Dave Hubbard is a fitness coach

The Coach Approach

Is there a difference between a consultant, a trainer, and a coach? By definition they are actually closely related. However, people’s perceptions of each are very different. A consultant is an experienced individual that is trained to analyze and advise a client to make better choices or to better meet strategic goals. Few people really get what a consultant actually does. On the other hand, most people have experienced a coach or a trainer at some point in their life.

Research was conducted on words associated with training and coaching… here are the top words associated with both.

Training: Prescriptive (71%), Rigid (70%), Intimidating (50%)
Coaching: Supportive (98%), Empowering (82%), Inspirational (77%)

It is clear from those associative words that perception favors coaching over training. Possibly that relates to the origins of the word coach. Coach is one of the few English words borrowed from Hungarian. It comes (via French coche and German kutsche) from Hungarian kocsi, an adjective meaning ‘of Kocs’ (Kocs is a village in north-east Hungary, between Budapest and Györ, where carriages, carts, etc were made).

So, how did a Hungarian horse-carriage word get applied to coaching? The modern sense of a coach as an instructor originated in the 19th-century as university slang. The idea being that a coach, from its original meaning, was someone who guided students through a particular course of study. The coach carried, as it were, the student through the course, as a coach (carriage) would carry someone from point A to point B.

That word-picture accurately portrays the difference in coaching, verses training or consulting. First, there is a journey involved, which has a starting point and a selected destination. One of the negative perceptions of consulting is that the process is often vague and specific goals undetermined. Someone once said of consulting, “If you’re not a part of the solution, there’s good money to be made in prolonging the problem.”

The act of carrying someone – assisting them to get from one place to another – denotes companionship, close relationship, and the act of accomplishment together, verses simply training someone how to do something. A coach is someone who takes you from where you are now to where you want to be. A coach goes with you through the process, and must be trusted to carry you to your goal successfully.