough and useful enough that they can actually keep doing it.
That's the bit I understand because I've been on the other side of it.
I didn't need someone to tell me that exercise was good for me.
I needed to find a way of exercising that worked around my life.
I didn't need someone to tell me I should get better at HYROX.
I needed someone to watch what I was actually doing and say, "Try this tiny change."
And sometimes that's all coaching needs to be.
Not a massive overhaul.
Not another hundred things to think about.
Just someone who knows where you're trying to get to, understands where you are now, and can spot the one small thing that might help you move forwards.
Sometimes you don't need another answer.
You need someone who knows you well enough to say:
"Reach higher."
And knows that, for you, that tiny change might be enough to make things better.
That's why I pay for a coach.
And it's why I believe coaching is worth paying for.
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