Is Online Personal Training Worth It? An Honest Answer From a Coach

You can find a decent training programme online for nothing in about four minutes. So the question is fair: why would anybody pay somebody between fifty and a couple of hundred pounds a month to be told what to do, when the information is free?

The honest answer is that for some people it is very good value and for others it is money quietly wasted, and the difference is predictable enough that you can work out which you are before you spend anything. I coach in person and I am opening online coaching soon, so I have every commercial reason to tell you it is always worth it. It is not. Here is the actual test.

You are not paying for the information

Nobody who has trained for more than a year is short of information. You already know that you should lift progressively heavier things a few times a week, walk more, eat enough protein and sleep. If knowing was the bottleneck, the fitness industry would have run out of customers a long time ago.

What you are actually buying is four things: a plan that fits your specific circumstances rather than a generic one, someone applying judgement when things change, a reason to report honestly to another human being every week, and the removal of decisions. That last one is bigger than it sounds. Most people do not stop training because the programme was wrong. They stop because every session required a decision and the decisions ran out of energy before the muscles did.

When online coaching is clearly worth the money

There are a few situations where I think the value is obvious.

• You know how to train but you keep stopping and starting, and you have never strung twelve consistent weeks together
• You have been training for a while and nothing has moved for a year, because you have been repeating the same sessions at the same loads
• Your schedule is chaotic and no fixed weekly slot with a trainer would survive it
• You want to train at home or at a gym near work, and you need the plan to work in both
• You respond well to being accountable to someone, but you cannot justify the cost of two in person hours a week
• You want to learn enough to eventually do this without a coach at all

The common thread is that the coaching is solving your actual bottleneck. If your bottleneck is consistency and structure, coaching hits it directly, and the return on a hundred pounds a month is enormous compared to another year of drifting. Have a look at what the coaching relationship involves on the online coaching page and check that it is the thing you are missing.

Who wastes their money on it

I would rather say this plainly than have someone sign up and regret it.

First, people who are hoping the purchase will supply the motivation. Buying coaching feels like progress. It gives you the same small hit as buying running shoes. But a coach cannot want it on your behalf, and if you are looking for something to make you want to train, you are shopping for the wrong product. Coaching multiplies effort. It does not create it from nothing.

Second, complete beginners who will be training alone with no experience of the movements. You can learn from video feedback, but it is slower and more frustrating than being taught in a room. A short block of in person sessions first is usually better value, and then online coaching afterwards is excellent value.

Third, anyone with a significant undiagnosed problem. If your back has been bad for eight months and nobody clinical has looked at it, spend the money on your GP referral or a physiotherapist before you spend it on programming. Training around a problem you have not identified is guesswork with your money attached.

Fourth, people who will not report honestly. Online coaching runs on the information you send. If you are going to overstate the sessions you completed and quietly leave out the four takeaways, your coach is making decisions from fiction and you will not get what you paid for.

Fifth, people who need to be watched to turn up at all. That is not a failing, it is useful self knowledge, and the right spend for you is a local trainer with a fixed slot in the diary.

How to judge value at different prices

Across the UK, online coaching commonly runs from around £50 a month at the lighter end to £200 or more where there is a lot of direct contact and individual attention. That is a wide range and price alone tells you very little, so judge it on what is included.

At the lower end you should expect a programme genuinely built from your own answers, written technique feedback on videos you send, and a monthly review with real adjustments. At the higher end you should expect more frequent check ins, faster replies, more detailed nutrition support, and the sense that somebody is actively thinking about your training between the times you speak.

What should be true at every price is that the plan changes in response to you. If three months in you are following essentially the same document you were handed on day one, you have bought a PDF at a subscription price. Ask directly at the start how often the programme is reviewed and what triggers a change.

Compared to what?

Value is always relative, so put it next to the alternatives rather than next to zero.

• A gym membership you use twice a month is not cheaper than coaching, it is more expensive per session by a distance
• Free programmes are excellent if you will follow one for six months. Most people follow one for three weeks and then find a different one
• In person training in the south east costs meaningfully more per week, which is right for some people and unnecessary for others
• Another year of doing nothing has a cost too, it is just paid in a currency that does not show up on a bank statement

How long before you can tell?

Twelve weeks. Not four. Strength and habits both take longer than a month to show anything you can trust, and if you judge coaching by how you look after three weeks you will cancel everything you ever start. At twelve weeks the questions are concrete: are the loads on your main lifts higher, are you completing more of your planned sessions than you used to, do you understand what you are doing and why, and has the plan been adapted at least a few times in response to your real life?

If the honest answer to most of those is yes, it was worth it, even if the scales have been stubborn. If the answer to most of them is no, do not renew out of politeness. Say what has not worked and either fix it with your coach or stop.

The question I would ask instead

Rather than is online coaching worth it, ask what has actually stopped you in the past. If the answer is I did not know what to do, a good plan solves that cheaply. If it is I know what to do and I still do not do it consistently, then you are exactly who coaching is for, and the monthly cost is small against another two years of the same pattern. There is more about how I work with people on the how it works page.

Find out whether it fits you before you spend anything

I coach busy parents and professionals one to one in person in Cuckfield, and online coaching is opening soon. Every conversation starts free and with no obligation, and part of the point of it is to tell you honestly if online coaching is not the right spend for you right now. If you would like to know when it opens, get in touch and I will let you know.