Is online fitness coaching worth it? An honest answer
You've downloaded the apps. You've logged the food, maybe for months at a time. You know protein matters and lifting is good for you, and it still falls apart by March.
So you're wondering if paying a coach would be any different. That's a fair question, and the honest answer is "sometimes."
Short answer: online coaching is worth it when two things are true. You already know roughly what to do but can't keep it going, and you'll check in every week, even on bad weeks. A coach's real job is changing the plan when your week changes. If you won't check in, keep your money. An app will do.
Most people who ask me this aren't beginners. They've tried it alone, often more than once. The missing piece was never information. This post will help you figure out which camp you're in before you sign up for anything, with me or anyone else.
I'm Matt. I've been coaching since 2009, in person and online, and most of the people I coach are working parents.
What is online coaching, really?
A lot of things get called online coaching. A PDF with 12 weeks of workouts. An app that builds a plan from a quiz. A group program where everyone gets the same thing. Those can be fine. They aren't coaching.
Coaching means a real person looks at your actual week and builds around it. Your shifts. Your equipment. The food that's really in your fridge. The knee that complains on the stairs. The kid with practice three nights a week.
Here's how I run it. You fill out an intake form. I build your training and nutrition in the app around the days and equipment you really have. You check in every week. I read it and change the plan. Then we do it again.
The first plan is a guess. The plan in week six is the one that fits you. By then it's been corrected five times by what actually happened.
Can a coach do anything an app can't?
Apps are good now. Some adjust your workouts from what you log. If you're consistent and healthy, an app might be all you need.
But apps have a staying problem. In a national survey of 1,604 US phone owners, about half of the people who had downloaded health apps had stopped using some of them. The top reasons were too much data entry and losing interest (Krebs and Duncan, 2015).
A real person seems to help. In one trial, 192 adults in an online weight-loss program got either no counseling, automated tailored messages, or weekly emails from a human counselor. At three months, the automated and human groups were about even. By six months, the human group had lost more (Tate and colleagues, 2006).
A bigger trial ran for two years. It followed 415 adults, about two thirds of them women, average age 54. One group was coached only by phone, web and email. In that group, 38% lost at least 5% of their body weight, compared with 19% of people doing it on their own. The remote group did about as well as a group that also met coaches in person (Appel and colleagues, NEJM, 2011).
Those are weight-loss studies in adults with obesity, so they aren't a promise about you. They do point the same way I've seen for years. The plan matters less than someone who keeps paying attention to it.
That's the part an app can't do. It can't read between the lines. It doesn't know your check-in says "fine" but you've slept five hours a night since your schedule flipped to nights. It doesn't know you keep skipping Thursday because that's the night your partner works late. It won't tell you to take an easy week after a cold went through the whole house.
When is online coaching worth it?
You know what to do and still can't keep it going. This is most people I work with. They start strong in January. Then a sick kid, a deadline or a run of night shifts knocks it over, and it feels like starting from zero. They didn't need a better plan. They needed one that bends instead of breaks. (I wrote about that in bad week? call it a mulligan.)
Your weeks don't look the same twice. Twelve-hour shifts. Day and night flips. Kids' sports. A job that eats your evenings. A fixed program assumes the same week every week. Nobody I coach has that week. When I know a hard week is coming, the plan changes before it starts, not after you've missed four sessions. Often that means three days instead of six.
Your body is changing, or something hurts. Maybe it's an old shoulder or a back that complains. Maybe it's your 40s, and the things that used to work stopped working. A generic program doesn't know any of that. I build around it from day one. I'm a coach, not a doctor. If perimenopause symptoms, a medication or pain needs your doctor first, I'll tell you.
You need someone to take things off your plate. Half of good coaching is telling you what to stop doing. Most busy parents are doing too much of something that doesn't matter, and not enough of the two or three things that do.
When isn't it worth it?
You already train consistently and just want new workouts. If you've shown up three or four days a week for a year and you're happy, buy a good program or use an app. That's a fine choice.
You won't check in. The check-in is where the coaching happens. If you'll ignore the weekly form, you're paying for a plan you could get elsewhere. Be honest with yourself on this one.
You want someone next to you every set. That's in-person training, and it's a different thing. I can review videos of your lifts, but nobody is standing in your garage.
You want a fast fix. I don't do 30-day makeovers. Real change shows up over months. You're stronger, your energy is steadier, your clothes fit differently, and the habits stop feeling like work. If you want ten pounds gone by next Friday, I'm the wrong coach.
Coach or app: a three-question self-test
- Have you started over more than twice in the last two years?
- Did your last plan fall apart the first time your week changed?
- Will you answer a short check-in every week, even after a bad one?
If you said yes to the first two and yes to the third, coaching is likely worth it. If you said no to the third, start with an app. Come back when you're ready to check in. I mean that.
What should you look for in an online coach?
If you decide coaching fits, here's what I'd check before picking anyone, including me.
Do they ask about your life before they write a plan? If the first step is a checkout button with no questions, the plan was written before they met you.
Do they change it? Ask how often the plan changes and why. "Every month, no matter what" isn't coaching. "Whenever your week or your progress says so" is.
Do they promise results? Be careful. Nobody can promise what your body will do. They don't control your sleep, your stress or your food. A coach can promise to pay attention and keep adjusting.
Do they tell you who it's not for? A coach who says yes to everyone isn't really listening.
Do they coach people with your life? Most of the people I coach are working parents. A lot of them are women in their 30s, 40s and 50s, and many work shifts. Ask any coach who they work with most. The answer tells you whether they'll understand your week.
What to do this week
- Take the self-test above. Be honest about question 3.
- Write down last week as it really went: workouts done, nights under six hours of sleep, meals eaten in the car. That's the week any plan has to fit.
- If coaching fits, fill out the intake form. If it doesn't, pick one app and give it 30 days before you judge it.
Questions people ask
How does online personal training work? You share your goal, schedule, equipment, food habits and anything that hurts. Your coach writes your training and nutrition around that, in an app. You follow it, then check in each week. The coach reads the check-in and adjusts the plan, so it keeps fitting as your life changes.
Is online coaching as good as in-person? For most goals it can be. In a two-year trial of 415 adults, people coached only by phone, web and email did about as well. They lost about as much weight as people who also met coaches in person. In-person training is better if you need someone watching every rep. Many people do fine with video review.
What if coaching didn't work for me before? Ask why. Was the plan built for your real week? Did anyone change it when life got busy? Did you check in? If the answer to the first two was no, that wasn't coaching. If the answer to the third was no, start there.
Do I need a gym? No. About half the people I coach train at home or in a garage, and many use both. I write the plan around the equipment you have, whether that's a full gym, a pair of dumbbells or a few bands and a bench.
So, is it worth it?
You don't need more information. You've had that since the first app. What you need is a plan that changes when your week does, and someone who notices when it's slipping.
If that sounds like what's been missing, start with the intake form. Tell me your goal, your week and anything that hurts. I'll tell you honestly what I think fits, even if the answer is that you'd do fine on your own.
Sources
- Krebs P, Duncan DT. Health App Use Among US Mobile Phone Owners: A National Survey. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 2015. https://mhealth.jmir.org/2015/4/e101/
- Tate DF, Jackvony EH, Wing RR. A randomized trial comparing human e-mail counseling, computer-automated tailored counseling, and no counseling in an Internet weight loss program. Archives of Internal Medicine, 2006. https://doi.org/10.1001/archinte.166.15.1620
- Appel LJ, Clark JM, Yeh HC, et al. Comparative Effectiveness of Weight-Loss Interventions in Clinical Practice (POWER trial). New England Journal of Medicine, 2011. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1108660