Health Coach Templates Toolkit to Boost Client Success

Much of our wellbeing depends on the everyday choices we make. While we cannot control every aspect of health, we can influence many outcomes through lifestyle, habits, and deliberate behavior change (Normand & Bober, 2020).

Health and wellness coaching helps individuals and groups identify meaningful goals, build motivation, and make sustainable changes that support overall wellbeing (Moore et al., 2016).

Coaches work to increase client wholeness, ensure essential needs are considered, and empower people to take responsibility for their health (Arloski, 2014).

This article outlines core skills, practical techniques, motivational interviewing strategies, useful templates, assessment tools, and recommended resources to support effective health coaching.

8 Skills of Effective Health Coaches

Great health coaches do more than give advice about diet and exercise. They address the whole person, fostering autonomy and supporting lasting change without ordering or shaming clients (Moore et al., 2016).

Key overlapping skills for effective coaching include (Moore et al., 2016):

• Helping clients clarify what they truly want and need
• Engaging nonjudgmentally while providing challenge and stimulation
• Supporting clients to remove life “clutter” and reveal their strengths
• Creating conditions that promote psychological and neural readiness for change
• Eliciting intrinsic motivation so clients act for internal reasons
• Building confidence by cultivating positive emotions and small wins
• Using authentic positivity to recover from setbacks
• Structuring the coaching process and tracking measurable progress

When clients feel confident and self-motivated, even small consistent changes will reinforce progress and sustain momentum (Moore et al., 2016).

3 Techniques for Your Sessions

Begin coaching sessions with foundational coaching principles that reinforce client agency and collaboration (adapted from Rogers & Maini, 2016):

• Assume clients are resourceful and capable.
• The coach acts as an enabler, not simply an expert.
• Adopt a whole-life approach to health and wellbeing.
• The client owns the agenda for sessions.
• Coach and client relate as equals in the process.
• Coaching focuses on change and action.

These principles promote responsibility and empower clients to take ownership of their health.

Creating a wellness plan

Co-create a wellness plan to outline a clear path for change. A coach’s role is to facilitate the client’s responsibility for their own health rather than prescribing solutions (Arloski, 2014).

A practical wellness plan helps clients:

• Identify lifestyle changes they want to prioritize
• Define ways to measure and track progress
• Clarify the support they need
• Set target outcomes to recognize success

Include motivation, likely obstacles, and support systems when designing the plan.

Create a wellness vision

Work with the client to craft a vivid wellness vision that answers: What does the best possible life look like? Typical elements include healthy relationships, physical vitality, meaningful purpose, and reduced harmful behaviors (modified from Arloski, 2014).

Example vision statement:

My vision is to become fit and active so I can enjoy playing with my children and maintain good health as I age.

A personal vision helps clients picture the benefits and stay motivated.

Determine and live client goals

Clients choose specific focus areas—such as diet variety, fitness, or reducing alcohol—and set goals that define success. Break goals into small, actionable steps like daily brisk walks or adding more vegetables.

Use guiding questions to structure goal-setting (modified from Arloski, 2014):

• Desires – What do you want from this area?
• Current location – Where are you now?
• Destination – Where would you like to be?
• Committed course – What will you commit to doing?
• Challenges – What obstacles might appear?
• Strategies – How will you overcome them?
• Support – Who can help you?

SMART goal-setting (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-bound) keeps goals realistic and actionable.

How to Use Motivational Interviewing

Motivational interviewing (MI) is a client-centered, non-confrontational method designed to strengthen a person’s internal motivation to change (Hagger et al., 2020).

Practitioners using MI should develop:

• Relational skills that embody the spirit of MI
• MI-consistent techniques and strategies
• Skills to increase “change talk” (client statements favoring change)
• Skills to reduce “sustain talk” (statements that favor maintaining the status quo)

Core MI techniques include:

• Affirmation – Acknowledge client strengths and efforts to build confidence.
• Elicit–provide–elicit – Ask what the client knows, offer information when invited, then elicit their response.
• Identify strengths – Reflect and amplify strengths clients reveal in conversation.
• DARN – Elicit Desire, Ability, Reason, and Need for change to encourage change talk.
• Change plan – Use CAT (Commitment, Activation, Taking steps) to convert motivation into action.

9 Health Coaching Templates, Forms, and Worksheets

Practical templates and worksheets structure sessions, simplify goal tracking, and document progress.

3 Best forms for your sessions

1. Focusing Health Choices

Use a focused worksheet to list the health and lifestyle changes a client wants to explore. This helps create a comprehensive view of priorities and values.

2. Wellness Map

A wellness map captures desired changes, readiness to change, concrete actions, and success indicators. It keeps coaching sessions aligned and goal-directed.

3. Health Coaching Foundations

This intake-style worksheet clarifies the client’s perspective, motivations, and what they consider success—forming a foundation for the coaching relationship.

Coaching agreement templates

• Use a feedback or instructor form to clarify session intent and secure client agreement on objectives.
• A behavior-contract template can document commitments and supportive environments.
• An intake form captures reasons for seeking coaching and any triggers or safety considerations.

Crafting a session plan: 3 examples

Session plans should be tailored to each client. Useful tools include goal trackers, SMART goal worksheets, and session feedback forms to record wins, barriers, and next steps.

10 Extra Tips to Become the Ultimate Health Coach

Strong coaching partnerships are built on trust and collaboration. The following practical tips help create powerful consultations (Rogers & Maini, 2016; Starr, 2021):

1. Create a professional, welcoming first impression.
2. Build rapport to enable honest sharing and exploration.
3. Maintain an equal, nonjudgmental relationship—recognize the client as the expert on their life.
4. Share personal insights sparingly and only when helpful.
5. Co-create a small number of clear goals that matter to the client.
6. Use positive language to reinforce possibility and progress.
7. Practice active listening, attending to verbal and nonverbal cues.
8. Use intuition to guide the flow of conversation and determine when to probe or pivot.
9. Ask powerful questions that unlock new thinking and awareness.
10. Provide constructive feedback that supports reflection and learning.

7 Helpful Assessment Tools You Can Use

Assessments help coaches identify priorities, measure progress, and tailor interventions to client needs.

• Basic Needs Satisfaction assessments reveal intrinsic motivation and psychological drivers.
• Frameworks such as the Five A’s provide structured steps for assessing and addressing unhealthy habits.
• Decisional balance worksheets help clients weigh pros and cons of change.
• Tools that assess life wants or values clarify which changes matter most.

3 questionnaires for health coaches

• Health coaching intake questionnaires capture areas clients want to work on and their readiness.
• WDEP-style (Wants, Doing, Evaluation, Planning) questionnaires help map current efforts and next steps.
• Abstraction or goal-mapping worksheets break down larger goals into concrete steps and timelines.

Most Fascinating Health Coaching Books

For deeper study, these books provide practical frameworks and evidence-informed techniques:

1. Masterful Health and Wellness Coaching: Deepening Your Craft – Michael Arloski

This book describes foundational coaching approaches and the tools needed to support lasting lifestyle change.

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2. Coaching for Health: Why It Works and How to Do It – Jenny Rogers and Arti Maini

Rogers and Maini present a client-centered model that reduces coach stress while delivering better outcomes.

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3. Motivational Interviewing in Nutrition and Fitness – Dawn Clifford and Laura Curtis

This text applies motivational interviewing to nutrition and fitness contexts, offering techniques for resolving ambivalence and promoting change.

Resources From PositivePsychology.com

Practical coaching tools and downloadable worksheets can support behavior change and goal attainment. Examples include process-focused goal-setting, goal visualization, self-care checkups, and short commitment challenges to build new habits.

Assessment tools like a wheel of needs help clients identify low-scoring areas and prioritize action. Preparing for change with DARN-based questions can uncover desire, ability, reasons, and need for change.

A Take-Home Message

Small, sustained changes in behavior—such as reducing smoking or alcohol, improving diet, and increasing physical activity—can greatly enhance wellbeing. Health coaching helps clients translate values into action by building motivation, setting a clear vision, and co-creating a practical plan.

Coaches support clients to meet psychological and physical needs, develop confidence, and make consistent choices that align with their goals. Techniques like motivational interviewing and structured planning tools can increase the likelihood of long-term success.

We hope these skills, templates, and tools help you deliver more effective health coaching and support clients on their path to lasting wellbeing.