Wellness coaching
Wellness coaching, and what it actually involves
“Wellness coaching” is a broad phrase, and it is used to describe very different things. This page sets out what it means here: what the work covers, how it runs online week to week, who it suits, and what it is reasonable to expect from it.
The short answer
Coaching the whole picture, not one piece of it
Wellness coaching is a one-to-one working relationship in which training, nutrition, sleep and daily habits are addressed together, over months, with someone accountable for adjusting the plan as your life changes.
The distinction that matters is between being given a plan and being coached. A plan is a document. Coaching is what happens when the plan meets a week you did not expect — a work trip, an injury-free but exhausting fortnight, a month where the food is out of your control — and someone changes it with you rather than telling you to try harder.
It is educational work. The intention is that you finish able to make good decisions about food, training and recovery without needing to ask, which is a different goal from keeping you on a programme indefinitely.
What it is not. Wellness and fitness coaching is not medical care. It does not diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any condition, and it does not replace diagnosis or treatment by an appropriately qualified healthcare professional. If something needs a clinician, it needs a clinician.
What the coaching covers
Five things, worked on together
None of these is sold separately, and none of them works well on its own. Training without recovery stalls; nutrition without structure holds for about three weeks; accountability with nothing to be accountable for is a reminder to feel guilty.
Training
A programme written for your starting point, your equipment and the number of days you can genuinely train — not a template with your name at the top. It is logged in the app as you do it, so progression is based on what happened rather than what was planned.
Sets, reps and loads are adjusted as you get stronger and as your weeks change shape.
Nutrition
Guidance built around how you actually eat, with the reasoning attached. The aim is that you can look at a meal and know roughly what it does, rather than following a plan you cannot explain and abandon the week it becomes inconvenient.
This is nutrition education and coaching. It is not a prescribed diet, and it is not clinical dietetics.
Sleep and recovery
Training only works to the extent you recover from it. Sleep, rest days and how hard a week is allowed to be are part of the programme rather than an afterthought, and they are reviewed alongside training and food.
Tracked simply, in the app, so patterns are visible over weeks instead of remembered.
Daily structure and habits
Most of what decides a result happens outside the sessions. The work here is on the small repeatable things — when you eat, when you train, how a difficult week is handled — chosen so they survive a bad month rather than a good one.
One or two at a time. A list of fifteen new habits is a list nobody keeps.
Accountability and review
A weekly check-in and a private message thread with Rishman, not a chatbot and not a shared community channel. Progress is reviewed against what you logged, and the programme changes when the evidence says it should.
Direct, private, and answered by the person who wrote your programme.
How online coaching works
A week, start to finish
Everything runs through the Wellness by Rishman client app — your programme, your log, your check-ins and a private thread with Rishman, in one place rather than across four.
Coaching is delivered remotely from India over video. There is no studio to travel to and no in-person training.
Your programme is waiting in the app
Today's session, the exercises, the target sets and the last weights you used.
You log the session as you do it
Weights, reps and how it felt. Two minutes, not homework.
You check in once a week
Weight, how training went, sleep, energy, and anything that got in the way.
Rishman reviews and adjusts
The programme changes based on what you logged, not on a fixed schedule of changes.
You can message any day
A private thread for the question that comes up on Wednesday, not one saved for Sunday.
Two formats
Is Rishman in the session, or behind it?
Both formats are one-to-one and both include everything above. The only difference is whether the workouts are supervised live.
Online Coaching
Personalised programming and guidance, on your schedule.
You follow your personalised program independently, with ongoing guidance.
For people who can train independently, but want structure, accountability and expert guidance behind them.
Live Online Personal Training
Train with your coach, in real time.
Rishman personally supervises three workouts a week by video, on top of the full coaching system.
For people who want Rishman in the session with them — watching the lift, correcting it as it happens.
Fit
Who this suits, and who it does not
A good fit if
- You want to lose body fat and keep it off, rather than lose it and start again
- You would rather understand your nutrition than be handed a meal plan
- You can commit to a block of months, not a fortnight
- You want one person who knows your situation, not a library of programmes
- You are comfortable training and communicating online
Probably not, if
- You are looking for a meal plan or a workout PDF and nothing else
- You want a guaranteed rate of weight loss — no honest coach will give you one
- You need in-person, hands-on supervision for every session
- You are looking for treatment for a diagnosed medical condition
Expectations
What is reasonable to expect
The coaching works towards four things: losing excess body fat, building strength and fitness, understanding nutrition, and building habits that hold. Those are aims. How far and how fast any individual moves towards them depends on their starting point, their health, their consistency and their circumstances, and it varies widely between people.
No specific result is promised or guaranteed, and no rate of weight change is quoted anywhere on this site. A coach who guarantees a number is either not accounting for the person in front of them or is not being straight with you.
What is reasonable to expect is a programme built for your situation, a considered adjustment every week based on what you actually did, a direct answer when you ask a question, and an understanding of your own training and nutrition that outlasts the coaching.
- Lose excess body fat
- Build strength and fitness
- Understand nutrition
- Build sustainable habits
The method
Four stages
The structure the coaching runs on, whichever format you choose.
Assess
We start with where you actually are — your routine, your training history, what you eat and what you want to be able to do.
Personalize
Nutrition and training built around your life, your preferences and your schedule rather than a template.
Transform
Weekly calls, progress tracking and adjustments as your circumstances and your body change.
Sustain
The habits and the understanding stay with you, so what you have built holds once the coaching finishes.
Go deeper
Written in more detail
Each of these stands on its own, and none of them requires working with me to be useful.
- WellnessWhat is wellness coaching?What wellness coaching is, how it differs from personal training, nutrition advice and therapy, what a coach cannot do, and how to tell whether you need one.9 min read
- Online coachingOnline coaching or live online personal training?The difference between following a programme with a coach behind it and training with your coach watching over video — and how to tell which one you need.7 min read
- TrainingStrength training for beginnersThe six decisions that matter when you start lifting — days, movements, load, progression, soreness and when to change something — and how to get each right.7 min read
- TrainingA routine that survives a bad monthRoutines rarely fail on ordinary weeks. They fail on the week that goes wrong, because no smaller version was designed. Here is how to design one.7 min read
- NutritionNutrition for fat loss, in order of what mattersThe decisions that account for most of the outcome, ranked — and the ones people spend their attention on first that are rounding errors.7 min read
- RecoverySleep, recovery and trainingHow much sleep adults are advised to get, why recovery is where training actually works, what is worth tracking, and when the answer is a doctor rather than a habit.6 min read
Who coaches you
One coach, not a team
Hrishikesh Babade — Rishman — is a NASM Certified Personal Trainer and NASM Certified Wellness Coach, with ISSA qualifications in strength and conditioning and in sports nutrition, and a diploma in sports science.
He has worked as a personal trainer, a fitness director, and a fitness and wellness professional, including international work in premium cruise environments. Every programme, every weekly review and every message reply is his.
Wellness and fitness coaching is not a regulated profession. Nothing here is a claim to statutory registration or to any medical or dietetic qualification.
See whether this is a fit
Start with a short application. It tells Rishman what you are working towards and whether this is the right way to get there — before anything is booked or paid for.