The Online Fitness Coach

With the increasing popularity of getting fit and looking good, many people are turning away from traditional 1 on 1 personal training and are turning to fitness consulting as an effective and low cost way of reaching their goals.

The Problem With Traditional Personal Training

A well qualified and highly experienced personal trainer will charge anywhere between $60 and $100 for a single 1-hour session of 1 on 1 personal training. Sessions are usually sold in blocks of 10 which turns out to be quite a financial investment on the client’s part. For this fee, the trainer will take the client through the motions of the workout and if the client is lucky, might offer some advice or tips during the sessions. It involves no program design, no background inquiry, no meal planning, and likely no motivational support. Usually at the end of the 10 sessions the client is no better off than when they started. Sure they may have shed a couple of pounds of fat and improved muscle tone a bit but it is a temporary fix. Without the trainer they will likely fall back into their old lifestyle and lose any gains they may have achieved. It is a broken system that usually leads to failure.

Why an Online Fitness Consultant Is A Better Alternative

Online fitness consulting is superior to traditional personal training for several reasons. First it offers much greater value. Most online fitness consultants charge around $100 per month…yes that is per month! With this monthly fee, the online trainer will usually work with their clients on a weekly basis (I talk with my clients sometimes twice a week or even daily when they are close to a competition.) The online consultant provides the client with a long term plan, weekly workout updates, weekly meal plan modifications to reach weight loss (or weight gain) goals, supplementation advice, and much more. A good online trainer will also entertain questions from their clients and educate them on all aspects of fitness and nutrition. Of course the client will also be whipped into shape and experience a complete physical transformation in the process! As part of my consultation business I also offer full physique competition preparation, fitness modeling and sponsorship advice, injury management advice, and contact with my network of bodybuilding, health and fitness professionals.

Another reason why online consulting is superior to traditional personal training is that you can workout on your own time. You do not need to schedule workouts around your trainer’s time slots. Instead you are able to train at a time that is most convienient to your lifestyle.

Lastly with online consulting you do not have to face the humiliation of being tagged along by a trainer into a busy gym with everyone staring at you. The truth of the matter is that being trained by someone draws attention. For some people this is not an issue but I could always tell when people who were being trained at a gym felt uncomfortable. My heart went out to them.

Not All Online Coaches Are Equal

With the growing popularity of online personal training, I have noticed that there are more and more so called experts on the internet promoting their consulting service. Without mentioning names or going into specifics, there are several things that a person looking for a fitness coach should look out for.

1.Caring: A good fitness coach will care that their clients see results and reach their goals. Look for a “Clients” or “Testimonials” page on the trainers web site. The trainer should also make themselves available to their clients as much as possible. I know of some online coaches who have their clients report in bi-weekly. This is far too long to not be in contact with your coach. So much can happen in that time which can potentially halt your progress. A good fitness consultant will keep in contact with their clients and encourage dialogue or questions at any time.

2.Knowledge: Your fitness coach should have all the right answers. Look for a solid education background in exercise science, nutrition, and injury management. Also make sure you are getting answers that are explained to you in terms that you understand.

3.Experience: The best fitness coaches are people who have experienced success themselves and who live a healthy and fit lifestyle. Far too often I see so called experts who tell others how to train and eat but never really applied their own teaching to their own bodies. It is true that just because someone looks great, does not mean that they automatically will know a lot about training and diet. Look for a coach who not only has had success transforming their own bodies, but who maintains a healthy body and lifestyle.

4.Weekly Updates: Good online trainers provide fresh workouts and meal plans for their clients. A training program that does not change in some aspect week to week is useless. When the body is not stressed in different ways it gets accustomed to the workout and muscle adaptation diminishes. It is the online coach’s role to provide a well planned workout program that changes each week, and keeps the client’s body adapting to new stresses. In the same way, good online trainers will modify a client’s diet on a weekly basis. Meal plans need to be tweaked frequently so that clients are maintaining a correct caloric balance to reach their weight loss, gain, or maintenance goals. Bi-weekly meal plan updates are simply too slow to react to caloric balance errors which will not be detected until it is too late. I could never imagine waiting a full 2-weeks to check in on one of my clients going through the diet process as a sudden weight loss (or lack there of) can be common and needs to be addressed quickly.

5.Educate You: It is my goal as a trainer to educate my clients. I remember how hard it was to find information when I first got into bodybuilding. I made it my mission to find out as much as I could by educating myself and talking to as many people as I could. I had my own mentors and trainers, each of which taught me a few things and added to my knowledge base. To educate my clients I encourage them to ask me “Why” questions so that they get a better understanding of how things work. It is my goal to pass down all of my knowledge that I have gained in the last 25 years so that my clients can one day take over their own training and perhaps one day train their own clients.

6.Customized Programs: I will never forget the first online trainer I had when I was getting ready to compete in bodybuilding contests. When I opened the training program he made for me it was called “Frank’s Program Week #1”. My name is not Frank. I still had faith that he was a good trainer and thought that it must have been a simple mistake. Well sure enough, each week when I received the response to my updates there was no real advice or changes to the program. He would just say “Sounds Good” and “God Bless” I remember it hurt my feelings that this person could take my money and not even care if I was experiencing results. Good trainers will create customized programs specific your goals and likes. I always ask my clients which exercises / foods they like (and do not like) so that I can tailor their training with that in mind.