Using Scaffolding with Clients: The Zone of Proximal Development

Using scaffolding with your clients will lead to much better results. It is one of those things that once you learn about it, and have it formalised in your mind, it really does change the way you coach. Let me tell you about a pattern I see constantly with new coaches. You get a client, you’re excited, you create what you think is a solid program based on their goals and your knowledge. And then one of two things happens: either they struggle, get overwhelmed, and ghost you within a month, or they cruise through everything easily, get bored, and decide they don’t really need a coach after all.

Same problem, opposite manifestations. The issue isn’t your programming. It’s not your exercise selection or your nutrition recommendations. The issue is that you’re not meeting clients where they actually are. You’re guessing at their starting point, and then you’re keeping them at that same level of support for way too long, regardless of whether they’ve outgrown it or never fit it in the first place.

This is where scaffolding comes in, and I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s probably one of the most important concepts I can teach you. It’s also something I’ve never seen covered in any certification course, which is mind-boggling because it matters more than perfect programming or optimal macros ever will. 

You see, the paradox every great coach must navigate is that the more competent you make your client, the less they need you. But the coaches who embrace this paradox build thriving practices, while those who resist it create revolving doors and are constantly stuck marketing for new clients without getting consistent results. Competence is contagious, and your most successful clients become your best marketing. So, your focus should be on getting phenomenal results first and foremost, and using scaffolding with clients will allow you to do this.

TL;DR

The best coaches don’t keep clients dependent; they strategically add and remove support to build autonomous, capable people who eventually don’t need constant hand-holding. To do this effectively, you will need to meet clients exactly where they are, provide just enough challenge to create growth without defeat, and then systematically pull back as they develop competence. Your job isn’t to be needed forever; it’s to make yourself progressively less necessary.

What Scaffolding Actually Means in Coaching

Now, I know that when I talk about using scaffolding with clients, you may have a few different ideas in your head, and you may be wondering how this actually applies to coaching. So, I want to ensure we are actually on the same page here. 

Think about construction scaffolding. It’s temporary support that holds things up while something is being built. Once the structure can stand on its own, the scaffolding comes down. You’d never leave it up permanently, and you’d never remove it before the building was ready. That’s exactly what we’re doing with clients, except we’re building competence, confidence, and capability.

Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky discovered that learning happens not in isolation, but in the space between independence and impossibility. Not too easy, but not hard. He called it the zone of proximal development, which sounds academic but is actually simple. Imagine three zones. In the first zone, your client can handle things alone without any help from you. In the third zone, even with your best coaching, they’re not ready; it’s too far beyond their current abilities. But that middle zone is where they can succeed with your guidance and support. That’s where all the growth happens.

This isn’t new, by the way. Medieval apprenticeships followed the exact same arc: the apprentice watches, then assists, then works under supervision, then works independently. We’ve somehow convinced ourselves that modern coaching should skip these steps, handing people a PDF and expecting mastery. But human learning hasn’t changed. The principles that worked for blacksmiths in 1450 still work for building better nutrition and training habits in the 21st century.

To do this effectively requires that you shift from asking “Can my client do this?” to asking “How much support does my client need to do this successfully?” By doing this, suddenly every client became coachable at any starting point. The program didn’t need to be massively different. The amount and type of support you provide become the variable.

What This Looks Like in Practice

I know this can be very abstract, so let’s talk about teaching a push-up, because it’s concrete and everyone gets it. A complete beginner might not be able to do even one push-up from the floor. But they can probably do a push-up against a wall. That wall push-up isn’t their goal, and it’s not where they’ll stay, but it’s in their zone of proximal development right now. They can do it, they can feel successful, and they can build from there.

Over weeks, you gradually change the angle. Countertop, then bench, then a low step. Eventually, you’re at the floor doing knee push-ups, then full push-ups from the toes. Your job through all of this isn’t to push them to do a full push-up on day one, and it isn’t to keep them at the wall forever. It’s to constantly assess where they are and provide exactly enough challenge to create growth without creating defeat.

For those of you reading this who do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu like I do, you are actually intimately familiar with the use of scaffolding and keeping people in their zone of proximal development. A white belt doesn’t roll with black belts going full intensity; they’d learn nothing and probably get hurt. But they don’t stay in the kids’ class either. They roll with blue and purple belts who can control the pace, who can let them work, who can catch them when they make mistakes before those mistakes become injuries. That’s scaffolding. The more experienced practitioner is creating a space where learning can happen, where the white belt is challenged but not destroyed. And eventually, that white belt becomes the purple belt, doing the same for someone else. The cycle continues.

The same principle applies to nutrition. Someone who’s completely overwhelmed by nutrition information doesn’t need a detailed macro breakdown on day one. They might need to start with one single habit: eating protein at breakfast. That’s it. No tracking, no weighing, no apps. Just protein at breakfast. Once that’s consistent, you add another piece. Then another.

Research by Phillippa Lally showed habits take an average of 66 days to form, but the range was something like 18 to 254 days. I can almost certainly guarantee you that the individuals who formed habits faster had better scaffolding that matched their zone. The ones who took longer were either under-scaffolded and floundering, or over-scaffolded and dependent. Six months later, when someone is hitting protein targets naturally, has developed an intuitive sense of portions, and is meal prepping without reminders, the nutrition information you eventually taught them isn’t different from what you would have given them on day one. But the scaffolding you provided, the way you sequenced it, and the pace at which you released control made all the difference to them actually succeeding.

The Four Types of Support You’re Providing

Over the years, I’ve realised I’m providing four different types of scaffolding, often simultaneously. Understanding this helps me troubleshoot when something isn’t working.

First, there’s instructional scaffolding. This is the teaching part. The verbal cues during a deadlift, the nutrition education, and the explanations of why we’re doing what we’re doing. When I’m using heavy instructional scaffolding, I’m talking more, demonstrating more, explaining more. Psychologist Robert Bjork’s research on “desirable difficulty” is relevant here. He found that learning that feels easy often isn’t sticky. The struggle itself, when appropriately calibrated, is what creates durable learning. So I’m not trying to make my instruction so clear that there’s zero cognitive effort. I’m trying to make it clear enough that they can engage with the challenge productively.

Second is environmental scaffolding. This is where I modify the actual difficulty of the task itself. Using a box for box squats instead of free squats. Having someone use dumbbells instead of a barbell while they’re learning a movement pattern. Suggesting they prep just one meal instead of a whole week. I’m changing the environment or the task to match their current capacity. 

Third is motivational scaffolding, which is probably the most underestimated type. This is the encouragement, the accountability check-ins, and the reframing when they want to quit. It’s reminding them of their progress when they can only see how far they have to go. The Pygmalion Effect shows that people rise or fall to meet our expectations. When I provide heavy motivational scaffolding early, I’m not just cheerleading; I’m literally holding the expectation that they can succeed until their own belief catches up. My conviction becomes borrowed competence. They don’t believe in themselves yet, so they borrow my belief in them. Early in a coaching relationship, I’m providing tons of motivational scaffolding. I’m the one believing in them until they can believe in themselves.

Fourth is decision-making scaffolding. This is where I structure choices. Using the same example as the environmental scaffolding, instead of saying “eat whatever you want,” I might say, “for your post-workout meal, you could have option A, B, or C. What sounds good to you?” Behavioural economists call this choice architecture; structuring decisions to make good choices easier. I’m not removing choice; I’m designing the decision environment. “Eat more protein” is abstract and overwhelming. Three concrete options are actionable. 

I’m giving them autonomy, but within guardrails. As their competence grows, the architecture can become more open, more flexible, and more autonomous. As they develop judgment, those guardrails get wider until eventually they’re making fully independent decisions. 

This ties directly to what philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre meant when he said we’re “condemned to be free”; we can’t escape the responsibility of our choices. Over-scaffolding (providing too much support) is actually an existential failure on both sides: I’m rescuing the client from freedom, and they’re abdicating responsibility. The goal isn’t to make training easier forever; it’s to make them capable of choosing difficulty. 

The art of great coaching is knowing which type of scaffolding your client needs most at any given moment, and how much to actually provide. It’s rarely the same type all the time, and you can both provide too much and too little scaffolding.

Reading Your Client’s Zone

The really difficult thing about using scaffolding with clients is that your initial assessment of a client’s zone of proximal development and how much scaffolding they need is probably wrong. This doesn’t mean you’re bad at coaching; it’s just that zones are invisible and constantly moving. You’re making an educated guess based on limited information. What separates decent coaches from exceptional ones is how quickly you recognise when you’ve misjudged and how willing you are to adjust.

Fighter pilots use something called the OODA loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. Then loop back. That’s zone assessment in four steps. I observe how they’re performing. I orient myself to what that means about their current capacity. I decide what adjustment to make. I act on it. Then I loop back and observe again. Coaches who skip the observation step are flying blind. They decided what the client needed in week one and never updated their assessment. Meanwhile, the client has either adapted past that level or is still struggling to reach it.

Further to this, I watch for three states: frustration, flow, and boredom. The brain releases dopamine when things aren’t too easy nor impossibly hard, but when they’re just right. You’re not just scaffolding physical skills; you’re engineering neurochemical feedback loops that make growth feel rewarding. When a client is in flow, they’re engaged, focused, and there’s effort but not strain. They finish a session feeling accomplished. That’s your signal that you’ve nailed the zone.

When I see frustration, shut down, avoidance, or that look that says they want to quit, I’ve overshot the zone. The challenge is beyond what they can handle, even with support. Here’s where understanding learned helplessness becomes critical. Psychologist Martin Seligman’s research showed what happens when challenges are consistently too far outside someone’s zone: they learn that their actions don’t matter. They develop a belief that effort is futile. 

But the inverse is equally powerful: learned industriousness. When people experience that their effort produces results because you’ve scaffolded appropriately, they learn to embrace challenge itself. Challenge becomes associated with growth rather than failure.

And when I see boredom, disengagement, or someone who’s phoning it in, I’ve undershot the zone. It’s too easy. They need more challenge.

To make this simpler in practice, the question I often ask isn’t “Is this hard?” because that’s subjective and useless. Instead, I ask, “On a scale from one to ten, where one is so easy you could do it in your sleep, and ten is completely impossible, where does this feel right now?” If they say seven or eight, we’re probably in the zone. If they say three or four, they need more challenge. If they say nine or ten, I’ve pushed too far. But I’m also watching their body language, their energy, their engagement level, because sometimes what people say and what I observe don’t match.

There’s also the Dunning-Kruger effect to consider, especially with new clients. The research shows that beginners often have peak confidence with minimal competence. They don’t know what they don’t know, so they underestimate how much scaffolding they need. My job is to provide protective scaffolding while their actual skill catches up to their perceived skill, without crushing their enthusiasm in the process. This is delicate work. I need to give them enough rope to feel autonomous while still having safety nets in place.

To do this effectively, you need to ask and observe frequently, especially early on. Zones shift fast with beginners. Something that was an eight last week might be a five this week because they’ve adapted quickly. And something that felt manageable on a good day might feel impossible on a day when they slept poorly and had a stressful work meeting. Learning creates physical changes in the brain, but there’s a sweet spot for neuroplasticity. Too little challenge and no new neural pathways form. Too much stress and the system goes into threat mode, shutting down learning. The zone of proximal development is essentially the neuroplasticity window, where the brain is primed to rewire itself. Great coaching requires constant recalibration, not a set-it-and-forget-it approach.

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The Art of Letting Go

This is the part that terrifies new coaches. Pulling back support feels risky. What if they fail? What if they get hurt? What if they realise they don’t need you anymore? But the truth is that if I never pull back support, I’m not actually coaching. I’m just hand-holding. And hand-holding doesn’t create the capable, confident, independent humans I’m supposed to be building.

Nassim Taleb’s concept of antifragility applies perfectly here. He distinguished between things that are fragile (harmed by stress), robust (unaffected by stress), and antifragile (improved by stress). A client who never trains without your constant presence isn’t building resilience; they’re building brittleness. They’re fragile. Strategic stress, applied at the edge of their zone, makes them antifragile. They don’t just survive without you; they become stronger because of periods without you.

I think about it in three phases, though they’re not rigid or perfectly sequential. There’s the “I do” phase where I’m demonstrating, teaching, and they’re mostly watching and learning. Then there’s the “we do” phase, where we’re doing it together. I’m right there, cueing, supporting, correcting, but they’re taking the lead. And finally, there’s the “you do” phase where they’re independent, and I’m mostly just observing and occasionally fine-tuning.

The signs that a client is ready for less support are pretty clear once you know what to look for. They start self-correcting before you need to cue them. They ask informed questions instead of basic ones. They anticipate what comes next. They show up more confident. They volunteer to try things that previously intimidated them. When I see these signs, I start pulling back intentionally.

This needs to be collaborative. I acknowledge what I’m noticing. I tell them I can see they’re becoming really confident with certain skills, and I ask if they feel ready to take on more independence in that area. This prevents the client from feeling abandoned while still moving them toward self-sufficiency.

I don’t remove all scaffolding on Monday. I remove one piece, let them adapt, remove another piece, let them adapt. The gaps between support create the consolidation. Maybe I stop cueing their squat depth every rep but still watch their sets. Then I stop watching every set but check in after their workout. Then I move to weekly check-ins on their training logs. Each gap is a small test of independence that builds toward full autonomy.

Now, the danger of pulling back too fast is obvious. The client isn’t ready, they struggle, confidence tanks, and you’re rebuilding from a worse place than where you started. But the danger of pulling back too slowly is more insidious. You create dependency. The client starts to believe they can’t do this without you. They don’t develop the self-efficacy that’s actually more important than the skills you’re teaching. And eventually, they plateau because you’ve become the ceiling of their growth instead of the scaffold supporting it.

Where New Coaches Go Wrong

The first big mistake is giving clients your program. You know what works for you, what you’ve done, what you’ve seen work for people you admire. So you template it and hand it over. The problem is that your program exists in your zone of proximal development, not theirs. What’s appropriately challenging for you might be laughably easy or impossibly hard for them. You know how in Tetris, the pieces fall faster as you get better? The game’s difficulty scales with your competence. That’s what great coaching looks like. The pieces keep coming, but the speed adjusts. You’re not playing the same level in month six that you played in month one. When you give someone your program, you’re forcing them to play at your Tetris speed.

The second mistake is under-scaffolding because you believe in some vague notion of letting people find their own way. Look, I’m all for client autonomy. But throwing every client in the deep end and calling it coaching is just laziness dressed up as philosophy. If you’re not sure whether you’re empowering them or abandoning them, ask yourself this: are they growing, or are they floundering? Growth has a distinct signature: increasing competence, building confidence, and expanding capacity. Floundering looks like repeated failure, avoidance, and declining engagement.

The third mistake is over-scaffolding and creating dependency. This happens to caring, attentive coaches. You want your clients to succeed so badly that you never stop holding their hand. You’re still cueing every rep in month six. You’re still making every nutrition decision for them. You’re still texting them every morning to make sure they’re going to the gym. Your clients stay with you, which feels like success, but they’re staying because they can’t function without you, not because you’re adding ongoing value. You’re preventing them from taking responsibility for their own freedom.

The fourth mistake is not adjusting when the zone shifts. You nail it initially. You’ve got them perfectly challenged, growing, engaged. But then weeks pass, and you forget that zones are moving targets. What worked in week two doesn’t work in week eight. What was appropriate in month one is insulting by month four. Systems thinkers talk about reinforcing feedback loops; cycles that amplify themselves. Appropriate scaffolding creates a reinforcing loop: challenge that matches capacity leads to success, which builds confidence, which enables more challenge, which builds more competence. It’s a virtuous cycle. But miss the zone in either direction, and you create a vicious cycle instead: failure breeds doubt, which leads to avoidance, which prevents growth, which confirms the belief that they can’t do it.

The fifth mistake is scaffolding skill, but not mindset. You can teach perfect technique and dial in nutrition flawlessly. But if you’re not also scaffolding their relationship with failure, their self-talk, their beliefs about what they’re capable of, you’re building a house on sand. Aristotle argued that virtue isn’t innate; it’s developed through practice in progressively challenging situations. You become courageous not by reading about courage, but by facing appropriately scaled threats. You become disciplined not through willpower alone, but through structured practice that gradually removes external controls. I’m not teaching nutrition information; I’m scaffolding the virtue of temperance. I’m not teaching exercise technique; I’m scaffolding the virtue of perseverance. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus teaches us that we don’t control outcomes, only our responses. When I’m scaffolding mindset, I’m essentially teaching Epictetus’s dichotomy of control. You can’t control the scale today, but you can control showing up tomorrow. You can’t control whether the workout feels easy, but you can control your effort. This is scaffolding at the psychological level, and it’s just as important as scaffolding at the skill level.

And the sixth mistake is removing all scaffolding at once. Maybe you think they’re ready. Maybe you’re trying to push them toward independence. Maybe you’re busy and distracted. Whatever the reason, you go from high support to no support overnight, and they crash. Scaffolding removal should be gradual and strategic. You pull back in one area while maintaining support in others. You test their readiness in small ways before making big changes.

Different Clients, Different Scaffolding

Different personality types need different scaffolding approaches, even when they’re at similar skill levels. The anxious perfectionist needs a lot of structure initially. They’re terrified of doing it wrong, so ambiguity paralyses them. With these clients, I aim to provide very clear frameworks, step-by-step instructions, and frequent reassurance. But I also have to gradually introduce flexibility and help them become comfortable with imperfection, or they’ll stay dependent on rigid structure forever. I’m scaffolding the tolerance for uncertainty, not just the skill itself.

The overconfident newbie thinks they know more than they do. They want to skip the basics. This is Dunning-Kruger in action. They’re at peak confidence with minimal competence. With these clients, I give them a bit more autonomy than I normally would at their skill level, but I build in guardrails they don’t always realise are there. I let them make choices, but within parameters I’ve set. And I’m vigilant about watching for when their confidence exceeds their competence in a way that could cause injury. The scaffolding here is often invisible to them, which is exactly the point. They get to feel autonomous while I ensure they stay safe.

The all-or-nothing client is either completely on the wagon or completely off it. Perfect adherence or total abandon. With these clients, I scaffold middle ground. I build in flexibility from day one. I literally program “easy” days and teach them that those days are part of the plan, not failure. I’m scaffolding the ability to show up even when it’s not perfect. This is desirable difficulty in practice; creating just enough challenge that growth occurs, but normalising the fact that some days will be easier than others. The difficulty isn’t in the workout; it’s in showing up consistently despite variability.

And the analytical overthinker wants to understand the mechanism behind everything, gets stuck in analysis paralysis, can’t just do the workout because they’re too busy wondering if it’s optimal. With these clients, I actually simplify my scaffolding. I give them less information, not more. I teach them to trust the process without needing to understand every detail. I scaffold the ability to execute without overthinking. Sometimes, less information is more supportive than comprehensive explanation.

From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense. Humans learn through apprenticeship because skill transfer was survival-critical. But what’s interesting is we’re also wired to prove ourselves, to signal competence to our tribe. That’s why pulling back scaffolding at the right time works so well. You’re not abandoning them, you’re giving them the opportunity to signal their growing competence to themselves and others. The challenge itself becomes rewarding, not just the outcome. This is part of our evolutionary inheritance, and great coaching works with these deep psychological drives rather than against them.

Using Scaffolding with Clients: Game Plan

When I’m starting with a new client, my first job is assessment, but not just the typical fitness assessment. I’m assessing where they are across multiple dimensions. What’s their movement competence? What’s their nutrition knowledge and skill? What’s their consistency history? What’s their self-efficacy? What’s their readiness to change? I’m looking for their starting zones in different areas because they’re rarely all in the same place.

Based on that assessment, I plan my scaffolding strategy for the first ninety days. Not the programming or nutrition, the actual scaffolding. How much support will they need initially? In what areas? What’s my plan for gradually releasing control? What are my checkpoints for reassessing? If I don’t plan for scaffolding removal, it won’t happen. I’ll keep providing the same level of support because it’s easier and more comfortable than constantly adjusting.

I build in regular zone reassessment using that OODA loop. For new clients, I’m observing, orienting, deciding, and acting every single session for the first month. Are they in the zone? Do I need to adjust? After the first month, if things are stable, maybe I’m going through the loop weekly. But I’m never going more than two weeks without explicitly thinking about whether my scaffolding is still appropriate.

And I communicate all of this to my clients. I tell them on day one that my job is to support them where they need it and gradually give them more independence as they’re ready, so that they eventually no longer need me. I tell them that what we’re doing in month one won’t be what we’re doing in month six. I prepare them for the fact that I’m going to push them to do more on their own over time, and that’s not me caring less; it’s me coaching well. I might say: “Think of me as training wheels. Right now, you need them. In a few months, you won’t. My job is to know exactly when to take them off so you don’t fall, but also so you don’t stay dependent on them longer than necessary.”

This conversation heads off so much confusion and anxiety down the road. When I start pulling back, they don’t interpret it as abandonment. They recognise it as progress. The scaffolding itself becomes a visible marker of their development.

I also document everything. Not obsessively, but consistently. I keep notes on what scaffolding I’m providing, when I make adjustments, and how the client responds. This does two things. First, it makes me more intentional because I have to articulate what I’m doing. Second, it gives me data over time. I can look back and see patterns. I can see that I tend to pull back too fast with certain types of clients, or that I hover too long with others. It’s made me a dramatically better coach because it’s forced me to be reflective instead of reactive.

Think of it this way: you’re running an experiment with an N of one. Every client is a unique case study. The more data you collect about what scaffolding works when, the better your intuition becomes about future clients. But without documentation, you’re just guessing repeatedly instead of learning systematically.

Building People Who Don’t Need You Anymore

The goal of great coaching is to make yourself obsolete. Not completely, not forever, but in terms of the basic scaffolding. If you’re still providing the same level of support in month twelve that you provided in month one, you haven’t coached; you’ve created a dependent relationship.

The best clients, the ones who get phenomenal results, are the ones who transition from needing me to guide their every decision to valuing me as a strategic partner in their ongoing development. They don’t need me to tell them what to eat or how to train anymore. They’re competent at that. But they value having someone who sees patterns they miss, who challenges them in new ways, who provides accountability and outside perspective, who helps them navigate the next level of goals.

This is what I mean when I say I’m scaffolding independence. I’m not just teaching them to squat. I’m teaching them how to assess their own squat. I’m not just creating a diet plan. I’m teaching them how to create their own diet plan based on principles. I’m not just programming their workouts. I’m teaching them how programming works so they can make intelligent modifications when life happens. This is the apprenticeship model playing out in modern coaching: watch, assist, do with supervision, and do independently. Each phase builds toward the next.

And yes, some clients do graduate completely. They reach a point where they truly don’t need ongoing coaching. They’re self-sufficient. That’s not a failure. That’s the highest form of success. I’ve had clients leave and then come back a year later for a new goal or a new phase of life. I’ve had clients refer friends because they’re so confident in what I taught them. That doesn’t happen when you create dependency. It happens when you’ve successfully scaffolded them all the way to genuine autonomy.

Using Scaffolding with Clients: The Real Secret

Here’s what I wish someone had told me when I was a new coach is that appropriate scaffolding is the difference between good coaches and great ones. Programming knowledge is important. Exercise science matters. Understanding nutrition is crucial. But those are the basic entry requirements. Every decent coach has that knowledge, or at least they should. What really separates you is your ability to meet clients where they are, provide exactly the support they need, and gradually build their capacity to function independently.

This also prevents burnout. When I was trying to provide maximum support to every client all the time, I was exhausted. I was texting at all hours. I was emotionally depleted. I felt responsible for every choice they made. But when I understood scaffolding, I realised that my job wasn’t to do it for them. It was to support them in doing it for themselves. That shifted my entire experience of coaching from exhausting to energising. I was building something that could stand without me, which paradoxically made me more valuable, not less.

Support until they don’t need it, then support them differently. That’s the entire philosophy in one sentence.

So here’s my challenge to you: take your current client roster and audit it through the lens of scaffolding. For each client, ask yourself: What scaffolding am I currently providing? Is it the right amount and type for where they are right now? Have I adjusted it recently, or am I still providing the same support I provided when they started? Are there areas where I’m over-scaffolding and creating dependency? Are there areas where I’m under-scaffolding and they’re struggling silently? What’s my plan for the next phase of scaffolding removal? When I observe them, what do I see: flow, frustration, or boredom? What does my OODA loop tell me about necessary adjustments?

This exercise will reveal gaps you didn’t know existed. You’ll see clients you’re holding back by providing too much support. You’ll see clients you’re losing because you’re not providing enough. And you’ll have a roadmap for how to adjust. More importantly, you’ll start to see your entire coaching practice through a different lens. Every interaction becomes an opportunity to assess, adjust, and optimise the support structure.

The coaches I admire most, the ones whose businesses thrive and whose clients get life-changing results, are masters of scaffolding. They might not call it that. They might not have heard the term “zone of proximal development.” But they’re doing it intuitively. They’re constantly assessing, adjusting, supporting, and releasing. They’re building capable humans who trust themselves as much as they trust their coach. They understand that the goal isn’t to be needed forever; it’s to be valued for continually evolving the relationship as the client grows.

That’s the coach I want you to become. It’s not as trendy, but it does work super well. It creates the kind of transformation that actually sticks. It allows you to serve more people more effectively without burning yourself out. And it honours both your expertise and your client’s potential for growth.

You’re not just building better bodies. You’re building people who believe in their own capacity to grow, change, and achieve hard things. You’re creating antifragile humans who get stronger through appropriately dosed challenge. You’re teaching Aristotelian virtue through the medium of fitness. You’re helping people take existential responsibility for their choices. 

And the scaffolding you provide, and strategically remove, is how you make all of that happen. That’s the real work of coaching, and it’s worth mastering.

Having said all of that, you do still need a working model of physiology, nutrition and training to actually get results. So, for those of you ready to take the next step in professional development, we also offer advanced courses. Our Nutrition Coach Certification is designed to help you guide clients through sustainable, evidence-based nutrition change with confidence, while our Exercise Program Design Course focuses on building effective, individualised training plans that actually work in the real world. Beyond that, we’ve created specialised courses so you can grow in the exact areas that matter most for your journey as a coach.

If you want to keep sharpening your coaching craft, we’ve built a free Content Hub filled with resources just for coaches. Inside, you’ll find the Coaches Corner, which has a collection of tools, frameworks, and real-world insights you can start using right away. We also share regular tips and strategies on Instagram and YouTube, so you’ve always got fresh ideas and practical examples at your fingertips. And if you want everything delivered straight to you, the easiest way is to subscribe to our newsletter so you never miss new material.