Why Get A Coach?

Who Should or Shouldn't Get A Fitness and Nutrition Coach 

Getting a dedicated coach is important in many fitness endeavours, but it isn't for everyone. If you aren't willing to go all out in your training and nutrition to achieve whatever your goal may be then a coach will do you no good. Get a commercial gym membership, do basic exercises, eat decent food, and move more. You will get better but its significantly less likely you will achieve your goal.

The ideal client for a coach is truly dedicated to improving, following the structure and practices that their coach provides. In return for following the structure the coach will use their knowledge base to get you where you want to be as fast and reliably as possible. Taking on a fitness and nutrition coach is generally one of the most important factors in achieving your overarching goals, if you need proof just look at almost every college level and up fitness or sports team having dedicated fitness and nutrition coaches specific to their sport and sometimes even position or playing style. It is an extremely effective tool so long as you follow the program and your coach is educated properly. 

Should I Get an In-Person or An Online Coach? 

First let’s discuss the benefits and downsides of in-person training. In-person training has the immense benefit of live viewing of your form, this can reduce injuries, and make lifts more effective, you also have dedicated times to when your workouts will be making it more likely for you to attend. I generally find that in-person trainers are immensely beneficial to new people working out who don't have a lot of motivation to training but need to get into better shape. I generally like to stay up late at night and so my workouts tend to fall past midnight, making finding a trainer available at that time near impossible. Finally, the last issue I see with finding is their cost per hour, because they have to devote hour blocks to specific clients rather they tend to charge more per hour session, with some that I’ve seen going up to 150$ per hour. This means that doing 4, 1-hour sessions with a client will cost as much as a full month of near daily fitness and nutrition.

 Next, I’m going to cover the positive and negative sides to online coaches. Online coaching allows the coach to provide for a large client base with much less time commitment per client, this means that they can provide the service at a less expensive price with excellent quality behind it. The coaching generally can become more specific to your needs, because you are restricted geographically to trainers in your local area. Since coaches aren’t restricted to 1-hour sessions they can provide you with a more complete workout, this flexibility in scheduling also allows clients to get to the gym when they are comfortable.

Now the downsides of online coaching, to me the biggest downside is the self-directed nature of training, if you aren’t motivated or pushed to attend training it can be a waste of money. Then the next biggest issue is the difficulty in monitoring form. Our system allows us to upload videos on the lift so provided the video is good we can correct form issues, while it isn’t perfect, it's an improvement. Finally, there is an issue with trainer quality, there are thousands of workout programs online, thousands of trainers. Many aren’t worth their salt, so it is imperative that no matter if it is online or in-person make sure they are educated, and provide a good program, testimonials and reviews help but look at their education program first and foremost.