The Pattern Coaches Miss That Stops Client Progress
Frameworks with Carl Hardwick | CoachRx Podcast Network
I’ve met a lot of clients who can say all the right things. They want to train, they want to feel better, they want results that last. Then Monday shows up, work runs late, stress spikes, and the plan disappears.
When that happens, it’s tempting to blame discipline, motivation, or my program. But most of the time the real issue sits underneath all of that: beliefs. Beliefs quietly shape how someone sees their day, the choices they make, and what they actually do week after week.
This post is my go-to way to explain why client progress stalls, and what I do about it as a coach.
When a client “knows what to do” but won’t do it
If coaching were just reps, sets, and macros, this job would be simple. I’d hand someone a plan and they’d follow it. Real life doesn’t work that way.
Most coaching problems aren’t programming problems. They’re belief problems that show up as behavior problems.
A client might tell me they value health, but they consistently trade training for work. Another might say they want strength, but they avoid hard sets because they “don’t want to get bulky” or they think soreness means damage. Someone else might genuinely want to change, but they’ve lived so long in a pattern of all-or-nothing that they can’t stick to anything that looks “small.”
I don’t treat those as character flaws. People don’t act randomly. They act in ways that make sense to them.
When a client doesn’t follow through, I assume there’s a reason that feels logical on the inside. My job is to find that logic, understand it, and then help the client build a new pattern that actually fits their life.
That’s why I like thinking in a simple pyramid: beliefs at the bottom, actions at the top.
The “beliefs to actions” pyramid I use with every client
Here’s the core idea I keep coming back to:
Beliefs shape how someone sees the world.
That becomes perception in the moment.
Perception drives decisions.
Decisions turn into actions (or inaction).
If I only coach the top of the pyramid, the actions, I end up pushing reminders, check-ins, and “be more disciplined” talks. That can work short term, but it often creates friction. It also misses what’s really going on.
When I work from the bottom up, I can stop guessing. I can stop labeling someone inconsistent, and start understanding what’s actually steering their choices.
If you want a broader behavior-change lens from the fitness industry side, I’ve found this helpful as a companion read: behavior change science for fitness clients.
Beliefs: the foundation clients don’t choose (at least at first)
Beliefs usually come from somewhere long before training.
Upbringing, culture, past experiences, and old patterns of praise and punishment all leave a mark. If someone grew up in a home where productivity equaled worth, they might not even realize they’re carrying a belief like “if I’m not producing, I’m failing.”
That belief didn’t start with fitness. Fitness just exposes it.
When I hear a client say something like:
“I should be doing more.”
“I can’t afford to take time for that.”
“I’ve always been this way.”
…I don’t rush past it. That’s belief language, and it’s usually the real coaching moment.
I keep it simple and ask for expansion:
What do you mean by that? Where does that come from? When did you start thinking that way?
I’m not trying to barge in and rewrite someone’s whole identity. I’m also not coaching in a vacuum. I’m stepping into a belief system that already exists, so I try to do three things in order:
Recognize it.
Respect it.
Work with it.
Sometimes “working with it” means introducing a small intrusion, in a good way. Things like, “You deserve to take care of yourself,” or “Recovery matters if you want to do hard things again tomorrow,” or “Feeling good is a valid goal.”
Those aren’t dramatic philosophical arguments. They’re small belief shifts that make the next step possible.
Perception: belief in real time (why the same hour feels different)
Perception is what beliefs look like in the moment.
Two people can look at the same open hour on their calendar and see totally different things.
One person sees: “This is time to invest in my health.”
Another sees: “This is time stolen from work.”
The difference isn’t discipline. It’s perception.
When a client skips training to answer emails, it’s easy to say they’re unmotivated. But that might be a very disciplined person who’s protecting a deeper belief like “work comes first,” or “rest is laziness,” or “if I’m not available, I’ll fall behind.”
This is also where the practical side of coaching shows up. If I don’t understand how a client perceives training, I’ll misread their behavior every time.
It even shows up in exercise selection. If two movements get a client to the same outcome, but they perceive one as stressful and the other as doable, I’ll usually pick the one they can commit to. Results don’t come from the “perfect” option, they come from the option that gets repeated.
This is a big part of why I like the OPEX view of coaching and program design, it keeps me focused on the person in front of me, not the plan in my head. If you’re curious about that approach, here’s the OPEX CCP Level 1 mentorship I reference when I talk about method and decision-making.
Decisions: people protect beliefs more than goals
Decisions are made to stay congruent with beliefs.
That’s the part most coaches miss.
People don’t always make decisions that protect their goals. They make decisions that protect their identity and the beliefs they’ve been living with for years.
If someone believes “work equals value,” then when work gets busy, training is the first thing to vanish. Not because they don’t care about health, but because skipping the gym keeps their belief system intact.
From the outside, it looks like inconsistency.
From the inside, it can feel like integrity.
That’s why I’m careful with the word “compliance.” Low compliance might be real, but the behavior is often logical given the person’s belief stack.
This is also where I remind myself not to demonize work, family, or ambition. The goal isn’t to “win” against someone’s life. The goal is to jockey for position, to find a way for training, nutrition, sleep, and recovery to fit into a life that already has strong priorities.
If you like structured coaching frameworks, I’ve also pulled useful ideas from broader coaching models like GROW and similar tools. This overview is a solid reference: evidence-based coaching models.
Actions: words tell stories, actions tell the truth
Actions reveal priorities faster than any consult call.
One rule I stick to is this: actions tell the truth, words tell the story.
A client might tell me they value health. Cool. Then I ask them to walk me through a typical weekday, start to finish.
When they describe waking up late, eating in the car, skipping movement most days, sleeping five hours, and doing one “all-out” workout on Saturday to make up for it, I’m not hearing a moral failure. I’m seeing the truth of what’s currently prioritized.
This is why I like getting objective quickly. I’ll ask:
What does Monday look like hour by hour?
When do you eat, and what triggers the choices?
When do you move, and what tends to bump it out?
What time do you actually get in bed?
When actions and stated goals don’t match, I don’t treat that like lying. I treat it like “beliefs made visible.”
And week after week, patterns matter more than intentions. A plan only works if it survives real life.
For a fitness-specific view on coaching behavior change, this is another solid overview: coaching clients toward behavior change.
Why more pressure rarely creates lasting change
When client progress stalls, the common move is to push harder:
More accountability. More reminders. More structure. More rules.
Pressure can create short-term action, but pressure doesn’t change belief. It often creates resistance.
If I want durable behavior change, belief has to shift first.
And belief usually doesn’t shift because I gave a great lecture. It shifts because the client experiences something that challenges what they assumed was true.
Saying “lifting weights will help you feel better” is a nice idea. But if someone has never felt that in their body, it’s just words.
What actually works is helping them experience the payoff, then asking them to notice it.
This lines up with what we see in behavior-change approaches that blend motivational interviewing and cognitive behavioral strategies, where client-led reflection and real-world practice matter. This paper is a useful look at those components: motivational interviewing and CBT components for lifestyle change.
How I shift beliefs without arguing, forcing, or shaming
When I’m trying to help a client move, I don’t try to “convince” beliefs away. I try to design experiences that gently challenge them.
I think of it as engineering evidence.
I listen for belief language, then I slow down
If I hear “I should,” “I can’t,” or “I’ve always been,” I treat it like a breadcrumb trail.
A simple “tell me more about that” can open up the real issue, and it keeps the conversation collaborative instead of corrective.
If you want another perspective on identifying self-limiting beliefs, this is a clear breakdown: ways to illuminate self-limiting beliefs.
I watch patterns, not promises
I don’t ignore what clients say, but I weigh actions more heavily.
If a client keeps opening their laptop instead of training, that’s not an accident. Something in their belief system is driving that choice.
The pattern is the starting point for coaching, not something to punish.
I design small, repeatable wins
Beliefs rarely change from a heroic effort. They change when a client stacks enough proof that a new behavior is safe, doable, and worth it.
So I’ll shorten sessions, reduce friction, and make the first version almost impossible to fail. Consistency comes first. Intensity comes later.
I reflect more than I correct
Instead of telling a client what to think, I ask questions that help them connect actions to outcomes.
What did you notice this week?
How did training affect your focus at work?
What changed in your energy?
When clients hear themselves answer, it often creates the “oh” moment. They don’t need me to be the judge, they need help seeing the pattern clearly.
A real-world example: the “time stolen from work” client
Let’s use the most common situation I see: the client who believes that work equals worth.
They aren’t lazy. They’re often high-performing, responsible, and proud of it. The problem is that training gets framed as selfish, optional, or irresponsible when deadlines hit.
If I try to fix that with pressure, I lose them. I’m now competing with their identity.
What I do instead is run a short experiment.
I’ll ask for 2 to 3 weeks of consistency with a plan that fits their actual schedule. Not their ideal schedule. Their real one. That might mean 30 to 45 minutes, three times per week, with very clear boundaries.
Then I prompt reflection:
How was your energy in the afternoons?
Did you sleep differently?
How was your patience with your team or family?
Did your focus at work improve?
If training helps them feel sharper, calmer, and more effective, the belief starts to shift on its own. The story changes from “training steals time from work” to “training supports my work.”
That’s when compliance stops feeling like a fight.
If you coach a lot of people and want a clean way to track patterns like this across weeks, I’ve also found tools helpful when they reduce admin and keep me focused on the coaching conversations.
Here’s the CoachRx link I mentioned in the episode description.
Conclusion: reverse-engineer actions back to beliefs
When I’m stuck with a client, I stop staring at the program and I look at the pyramid. Beliefs shape perceptions, perceptions drive decisions, and decisions become actions. Then I reverse-engineer: what are they doing, and what must be true for that behavior to make sense?
The next time a client “falls off,” I’m not trying to win an argument. I’m trying to understand the belief they’re protecting, then design a small experience that gives them better evidence. If you want to talk shop or share what you’re seeing with your own clients, I’m also on Instagram.
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Have questions? DM Carl on Instagram @hardwickcarl
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