A client check-in template for health coaches

Vikrant Singh·July 3, 2026·7 min read

Vikrant Singh is co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Slide Practice. He writes about running a one-to-one practice.

A short, repeatable check-in your clients can fill in two minutes, so momentum holds between sessions and slow progress becomes something you can both see.

A client check-in template for health coaches is a short form your client fills in before each session, usually in about two minutes, covering wins since last time, how their habits went, a quick self-rating of energy, sleep, and mood, the biggest obstacle they hit, a focus for the coming week, and one question for you. It keeps momentum going between sessions and gives you a written record of progress you can point to when someone forgets how far they have come. Because this is non-clinical, cash-pay coaching, the check-in is a coaching tool and not a medical record, and it never stands in for care from a licensed clinician.

Why a structured check-in beats "so, how was your week?"

Opening a session with an open question feels friendly, but it puts the work of remembering on your client in the one moment they are least ready for it. They will give you the last two days, or whatever is loudest in their head, and you will spend the first ten minutes reconstructing the week before you can coach anything at all.

A check-in flips that. Your client does the remembering on their own time, when they can look back at their week honestly. By the time you meet, you both start from the same page, and you can spend the session on the pattern instead of the recap.

There is a second reason, and it matters more over months than weeks. Health change is slow and mostly invisible day to day. People forget they used to skip breakfast every morning, or that they were waking at 3 a.m. all through March. A written trail of check-ins is the thing you hold up in week twelve when a client says nothing is working. Often plenty is working. They just cannot see it without the record.

If you coach nutrition or wellness clients on a cash-pay basis, a repeatable check-in is one of the simplest ways to make slow, invisible progress visible. It sits alongside the other habits of a solo practice covered on the For health and wellness hub.

The six fields that carry their weight

A good check-in is short enough that your client will actually do it and specific enough that you learn something. These six fields do that. Anything past them tends to turn the form into homework, and homework is the first thing a busy person drops.

1. Wins since last time

Start positive, and start specific. Ask for two or three things that went well, however small. "I said no to the office donuts twice" counts. This does two jobs. It trains your client to notice their own progress, and it tells you which of your suggestions actually landed in a real week.

2. Habit adherence

Pick the two or three habits you agreed on and ask, plainly, how many days out of seven each one happened. Numbers beat adjectives here. "Pretty good" hides a lot; "four of seven" is something you can work with. If a habit sits at two of seven three weeks running, that is not a willpower problem. That is a sign the habit is wrong for their life and needs redesigning. For more on setting habits that survive contact with a real week, see tracking habits between check-ins.

3. Energy, sleep, and mood

A one-to-five self-rating on energy, sleep, and mood takes ten seconds and gives you a trend line. Any single week is noise. Four weeks of a slow climb in energy, or a dip in sleep that lines up neatly with a work deadline, is signal. You are not diagnosing anything with this. You are noticing, out loud, so your client feels seen and you both know where to point next.

4. The biggest obstacle

Ask for the one thing that got in the way most. Not a list, one thing. This is where the real coaching lives. Most obstacles are not about food or exercise at all. They are about time, travel, a partner who eats differently, a stressful stretch at work. Knowing the obstacle before the session means you walk in with a plan instead of hearing it for the first time and improvising on the clock.

5. Focus for next week

Have your client name the single change they want to hold onto. When the client picks it, they own it. Your job in the session is to pressure-test that focus and make it small enough to actually happen, not to hand them a fresh list of five new things to carry.

6. One question for you

Give them a place to park the thing they have been meaning to ask. "Is oat milk fine?" "Should I be worried I am hungrier on training days?" It surfaces small confusions early, and it quietly tells you what your client is unsure about in the days between sessions.

The template

Here is the whole thing. Copy it into a shared doc, a simple form, or the body of an email, and send it to your client the day before each session. Swap the bracketed parts for the habits the two of you are actually working on.

CHECK-IN · [Your name] · Week of [date]

Takes about two minutes. Be honest, not perfect. There
are no wrong answers here, only useful ones.

1. WINS SINCE LAST TIME
 Two or three things that went well, however small.
 -
 -
 -

2. HABITS: how did the plan go this week?
 [Habit 1, e.g. protein at breakfast] .... ___ of 7 days
 [Habit 2, e.g. 8,000 steps] ............. ___ of 7 days
 [Habit 3, e.g. lights out by 11pm] ...... ___ of 7 days

3. HOW YOU FELT (1 = rough, 5 = great)
 Energy 1 2 3 4 5
 Sleep 1 2 3 4 5
 Mood 1 2 3 4 5

4. BIGGEST OBSTACLE
 The one thing that got in the way most this week.
 -

5. FOCUS FOR NEXT WEEK
 The single habit or change you want to hold onto.
 -

6. ONE QUESTION FOR ME
 Anything you want answered before or during our
 next session.
 -

Keep the wording steady from week to week. Change only the bracketed habits. The value of a check-in is in the trend, and a trend needs the same questions asked the same way over time.

Weekly or every other week?

Both work. The right cadence depends on the client and the phase they are in, not on a rule. Here is the trade-off in plain terms.

A common pattern is weekly for the first month while habits are forming, then a move to every other week once things hold. Ask the client. Most people know which one they need.

How to read a check-in in ninety seconds

You do not need to study these. Scan in this order. First the self-ratings, for the trend. Then the obstacle, because that is your session's agenda. Then the habit numbers, to see what is holding and what is slipping. Wins and the focus tell you how your client sees themselves right now, and the question gets answered in the session or in a quick reply beforehand.

Jot a line or two of your own after each session while it is fresh, so next week's check-in reads against last week's notes. If you want a simple structure for those private notes, session notes for cash-pay nutrition work covers one that takes about a minute.

A few things that keep it working

• Keep it short. Two minutes, not ten. The moment the check-in feels like a chore, adherence drops and you lose the very data you wanted.
• Read it before the session, not during. Reading it live wastes the time you are both there for and undoes the main benefit.
• Close the loop. Reference something from the check-in in the first few minutes. It shows you read it, and it makes the next one more honest.
• Let a skipped week be information. When someone stops filling it in, that usually means the week was hard, not that they stopped caring. Ask gently and find out.

None of this needs software. A shared doc and a calendar reminder will carry you a long way, and plenty of good coaches run entirely on that. If you would rather your clients answered the same few questions in one place, and you saw the trail without chasing it, that is the sort of thing a quiet client portal is for. You keep 100% of what you earn, and Slide Practice stays out of your client payments; it just holds the record so you can coach. The six questions above are what matter, with or without it.

Common questions