Curriculum Outline
Build the Knowledge, Skills & Confidence to Coach With Impact
Explore a focused, competency-based curriculum that prepares you for the National Board Certification examination—and for a meaningful career helping clients create lasting health and wellness change.
Six Domains. One Transformative Coaching Education.
Coach Presence & Relationship Building
Develop self-awareness, unconditional positive regard, session preparation, and growth-enhancing relationships that help clients feel seen, supported, and empowered.
Behavior Change, Skills & Strategy
Master neuroplasticity, motivational interviewing, goal setting, communication, facilitation, autonomy, and practical tools that turn insight into sustainable action.
Ethics, Wellness & Practical Assessment
Strengthen your ethical foundation, whole-person health knowledge, equity awareness, and real-world coaching performance through practical skills assessments designed for professional readiness.
A Clear Path to Coaching Competency
Move from foundational presence to confident, ethical, evidence-informed practice through an immersive curriculum designed to prepare you for real coaching conversations and board certification.
1
Establish Your Coaching Foundation
Begin with coach presence, unconditional positive regard, self-awareness, and the relationship-building skills that create a safe, growth-enhancing space for every client.
2
Apply Theory Through Practical Skills
Connect behavior-change science, motivational interviewing, communication strategies, goal setting, and client-centered tools to meaningful coaching practice.
3
Practice Ethical, Whole-Person Coaching
Integrate scope of practice, ethics, health and wellness knowledge, and practical assessments to demonstrate the competency needed to move forward with confidence.
Coach Presence: The Foundation of Transformative Conversations
Coach Presence develops the awareness, empathy, and professional grounding that allow meaningful coaching relationships to flourish. You will explore unconditional positive regard and learn how to meet each client without judgment, honoring their experiences, values, strengths, and capacity for change. Through guided reflection, you will deepen your own self-awareness so you can recognize assumptions, manage personal reactions, and remain fully attentive to what the client needs in the moment.
The curriculum also focuses on building growth-enhancing relationships through trust, authenticity, active listening, and a client-centered approach. You will learn how to prepare for sessions with intention, confidently navigate early conversations and coaching agreements, and create a consistent structure for follow-up sessions. By the end of this section, you will understand how to support momentum, revisit goals, and conclude coaching agreements in a way that celebrates progress, reinforces autonomy, and leaves clients equipped to continue their wellness journey.
Theories, Models & Behavior Change
Turn Evidence Into Lasting Client Change
Effective health and wellness coaching is grounded in an understanding of how people change. This portion of the curriculum explores neuroplasticity and the foundations of healthy habit formation, helping you understand how repeated thoughts, choices, environments, and supportive practices can shape sustainable behavior. You will examine leading theories and models of behavior change and learn how to translate them into practical, client-centered coaching conversations.
Motivational interviewing is a central focus, with opportunities to practice its collaborative guiding style and core tasks. You will learn to recognize change talk and sustain talk, respond without confrontation, and help clients discover their own reasons for moving forward. Rather than prescribing solutions, you will practice evoking motivation while respecting freedom of choice, readiness, and personal values.
From there, you will explore goal-setting theories, self-efficacy, and self-determination theory to support goals that feel realistic, meaningful, and internally motivated. The curriculum also examines growth and fixed mindsets, showing how language and perspective can influence resilience, learning, and progress. Positive psychology and appreciative inquiry round out the learning experience by helping you identify strengths, amplify what is already working, and invite clients to envision the possibilities ahead.
Dedicated review and practice sessions bring these concepts together. You will apply behavior-change frameworks in coaching scenarios, strengthen your ability to listen for opportunities, and build the confidence to guide thoughtful conversations that support lasting health and wellbeing.
Skills, Tools & Strategies: Coaching That Creates Lasting Change
Build the practical coaching capabilities that turn knowledge into meaningful client progress. This curriculum develops confident facilitation, core communication, and a client-centered approach that honors autonomy while strengthening intrinsic motivation. You will practice helping clients uncover awareness, shift perspective, and recognize their own capacity for change.
Through guided application, learn when to expand a conversation for deeper exploration and when to narrow it toward a clear next step. Develop strategies for improving support, defining values-aligned goals, implementing sustainable action plans, and managing session time with purpose. These skills prepare you to lead focused, compassionate coaching conversations that support self-efficacy and lasting wellbeing.
Ethics & Legal: Professional Standards in Coaching Practice
Professional Practice
Ongoing professional development
Current NBHWC Scope of Practice
Clear coaching boundaries
Professional accountability
Commitment to continual learning
Ethical & Legal Application
Current NBHWC Code of Ethics
Legal responsibilities and awareness
Ethical decision-making framework
Practical real-world scenarios
Appropriate referral and documentation
Health & Wellness: Knowledge for Whole-Person Coaching
Whole-Person Health Promotion
Explore health promotion through a whole-person lens that recognizes physical, emotional, social, environmental, and lifestyle influences on wellbeing.
Proactive Wellbeing
Examine the core components of proactive health and wellbeing, helping clients build sustainable routines before concerns become crises.
Chronic Disease Prevention
Learn supportive coaching approaches for prevention and self-management of chronic disease while staying within an appropriate coaching scope.
Health Equity & Disparities
Understand health and healthcare disparities, inequity, and the importance of creating respectful, accessible, client-centered coaching experiences.
Structural Determinants of Health
Consider how policies, systems, resources, and community conditions can shape health opportunities, outcomes, and client choices.
Social Determinants of Health
Explore how housing, food access, education, transportation, relationships, and economic stability affect health and wellbeing.
Health Literacy & Numeracy
Practice communicating health information clearly and supporting clients as they interpret numbers, recommendations, and personal health data.
Key Health Measures
Develop foundational familiarity with BMI, waist circumference, blood pressure, triglycerides, and diabetes to support informed, non-clinical wellness conversations.
Practical Skills Assessments: Put Your Coaching Into Practice
Assessment 1: Foundational Coaching Presence
Demonstrate centered, client-led presence in a realistic coaching conversation.
Apply unconditional positive regard, self-awareness, and rapport-building skills.
Practice purposeful session preparation and a confident opening.
Receive faculty feedback to strengthen your coaching foundation.
Build comfort using the core competencies in a supportive learning environment.
Assessment 2: Behavior Change Coaching
Guide a practice client through a meaningful health or wellness goal.
Use motivational interviewing, including change talk and sustain talk.
Apply behavior change theories, neuroplasticity, and habit-formation principles.
Support autonomy, self-efficacy, and values-based goal setting.
Refine your guiding style through feedback, reflection, and focused practice.
Assessment 3: Integrated Coaching Session
Lead a complete coaching session that reflects professional-level competency.
Integrate communication skills, facilitation, and client-centered strategy selection.
Help the client create clear, realistic actions aligned with their priorities.
Manage time effectively while allowing space for insight and perspective shifts.
Demonstrate readiness to coach with confidence in real-world settings.
Realistic Session Experience
Each assessment mirrors the conversations you will have with future clients.
Work with relevant wellness topics, goals, barriers, and behavior-change opportunities.
Practice responding flexibly while keeping the client in the driver’s seat.
Learn to expand or narrow the conversation with purpose and care.
Develop the poise to navigate early sessions, follow-ups, and coaching closure.
Competency-Based Feedback
Receive clear observations connected to health and wellness coaching competencies.
Identify strengths you can carry into your professional coaching practice.
Discover specific opportunities to deepen your skills before the next assessment.
Use reflective feedback to turn practice into lasting professional growth.
Track your progress as your coaching voice becomes more confident and authentic.
Ethics and Scope in Action
Practice honoring client autonomy, privacy, and freedom of choice.
Recognize when a concern falls outside the health and wellness coaching scope.
Apply ethical decision-making to realistic coaching situations.
Strengthen awareness of appropriate referrals and professional boundaries.
Prepare to uphold the standards expected of board-certified coaches.
Board Exam Preparation
Translate course concepts into observable coaching behaviors and sound judgment.
Reinforce the competencies and language central to board examination preparation.
Practice thinking through client scenarios with clarity, ethics, and confidence.
Connect theory, models, and communication skills in an integrated coaching approach.
Leave with practical experience that supports your next step toward certification.
Professional Practice Readiness
Complete the assessments with a stronger sense of your unique coaching style.
Gain experience you can draw on when launching a practice or pursuing coaching roles.
Build confidence supporting clients in sustainable health and wellness change.
Develop the discipline of preparation, reflection, and ongoing professional development.
Move forward ready to serve clients with skill, compassion, and professionalism.