This is a transcription of Episode 24 of the LinnFit coaching Podcast. If you want to listen to it you can find it on Spotify by searching for LinnFit coaching Podcast, or on the Youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd7nXfhH5Fo.
Welcome to the LinnFit coaching podcast where we take some of the most important Fitness, Nutrition, and lifestyle topics and we make practical for you, so you can take it with you in your daily life.
Welcome to the LinnFit Coaching Podcast. Today I want to talk about the difference between an online exercise program and online coaching. Because you might be thinking today “I’d like to get fitter, I’d like to get stronger, I’d like to be a better version of myself, but I don’t know exactly how to get there.”
Should I get an online program? Or should I get an online coach?
What’s the difference?
Well today I want to help you understand what is the difference between an online program and an online coach. Let’s define them first. For an online program you subscribe to an exercise program that you follow on your own. You may have little to no interaction with a coach. You basically get the exercises and workouts and you do it, wherever you’re at. For online coaching you pay usually a little bit of a larger fee and you get a professional coach's time to interact with you, write your program, and help you see progress, whatever that means for you. Usually they are priced differently because there is a different level of engagement. One gets a person, the other gets a written program.
What do you get with an online program?
Let’s talk about what you get with both. With an online program, you pay sometimes as little as $5, maybe up to $50 for an upfront fee or for a monthly subscription. What you get with this is an exercise program. Usually it will come with some sort of delivery platform, if it's a pretty cheap program you probably will get a pdf with a big list of workouts on it. If it’s a monthly subscription, you will probably have some sort of delivery platform like an app or something, where you will get to see the workouts. You might be able to journal and log your scores and PRs and everything. You might even get plugged into a community that’s logging scores so that you have people that you can compare yourself to. But you may have little to no coach interaction there. It’s just something that you follow the workouts, and then you do your own thing with your own motivation. You get connected wherever your own community is. Maybe you do your workouts on your own, by yourself wherever you’re at. Many programs especially those with apps involved have exercise demos that you’ll get with the program. These will help to follow along and be able to replicate those exercises.
Online Coaching, What do you get with that?
A lot of times you’ll have the same sort of delivery, you’ll have an exercise program but you’ll have even more on top of that. The difference between the two again, is that with an online program you get an exercise program, you get the workouts. With online coaching you get a person, who’s delivering you all of these things. You pay either a monthly subscription fee or an upfront cost for a set time domain to receive coaching. Usually the price for that coaching can depend on the demographic, or where you live, what the coach believes his or her value is for their time, and how much time your coach intends to dedicate towards you and the coaching process. It’s usually around $100/month. Anywhere from that up to several hundred dollars depending on how much time you’re asking for, and how much time that coach intends to give you. What the coaching capacity is, how many clients they have, or how much time they have to offer all affect the price of coaching. You’re getting a person and that person gets to know you and assess you, and see what your current fitness level is, they help you set goals, and they help you take steps to get there. Usually an online coaching program will be more monitored and customized to what your needs are. It can really help solve problems and get long-term solutions for you. You can get more of a specialized coach with this as well, to help with whatever your specific needs are. Sometimes you can get more of a holistic coach who has skills in several different disciplines, or you might have a highly specialized coach who just helps you in one area. A swim coach is an example of this. Usually online coaching costs more depending on the demographic like I mentioned before. The cool thing about online coaching is that normally the coach is super reachable, if you need support your coach is there, because you are that coach's priority. There may also be a community involved with online coaching. You might be able to communicate with the other clients that your coach is working with, maybe it's group training, or maybe it’s one on one personal training.
What are some Cautions for online programming and online coaching?
With online programming you need to be experienced, you need to be self aware of your needs and recovery. It’s all on you because you have very little support. Especially if it includes complex movements, it’s on you to understand how to do those. They might have video demonstrations, but you will have to figure out how to follow those. The temptation with online programming can be to cherry pick workouts. Picking some from here and there or only choosing to do the workouts that you like. There’s no accountability there with only online programming.
With an online coach a caution that you might have is that you need to have a well qualified coach, admittedly there are some not so good coaches out there. You might just have someone that’s physically gifted and they will try to tell you what they did. That doesn’t necessarily work for all people. Another thing to be cautionary of is if a coach takes on too many clients, you know it because their engagement or their availability to you will drop. So that’s something to be mindful of with coaching. You want a coach who is willing to cap themselves so they can bring the best quality to you. You’ll have to determine what kind of coach you want. One who works with a ton of clients who rarely pops in, maybe that’s all you need, or one who really walks alongside you. You may have to determine what package or level you want because usually an online coach will offer different packages to determine different needs to work with whatever you are asking for. You will have to pay more for more time and you will pay less for less time. You may need other coaches, you may need a team of coaches with different specialties to really help you drive yourself forward if you’re trying to really excel in a sport or something like that.
Benefits of online programs and Coaching
Here are some of the Benefits of each. With an online program you don’t have to think about workouts, you can be independent, and it's more affordable. With an online coach you still don’t have to think about workouts, you can still be relatively independent because it’s basically everything you get from in-person coaching but online. So you don’t have to be in-person, and you have a lot more flexibility with your time. Online coaching can be more holistic, and can help you reach your goals more effectively because you have someone who is actually working with you and is giving you some accountability. You also get more specific encouragement from your coach to help you in the process.
About LinnFit Coaching
Here’s a little taste of what we do at LinnFit Coaching. What I do in my coaching, and what we do with all the coaches we work with, is primarily online coaching and distance clients. We do in-person as well but for the purpose of this podcast we’ll be talking about online coaching. We mainly do online coaching and a little bit of just plain exercise programs. This is because we care about the quality we bring, we don’t want to allow people to just cherry pick workouts and follow it for a short time. We want to really change peoples’ lives. So, we do primarily online coaching. We keep a small volume of clients so that we can truly value each individual the way that we want to, by providing holistic coaching support.
What Our coaching can offer you
Our holistic coaching support includes things like a movement assessment, nutritional assessment, lifestyle assessment and we regularly check in on those. Nutrition and lifestyle coaching, as well as, exercise programming and tracking. We are generally very available for messaging, and depending on what package that you sign up for we will be available for 1-4 zoom check in calls every month. These calls are typically either weekly, or once a month. All of these services together are pretty holistic. Basically all you need is a place to exercise and a teachable attitude to show up and participate in the coaching process! Because we offer several services, you are going to end up paying a little bit more because that’s an investment in your future and an investment in us, by believing in us and what our process can do for you. As you pay a little bit more you are investing in this preventative health care to make yourself fitter and healthier for the long-term so you don’t have those big health care bills down the road. That’s our big heart, is to help people live and move better. What that price in our coaching allows us to do is to coach only a certain number of clients at a time, to ensure that we can still bring quality and excellence that we want and you deserve.
That’s a little taste of the difference between a plain online program that you can subscribe to anywhere, there are thousands of different really cheap online programs that you can get. But if you truly want an online coach, and you are thinking about investing in yourself by reaching out to a coach I wanted you to understand what a coach can provide and help you with. I hope that this podcast helped to provide you with some insight about the differences between online coaching and programming.
If you’re interested in online coaching check it out for yourself! That’s what I’m all about, that’s what we do at LinnFit coaching. We bring that to you, we are here to come alongside you. We are pumped to help you raise the bar in your life.
If this online coaching process really interests you and you want to be a part of this if you want to be coached by an actual person and not just follow an online program then reach out. If you want to get in touch with me, you can reach me at caleb.linnfit on Instagram or you can just go to our website at linnfit.com and you can send us a message. Those are the two best ways to get a hold of us and get a hold of me, Coach Caleb. I’m excited to start this process with you, because you can receive a program, and you can try it all by yourself. But if you really want to live and move better then getting the actual guidance of a coach, who has dedicated his or her life to really knowing the human body, understanding you, listening to your situation and your specific challenges to help you take the next steps to get to where you want to go, and be who you want to be. That’s a worthy investment! Give us a shout out if you want to learn more about what it would look like to take online coaching. The biggest goal of this podcast today was to help you understand the differences. If you like this, let me know and I’ll catch you guys on the next one.