The Andarta Way
How Coaching Can Help
If we want to treat coaching as a preventative intervention, we need to understand what it’s actually doing, health-wise.
What we believe — based on clinical observation and performance outcomes — is that, when applied skilfully, coaching enhances capacity.
What has that to do with health in high-performers? So often, it's the mismatch between a person’s capacity to perform and the demands placed upon them that drives allostatic load (the cumulative physiological burden imposed by chronic stress and repeated activation of the stress response), leading to the body and mind paying a high cost. Which, as we've spoken about in other articles, high performers so frequently do.
The Hidden Health Costs of High Performance
That cost might be emotional. It might be in our personal and professional relationships. It might be metabolic, or cardiovascular. It might be cognitive. But in every case, it accumulates when the ever-increasing output of our nervous and hormonal systems, compounded by insufficient recovery, gets high enough to overwhelm the system’s margin.
We see this everywhere in our clinical practice:
The entrepreneur with the cognitive horsepower to lead, but whose emotional reactivity is driving her blood pressure skyward.
The athlete who trains obsessively, but keeps getting injured, because he doesn’t know how to train efficiently for the task - or how to stop.
The executive who performs impressively on paper, but drinks every night just to wind down.
The team leader struggling to maintain focus, becoming increasingly distant, unapproachable, and irritable.
We’re not just describing a theory. These risks are not conceptual; they show up as measurable impacts on the health and lifespan of high performers.
One study of 1,605 U.S. CEOs found that exposure to high-stakes, industry-wide stress—such as during financial crises—shortened life expectancy by approximately 1.2–1.5 years and visibly accelerated ageing by about one year.
That’s why, outside of managing immediate health impacts, identifying and addressing the root cause of this stress — the mismatch between task and capacity — is where we say that coaching becomes invaluable. Done well, coaching gives high performers the tools to better understand their internal responses to stress and to manage those responses before they become damaging.
A Final Word...
Coaching can't completely eliminate the health hazards associated with high performance. But it can reduce it —helping you perform at the highest level, with less risk to your health.
References:
Gabaix, X., Koijen, R. S. J., Lasry, J.-M., & Molinari, A. (2023). CEO Stress, Aging and Death*. National Bureau of Economic Research. [https://doi.org/10.3386/w31583](https://doi.org/10.3386/w31583)
Whitmore, J. (2009). Coaching for Performance: GROWing Human Potential and Purpose – The Principles and Practice of Coaching and Leadership*. Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
Reducing Risk, Sustaining Performance: Coaching as a Medical Prevention
Throughout my time in the Army, whether in regular field units or with UK Special Forces, I treated relatively few British or US casualties. That’s not because the work was safe. It’s because our operators were prepared. The drills were rehearsed. The kit was worn properly. The risks were anticipated, planned and properly prepared for—not ignored. And so, while the threat remained high, the need for acute medical intervention stayed low.
That wasn’t always the case with our partner forces.
Early on every deployment, before they’d been properly coached and built the habits of our teams, we saw a lot of trauma. Body armour, if worn at all, would often be poorly fitted. No comms. Unrehearsed movement under fire. And as a result, my medics and I were constantly busy.
But over time, through training, repetition, and integration, something changed. They became more capable. More deliberate. And as they adapted, the casualty rate dropped. Not because the environment was less hostile. But because their ability to meet it had improved. That shift — from needing reactive medical care to manage the consequences of poor preparation, to delivering high performance under pressure — was what kept us all alive.
And now, in a very different context, I see the same pattern play out in clinical work with high performers.
Just as we couldn’t change the tactical threat (we couldn’t ask the enemy to stop shooting, after all) we can’t reduce the challenges that high performers face. The pressure doesn’t go away. The deadlines remain. The responsibilities are non-negotiable. And the mental and physical health risks are real.
But when we can help someone build the skills to meet those demands more cleanly — when they learn how to move through stress without triggering all the primary and secondary effects of overload — we see that they break less. They recover faster. They maintain performance under pressure, without requiring rescue.
That’s where performance coaching becomes more than developmental. It becomes a form of preventative healthcare.
Not therapy. Not treatment. But an intervention designed to reduce the risks associated with relentless output.
Like body armour, or executing clean drills under fire, it doesn’t eliminate the threat. It reduces the risk of operating in high-pressure environments. Precisely the same way that preventative medicine reduces the risk of illness.
It doesn't make you invulnerable. But it does make you more likely to survive intact.
How Coaching Can Increase Capacity
Sir John Whitmore’s coaching model frames performance like this:
Performance = Potential – Interference
In other words, how well you perform isn’t simply a function of how capable you are: it depends on how much gets in the way. The obstacles you have to overcome, and the drains on your resources — mental, emotional, or environmental — that erode your ability to meet them. And as Whitmore also points out it’s often those internal interferences, rooted in belief, self-perception, or emotional reactivity, that are the hardest to shift. But that’s also the friction that demands the most effort to push through, and it’s what slowly wears the system down—physically, cognitively, and emotionally.
Performance coaching increases capacity not by reducing the task, but by reducing the unseen internal demands we place on our own systems.
That might mean building psychological flexibility. Or reducing reactivity. Or tightening boundaries. Or addressing the invisible frictions of misaligned work and values.
None of these are soft outcomes. They’re strategic adaptations that allow high performers to meet demand with less emotional, cognitive and, ultimately, physiological cost. And over time, we have seen them dramatically alter the trajectory of stress—reducing cumulative wear and the likelihood of breakdown.
Read Time: 4 mins
Author:
Dr Jonathan Clark-McKellar