Are my clients making excuses, or is that the wrong question entirely? It comes up constantly in my DMs, in HMCC, everywhere. In this episode, I’m breaking down the psychology of why coaches keep asking it and what to do instead.
You have a client who keeps skipping workouts, blowing their nutrition, or pushing back on every suggestion you give them. And somewhere in the back of your mind, you’re running the same loop: are my clients making excuses? Here’s what I want you to hear: that question is costing you.
Are My Clients Making Excuses…Or Is That the Wrong Question?
I hear this from coaches all the time. A coach will slide into my DMs and ask, almost apologetically, how I know if my client has a real reason for not following through, or if they’re just making excuses?
Here’s what I tell them every single time: it doesn’t matter whether you decide your clients are making excuses or have a valid reason.
Whether it’s a quote-unquote excuse or a totally valid reason, it’s still your job as the coach to figure out what’s going on and help your client be more successful. The label is irrelevant. What matters is that your client is struggling to be consistent, and that’s what you need to get to the bottom of.
When you find yourself trying to determine if something is a valid reason versus an excuse, what you’re actually doing is judging your client instead of coaching them. And that judgment changes how you show up. If you decide it’s just excuses, you’ll coach from a place of low trust, and your client will feel that.
Why Clients Don’t Follow Through (It’s Not About Excuses)
Behavior is always driven by underlying factors. Your biggest job as a coach isn’t to label what a client says, it’s to uncover what’s underneath it. Here are three frameworks from the research that can help you do that.
Stress and Self-Control
Stress and self-control compete for the same mental resources in the brain. When a client is operating under high stress, their capacity for self-control literally decreases, not because they don’t care, but because their brain is prioritizing other things. A stressed-out client isn’t choosing to fail. Their brain is just working against them in that moment, especially if the healthy behavior isn’t automatic yet.
Self-Determination Theory and Motivation Type
The type of motivation driving a client’s goal matters more than most coaches realize. Externally motivated goals (like losing weight for a wedding or a reunion) produce fragile consistency. When motivation isn’t rooted in personal values, identity, or genuine satisfaction, adherence is the first thing to go when life gets hard.
So instead of asking whether your client had a good enough excuse, ask: did they have a strong enough reason to follow through in the first place? Where is their motivation actually coming from?
Automatic Behavior and Habit Grooves
Humans default to what’s comfortable, predictable, and automatic. Clients who haven’t built consistent healthy habits yet will reliably fall back into the familiar patterns, not because they’re lazy, but because that’s how the brain conserves energy. Their old route just feels safer.
So many coaches are trying to coach willpower when the real issue is that their clients haven’t built a new automatic route yet. That’s not an excuse, and asking yourself are my clients making excuses gets you no closer to solving it. That’s just where they are in the process.
What to Do Instead
Instead of trying to decide if something is an excuse, shift into investigator mode. Your job is to build context, not assign blame.
First, make sure your client feels safe enough to be honest with you. If they’re worried you’ll judge them for not following through, they’ll start to hide things, water down their check-ins, or eventually ghost you altogether. Create the kind of relationship where they can come to you with the messy stuff.
Then, ask questions that help you both understand what actually happened:
- What was going on that day?
- What was different about this situation compared to when things go well?
- What were you thinking or feeling in that moment?
- Did it feel like a choice? What made it hard to follow through?
- What would have made this easier?
The goal here is not to jump straight to solutions. Skip the diagnostic process, and you’ll keep prescribing fixes for the wrong problem. Focus on creating awareness and building context for both of you.
What Your Frustration About Client Excuses Is Actually Telling You
If a client not following the plan consistently frustrates you, that frustration is worth paying attention to, but not because of what it says about your client. It’s actually information about your own expectations.
When you expect compliance and get complexity, frustration is a natural response. But the reality is that coaching is people work. Every client brings their own stress load, their own motivation patterns, their own deeply ingrained habits. The plan is just one piece of it.
And if all you’re offering is the plan, your value as a coach is genuinely at risk. AI can build a nutrition and training plan. What it can’t do is understand the context of why a specific client keeps falling off track and help them work through it. That’s the skill that sets great coaches apart.
The Bottom Line: Are My Clients Making Excuses?
Every missed action and every failed adherence is feedback. Behavior always makes sense in context, even when that context isn’t immediately obvious. Your job is to be the investigator, not the judge.
The best coaches don’t ask, “Are my clients making excuses?” They ask, “What are we missing here? What do we need to find out?”
That’s the shift. And it changes everything about how you coach.
Frequently Asked Questions About Client Excuses and Non-Adherence
Are clients making excuses or is it something else?
Most of the time, what looks like an excuse is actually a signal of stress, low motivation, or an ingrained habit pattern. The coach’s job is to investigate the context, not assign blame.
What do you do when a client keeps missing their goals?
Shift into investigator mode. Ask what was different about the times they did follow through, and what was happening underneath when they didn’t. Context always reveals more than the missed action itself.
What’s the difference between a valid reason and an excuse in coaching?
From a coaching standpoint, the distinction doesn’t matter. Whether it’s a “valid reason” or an “excuse,” your job is the same: understand what’s driving the behavior and help your client find a more consistent path forward.
Want to go deeper on motivation and what actually drives consistent behavior? This is exactly the kind of coaching scenario we work through inside the Health Mindset Coaching Certification — if you want a full framework for understanding what’s actually driving your clients’ behavior, that’s what HMCC is built around.
Come find me on Instagram @coachkaseyjo to continue the conversation.
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