Describing health and well-being can be extremely challenging. It’s often hard to explain what we mean, as different things are applicable and important to each individual.

It’s important that you develop a framework for conversations with your participants that allows you to check in, have meaningful conversations and develop goals and actions to enhance their physical well-being.

The World Health Organization defines health as ‘a complete state of physical mental and social well-being not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’, which is great and works well in the fact that good health is not merely the absence of bad health but also about social well-being, mental well-being and of course physical well-being, which we will explore further in this guide.

The ultimate unit of well-being is available energy through physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual outlets. A physiological system that is uplifted by adequate movement, nourishment, recovery, positive mindset, and supporting environment can thrive.

In simple terms, we can think of physical well-being as having enough energy to live, perform and play.

Increased mental energy will provide increased cognitive clarity to receive and consolidate information. Increased emotional energy supports building and maintaining challenging relationships. Increased spiritual energy helps us find purpose and meaning.

When we are considering physical well-being, it’s important to remember that it’s driven by our underlying physiology.  

Through this guide, we will explore each domain before considering a usable framework to help you apply these in your setting to meet the needs of the people you coach.

The people you coach are individuals. They are all unique and will have different priorities depending on their circumstances.

The skill of the coach is to create conversations, explore their priorities and work with the individual to take positive steps in the right direction that can directly affect and influence their physiology and subsequently their physical well-being.

It’s essential to remember that all the domains of physical well-being influence each other.

The five domains provide a progressive framework to consider with your participants, beginning with movement.

The illness – wellness continuum

High-level wellness does not preclude periods of illness and weakness. It simply defines choices we can make over things we can control in our life, including our behaviours.

John Travis developed the continuum to highlight how an individual can move along and through premature death, disease, poor health, neutral state, good health, and optimal health stages to get to high-level wellness. He emphasised that well-being includes mental and emotional health, as well as the presence or absence of illness.

When you consider that everyone is somewhere on the continuum, you can adjust or manipulate the five domains to nudge them towards a higher level of wellness. Whilst you can’t resolve a long-term health condition or complex medical issue, enhancing the five domains will improve their overall well-being, which will contribute to their improvement and recovery.

The difference between a medical intervention to solve a chronic issue and physical well-being is that these are preventative strategies. They provide the foundations before considering the extra one percenter and ‘marginal gains’ sometimes referred to in elite performance. It’s about having solid foundations in place and making good choices more often to enhance our physiology and physical well-being state.

When you go to the doctors, they ask about your lifestyle as well as your ailment and symptoms. They’re looking for behaviours they can improve that support the foundations.

Optimal functioning and premature death

As a participant moves to the right of the continuum, you can associate their state with some recognisable phrases in the coaching space.

Can you help the individual move from ‘surviving’ and ‘languishing’ into a state of being they may describe as ‘flourishing’ or ‘thriving?’

Your aim is to support people to the right of the continuum from wherever they are currently to an improved state, using their goals and motivations as the focus for change.

• Surviving.
• Languishing.
• Flourishing.
• Thriving.

If we think of the human body as a tree, it helps us to understand the importance of having strong foundations in place.

In people, the blossoms and flowers may be body shape, composition, and weight loss; and we chase a solution just for this isolated issue. We see people on yo-yo diets, missing meals to make it into an outfit, or prepare themselves for a beach holiday. It’s common to see exercise promotions ‘hooking’ into our insecurities and offering a quick-fix solution.

But physical well-being is more than physical fitness.

Movement

The natural starting point for any coach is movement, and this is the first domain we will explore.

The human body, and more specifically our physiology, requires frequent movement to function optimally.

Moving as well as exercising helps with:

• blood circulation
• heart health
• digestion
• blood sugar levels.

When we consume calories or eat certain types of food groups, this can lead to metabolic problems. We will look at this when we explore nourishment.

Movement is different to exercise because it's what the body needs, and it requires it for most of the day.

If steps are available, they are a very good quantifiable unit of movement. The recommended step count per day is 8,000 steps, and to achieve this, you need to be moving for at least 90 minutes per day.

If steps aren’t an option, alternatives include:

• sit and stand
• tricep dips
• wheelchair propulsion
• seated knee raises
• seated workouts
• swimming.

If we can only focus on one aspect of physical well-being, it is to take someone who has inadequate levels of movement and add movement to their day.

Exercise

As coaches, we all know the benefits of exercise and physical activity.

As we become older our body begins to waste away. This occurs at different times during the lifecycle for individuals: for some this will begin in their late 20s, others their mid-30s and for some in their 40s.

Three things are changing:

• Starting to lose muscle mass and strength.
• Reduced cardio-vascular functioning: the ability of the heart and lungs to circulate oxygen to my organs and muscles.
• Reduced flexibility: muscles have shortened and have a smaller range of motion.

Why is this happening during the lifecycle?

Muscle mass uses lots of energy, so to preserve our life the body begins to lose 2-5% of our total muscle mass each decade. This means you have less muscle to absorb blood glucose and less muscle to protect joints and control movements, which increases the risk of injury.

As we become older, our body thinks we don’t require muscle. To prevent muscle wastage and loss of strength, a weight training programme is essential to delay the body’s natural wasting of muscle.

Cardiovascular fitness is measured as VO2 Max (the maximum rate of oxygen your body can use during exercise). The system also removes waste products from the body.

This is still the best single indicator of how long an individual will live, so it’s a very important factor for physical well-being.

Including physical activity that stresses the heart and lungs into our routine is crucial. Aerobic/cardiovascular activity:

• strengthens the heart and lungs
• keeps the circulatory system working strong
• can reduce the risk of disease
• can enhance mood
• can improve brain function.

The oxygen that is being demanded and pumped around the body is required for energy expenditure and is proven to provide better stress resilience. That’s why we often feel better after aerobic exercise.

Reduced range of motion and flexibility can have an impact on our daily activities, preventing us from completing actions such as putting on a coat, tying shoelaces and reaching up on the top shelf of the supermarket.

If our muscles get less oxygen, that will affect their plasticity, leading to reduced muscle mass and cardiovascular ability. The introduction of regular mobility, flexibility and range of movement activity into a person’s well-being programme is important to prevent this from happening.

Nourishment

Nutritional knowledge and information have moved from hard to gain to hard to ignore, with thousands of dietary messages and messengers making understanding personal food choices a difficult task.

Beyond the many subtleties of clinical nutrition, there are some simple principles of eating well that can play a significant role in the physical well-being of an individual. A return to basics, based on the logic of why we eat, is a great place to start.

Human bodies have evolved alongside our natural environment. This is never more obvious than when looking at nourishment through food. A body that does not consume vitamin C will develop scurvy, that does not consume vitamin D, rickets, that does not have broad-spectrum proteins, tissue loss (muscle).

We eat to consume nutrients that work alongside our physiology to perform tasks essential to everyday life and function. A broad spectrum of nutrients are required to keep human physiology functioning well over its lifespan. Nourishment leads to discussions on eating a ‘whole food’ diet, rich in diverse, plant-based foods, ideally forming a rainbow of colour on the plate.

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Recovery

The word recovery has moved from the treatment couch of elite sports to the living room of the general public. Brands selling compression trousers, massage guns, ice baths and more have entered the mainstream, as people increasingly recognise the value of recovery as part of their lifestyle strategy.

Recovery is more than the simple act of reducing post-exercise soreness and, alongside reducing excessive inflammation, also includes the process of restoring energy during sleep, buffering excessive stress, and supporting optimal digestion. Recovery is as critical as movement and nutrition to physical well-being.

The cornerstones of recovery are sleep, stress, and inflammation. All three play an important part in how our body recovers or doesn’t recover from the perspective of physical well-being.

Before we explore each one in turn it is important to remember that all are important and if we have a deficit or gap in one area this will impact our overall recovery capability. It’s important to make sure that your participants are taking actionable steps in all areas.

Good sleep with a highly stressed lifestyle doesn’t work, just as a balanced stress lifestyle won’t offset inflammation if we don’t allow the body and its physiology time to recover. Constant training without adequate recovery will have a detrimental effect on performance and overall well-being.

Sleep

Humans spend nearly a third of their lives asleep, yet the science of sleep is still in its infancy. What we do know about sleep is that it is our critical biological process for restoring energy, regulation of immunity, consolidation of memory, processing of trauma and more. If we are thinking about recovery, then improving access to quality sleep patterns should be a major part of our strategy.

This probably sounds like common sense, that’s because it is. Most people know that the average person requires 7-9 hours’ sleep per night, but this will differ for individuals: for some, this will be 10 hours, and for others, as few as 6.

But just because it’s common sense, doesn’t mean it’s common practice. There are circumstances in our environment and times within our life stages that will have an impact on sleep long term. Think about the shift pattern worker, the new parent, and the person who is experiencing night sweats during the menopause.

Alongside this, you can support your participants to try to reduce ‘bad’ choices that will have an impact on their sleep, such as staying up late on social media, gaming into the early morning, or mismanaging caffeine and alcohol.

Getting good sleep requires the same amount of planning, preparation, and considerations as training well.

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Stress

Stress is the lifeblood of performance with increasing pressure being closely associated with increased performance in sport and life in general. However, when pressures regularly exceed our ability to cope then positive stress becomes negative. Understanding this process and key points in improving resilience in others is a major focus of good recovery.

Stress is broadly defined as ‘pressures upon an individual that exceed their ability to cope.’

The pressure performance curve represents when stress moves from a positive pressure to a negative pressure. The use of the pressure performance curve can be useful when trying to move away from a simplified concept such as ‘fight or flight’.

When faced with an acute stress, the human physiological response is ‘fight or flight,’ a series of biological processes driven by the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system.

However, for most people, their stress is not acute stressor, like a bear attack (threat to life) or being stopped for speeding by the police. Instead it is a progressive feeling of overwhelm brought about by the gradual and successive volume of smaller, often initially seen as insignificant, demands upon them and increasingly inadequate recovery to deal with those demands on a daily basis.

The pressure performance curve works on the principle that life without pressure is not the optimum goal. Hypostress is a very real state, felt by those with no role in life, no purpose, no sense of belonging and no demands placed upon them. It may feel like the ideal goal but ‘languishing’ in this state is associated with poor physical and mental health.

The ultimate aim is enough pressure (demands) to not only match the resources with coping mechanisms, but also, occasionally exceed them. A small amount of hyperstress is critical to growth and development and it is on these principles we can understand progressive overload and the role that plays in human performance improvement.

The key phrase here is that ‘stress is positive, distress is negative’ and prolonged exposure to too many demands, with inadequate recovery and processing, will lead to both negative performance (think overtraining) but also negative impacts on health.

Finding ways to decrease pressures, increase coping through emotional, mental, and physical strategies to bolster recovery capability, is a great focus for a good coach.

Inflammation

Inflammation is a word often used but rarely defined. There are two types: acute inflammation and chronic inflammation, which is often more subtle and long lasting.

Inflammation is a protective response to acute or long-term stressors. Acute inflammation occurs post exercise (delayed onset of muscle soreness (DOMS)), fights infection and speeds up the healing process after an injury. Reducing acute inflammation may play a part in the recovery process.

Chronic inflammation can last for several months, through to years. The symptoms may present as mild or severe and include:

• Fatigue
• long-term body pain
• weight loss/gain
• gastrointestinal complications such as diarrhoea and constipation
• constantly picking up viruses and infections.

Reducing chronic, or cellular inflammation, is linked to a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and neurocognitive disease such as Alzheimer's.

Mindset

Our body prepares for what we anticipate. If we regularly anticipate a stressful outcome, then we prepare for stress. If we regularly anticipate a peaceful outcome, then we physiologically prepare for pleasure. The role of mindset is well established in sports performance but managing thoughts and thought patterns is a key piece of physical well-being. We become what we think.

Reinforcing a positive mindset as a coach will be central to your coach behaviours and coaching sessions. From encouragement and check ins, through to praise and constructive feedback, they all help underpin a positive mindset.

The more we experience positive emotions, the more our brain releases the neurochemicals dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. These are known as the happy hormones. An easy way to remember these is we need our daily DOSE (dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins) to be happy.

Dopamine is involved in the anticipation of an event or feeling rather than in the actual feeling of happiness.

The neurochemical oxytocin is responsible for making humans into sociable beings. As it triggers social bonding when it is released, it is the cause of the emotion of empathy, which brings us closer to other people.

The neurochemical serotonin controls mood, whether it is positive or negative. It is a regulator, which means that it contributes to the regulation and maintenance of homeostasis within the gut system, influencing physiological processes like nutrient absorption, blood flow, and immune system health.

Hormones called endorphins are known to mask pain or discomfort and are closely related to the fight or flight response. Endorphins are released by the brain in response to pain or stress, which includes during exercise, eating, and sex.

Human physiology prepares for what it believes is going to happen next. If you ‘anticipate’ a 100m sprint race, before the gun goes off your heart rate will increase, blood rushes to the muscles, blood glucose levels rise, and your digestive processes shut down in preparation. Your body knows what is about to happen and prepares before it physically moves a muscle.

On a simple level those who anticipate poor outcomes will have a different physiological pattern to those who anticipate positive outcomes.

The rise of meditation practices, particular mindfulness, increase our understanding that a present and grounded mind will create a present and grounded physiology. If my mind is racing into future negative scenarios, then so is my preparatory physiology. A mind that is slow and grounded in the ‘now’ produces a less physiologically demanding response.

Changing a person’s mindset is more than transforming pessimistic thinking into optimistic thinking. It is a broad and complex area. However, as a coach, helping others avoid ‘catastrophising’ into negative future scenarios is a great approach.

Practices like relaxation, meditation and mindfulness can help enormously. Broader mindset work around positive visualisation (manifesting*) is also a powerful tool to help create a mental roadmap to success before it has been achieved.

This can include journaling, writing down positive thoughts and moments, creating a vision board (a visual of all the things you would like to come true) and playing out positive thoughts and outcomes every day. Flip your thinking to what is the best that can happen, rather than thinking the worst.

When a teacher catches a young person doing something positive, well and improving, they ‘catch’ them in the moment and add positive reinforcement to the behaviour and actions. This is a useful tool for any coach working with people, as it helps build a positive mindset, ‘can do’ culture and a safe environment. You can continue adding to their confidence and positive mindset ‘reserves’.

*Manifestation is the act of daydreaming or more specifically, having the ability to imagine and envision all your dreams coming true.

The power of ‘yet’

Psychologist Carol Dweck termed the phrase, ‘yet’. Encourage participants to finish otherwise negative statements with the word ‘yet’ and listen to how it changes the sentence.

This is rewarding effort, perseverance, and commitment over the outcome. That empowers the person to continue the challenge and see that you value them and what they bring as a person, rather than focusing on the immediate outcome.

Environment

Our physical well-being is not only driven by the actions we take, but also the environment in which we find ourselves. Environment is the

Our physical well-being is not only driven by the actions we take, but also the environment in which we find ourselves. Environment is the setting in which our physiology finds itself most frequently. The presence or absence of light, noise, heat, toxins, and other factors all affect the way we function and feel, as well as our lifespan.

Everyone’s environment, personal circumstances and setting will be different, and are influenced by:

• light and dark
• chronic heat and cold
• toxicity
• noise.

Mindset is very important in thinking differently. As Yoda once said: ‘do or do not, there is no try’. In other words, a positive and can-do attitude can make all the difference. When an individual’s environment is challenging or limited, the solution could be found within their imagination and the ability to think differently.

There are a number of factors which can negatively affect a person’s environment, including:

• working in a noisy environment, such as a factory
• working night shifts
• rotating shift patterns
• working indoors
• having a sedentary occupation
• living near an airport
• being unable to walk.

Despite all the prominent news and social media, genetics has a startlingly small impact on chronic health. Think of genes as an enabler: they make things easier or harder for some people, rather than possible or impossible.

Some people’s genetics make weight management easier, while for others their cardiovascular baseline is much higher, and they are a high responder to a training stimulus. Others try harder to make muscle gains, whilst others need fewer sessions. It isn’t a case of have or have not; you need to support participants to work with the genes they have to impact on their physical well-being.

Applying this to coaching practice

Role modelling

We can start by considering the lessons learned in the latest evolution of corporate well-being. It’s not about ‘telling’, or ‘prescribing’: if an organisation wants to impact on the health of their people and the organisation, they must go beyond the gym membership, healthy snacks and fruit bowl offerings. It’s about the directors and managers modelling those behaviours.

Encourage the people you coach to make time for movement, and not only to eat healthily, but also to make time to eat. People look to mimic and learn from the actions and behaviours of those they look up to.

Think of yourself as a person that people might look to learn from and model the behaviours that you’d like to see them adopt. Be willing to start conversations about physical well-being, be curious about your participants, and compassionately challenge choices that you think aren’t helping them.

Removing the limitations

In the real world, at your coaching sessions, you are unlikely to be able to arrange a private and confidential consultation that allows you to talk and explore the domains in detail. You are more likely to be using the template that you apply to your own life. Through leading a life that is high energy and high value you become the poster person for how physical well-being really does drive performance.

Beyond your own actions and behaviours, a practical approach, and the perfect starting point are ‘pinch points’ or ‘pain points’ for your participants. They are real, relevant to them and a great motivator for change.

You may notice an action or behaviour in a session that opens the door for a question, such as someone consistently yawning in sessions, using energy drinks repeatedly, complaints of niggles or always having a bug and unable to shake it off.

At other times it can be a conversation around how they are progressing, what is their energy levels like, how would they describe their energy and what is the comparison to last month?

Talking ‘pinch points’ stops the conversation being about them and makes it a conversation with them. Using the domains as a framework will allow you to skilfully discuss aspects of their performance. You’re looking to flip the conversation to identify a benefit, the use of a limiting factor or complete improvement through identifying one, maximum two, actions they can focus on over the coming six weeks.

Why six weeks? Physiology doesn't change overnight, and the idea that seven days at a health retreat will change 20 years of physiological adaptation is mad. A single action, a one-off activity, a new supplement will have little impact.

It’s the aggregation of micro-tweaks and actions, steady and constant reinforcement across the five domains will have the impact. You may work with a participant to ‘case’ one domain initially, creating a ‘quick’ win, but for permanent change its important that the gains are made across the five domains.

Over time, the actions become habits and behaviours and you can consolidate those with your participants by reinforcing, praising improvement, checking in and arranging a catch up to discuss further.

This is your opportunity to connect the improvement, behaviour, and habits to the area they wanted to be improve. This may be energy levels, or a more specific area. You show them how they are owning and taking responsibility for their own physical well-being.

These are the barriers that impact on their progress and will be specific to the individual. The barriers may change and alter throughout the lifecycle and as their personal circumstances change. As more factors impact on an individual the barriers can become greater:

• A single parent may have less time.
• A night shift worker has less opportunity to have a regulated sleep pattern.
• A woman may be peri-menopausal and their symptoms include brain fog and weight gain.

In isolation, these are challenging. Imagine they’re all happening to the same person! Take the time to understand your participants’ circumstances, situation and what is important to them. This helps you work together to find the solution that works for them.

Consider the factors that may be a barrier to the individuals you coach, such as:

• age
• gender
• motivation
• personal situation
• working conditions
• impairment/disability/long-term health condition
• current active status
• life stage.

Take the time to talk to the person and understand their personal situation. No magic wand or silver bullet, just simple behaviour change tactics.

Asking someone about their energy levels is a knock on the door: their response provides you with the permission to enter. You can explore across the five domains to connect with their ‘pain point’ and work with them to explore actions and behaviours to reduce it.

If a participant shares a health condition with you, you can’t say you can improve the condition. What you are able to do is explore the five domains of physical well-being with them to remove their specific ‘pain point,’ and that this may in turn also help their health condition.

Stress response and coach behaviours

When we consider individuals, we have to remember that we are all unique and that one size doesn’t fit all. This includes mindset. One person may benefit from an increase in stress (hyper) to get up to an optimum performance level. The same level of arousal affects another participant very differently and may have a negative impact on their performance and create distrust with you and others.

Your coach behaviours, including how you communicate, your words, language, and tone and your mannerisms are crucial and need to be combined with ‘noticing’. As a coach remaining vigilant to the environment, you can create appropriate stressors for individuals, ensuring they receive the appropriate ‘dose’ of stress to maximise their growth and development.

If you recognise that an individual is extremely volatile or boiling up to a point where they're looking stressed and potentially underperforming, and that they would benefit from some down regulation, you can try a few calming words, something that says in this situation I want you to be as fluid as possible.

Another participant might need to go into a state of hyper stress to go into that initial contact in a rugby game.

Your role as a coach is to pick the right tool at the right dosage for the right person.

Helping the individual shift their mindset will have a significant impact on their performance and importantly, also on physical well-being. If a participant is demonstrating several symptoms of emotional distress consistently during a period of two weeks or more, then you should refer them to their GP. If you believe the person is thinking of hurting themselves of others, you should refer them yourself.

Symptoms of emotional distress:

• Low or no energy.
• Feeling helpless or lost.
• Unexplained aches and pains.
• Becoming more withdrawn.
• Worrying constantly and feeling guilty, yet unable to explain why.
• Thinking of hurting themselves or someone else.

Physical well-being gauges

We now understand that everyone is on the continuum and that improvement in all five domains is possible for everyone, whether a health-conscious executive, elite athlete or an individual who is just starting out or returning to self-care and prioritising their physical well-being.

The conversation with your participants needs to be real, authentic, and not forced. Following these principles can help you explore the next steps together.

1. What is their goal? (What is motivating them?)
2. What are the priorities from the five domains? (Quick wins, firm foundations).
3. What are the limiters/barriers?
4. What are the best fit solutions?

When supporting participants in physical domains, it's helpful to have some immediate actions and personal behaviours that give you a starting point to have good discussions.

In the examples below, we have chosen five actions to encourage physical well-being conversations and see whether they're present or absent in your participant’s lifestyle.

If these actions are present, you can assume that their behaviour is supporting their physiology. If they are absent, it may be that their physiology is not receiving all benefits it could and you can focus on introducing five progressively beneficial actions.

If these actions are present, you can assume that their behaviour is supporting their physiology. If they are absent, it may be that their physiology is not receiving all benefits it could and you can focus on introducing five progressively beneficial actions.

We have created two ‘five actions’ checklists and a template to help you start supporting your coaches.

Coaching conversations

Coaching is a people business and significant part of this is communication, including conversations after sessions or taking a coachable moment in the session to ask a question or leave a ‘seed’ with your participant. It’s the combination of listening, noticing, and understanding the person’s needs and making judgements to nudge them towards their goals.

In these videos, Oli shares his experiences of having holistic conversations to help participants increase their physical well-being.