Professional Coaching for Beginners - Worth It?

Training
1

I’ve seen quite a few people on the forum here have had great progress when enlisting the services of a professional coach, although notably all these people seem to be pretty experienced lifters.

So it got me thinking this morning, as I sat perched atop my porcelain throne staring into the unfortunately placed bathroom mirror and noting my current level of un-awesomeness, would it be worth a beginner (who is looking to put on mass) enlisting the services of a professional coach?

Or would the more experienced guys (and girls) here recommend getting to a ‘minimum’ point of strength / definition / experience / nutritional know-how / etc. before even considering turning to someone for assistance? Should it just be a case of “follow a programme, eat, shut up and lift” for a relative newb?

Personally, I’m trying to not be fat at the moment (I have never seen any of my abs. I only know they are there thanks to DOMS), but once I’m no longer fat, I intend to add as much muscle as physically possible; hence the wondering about coaching.

Thoughts, opinions and amusing memes are encouraged.

2

This is kinda a to each his own situation. I know guys that started with a coach or trainer and did just fine. I also know guys who started with a coach and have flamed out stopped training all together not to say its the coaches fault but it can both ways. I personally never directly had a coach or trainer I pretty much started reading anything and everything about lofting and I slowly started putting my own stuff together. Still remember the book that started it Arnold’s Encyclopedia for Modern Bodybuilding. I read and referred back to book so many times it fell Aparts into about 5 different sectons. Started my own program and slowly started picking up advice from the bigger and stronger guys who seemed to know what they were doing a little at a time.

So either route can be done one is more expensive and involves alot less mental foot work. The latter only cost a gym membership and and time out of your day to read and research. So its a personal call if your motivated and have half a brain and will honestly take the time to study you don’t necessarily need a coach… unless your studying the clean and jerk and snatch I don’t care who you are your not going to read a article and k ow how to do them CORRECTLY. You may get lucky and be able to do half right and still get some weight up but with out atleast a few sessions with a CERTIFIED coach I wouldn’t do much of them.

3

But do you think that progress with a coach would result in significantly faster progress to start with than without?

4

Just my two cents.

Faster progress is going to be driven by knowing what you should be doing and then actually doing it. A coach can help you with both of those things, by bringing their knowledge and experience to the table, as well as providing regular consistent motivation/encouragement/pressure/guilt/whatever-it-takes-to-motivate-you.

As you progress with anything, coaching moves into more of a “consulting” type of role, because by that time you’ve figured out how to do most things right, they’re just there to help you tweak it and get the best of it.

As a beginner, if you have a good program, a good diet, and have recovery in order… and you’re able to sufficiently motivate yourself to follow through with it and push yourself, then a coach probably won’t be particularly useful. Most people don’t have that though, and that’s where a coach can be helpful.

Additionally, a coach can do things like steer you toward or away from activities you may not be suited for. E.g., you might want to be a powerlifter, but the coach may highly suggest you’d make a better olympic lifter. There can be value to a coach outside of the things you’d normally think about.

Do I think I need a coach? no. Could I benefit from one? probably. Do I think the benefits are worth paying for, at least at this point in my lifting “career”? no. I feel I have a pretty solid program, and I’m using the advice from fellow tnation-ers to refine and adjust things as they come up, both with my diet and my training.

5

Part of the reason for lifting is developing self-discipline, which is probably more important in life than any physical benefits you’ll receive… at least for the green horns.

I’m still struggling w/ it myself, though… so what do i know?

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Grumpig hunt- its completely up to how well of a self motivating and disciplined person you are. You can make gains just as fast on your own as if you had a coach. It all depends on how much time you put into to researching and being honest with your self and starting a good program. At the end of the day the only thing you get from a coach is out side motivation and all the thinking is out you just have to do what your told.

No matter how awesome the coach is your still the one who has to move the weight around. If you have a problem getting your self up and going on your own then a coach will be good for you as for me I have never even had a training partner until about 6 months ago when my wife started lifting with me. So I am very good at self motivation and I have probably read every book, article, and study out there so I have some elf educated knowledge and feel I am able to do my self what any coach could for me. For the most part although I did enlist help to learn the Olympic moves.

So be honest with your self if you need help coming up with a program then a coach can help but, at your level making a productive program is the easiest part of the lifting game and can be easily done by searching this forum or you could start another what’s the best program for a beginner post that’s been done a million and two times already.

If you can’t motivate your self to work your hardest a coach could help you if he ior she is awesome coach but, I suggest you find a way to start kicking yourself in the ass immediately if you have any real ambitions about lifting.

7

I think if they have a drive to train and learn, they’re wasting money. If they want to train but don’t want to learn on their own and want to speed it up, then they should get a coach/trainer.

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[quote]Grumpig Hunt wrote:
But do you think that progress with a coach would result in significantly faster progress to start with than without?[/quote]
About two months ago, my gal and I had to drive upstate to take a college campus tour with her youngest. We’d never been there before, so we just Google Mapped it, followed the directions, and drove up. The drive took us three and a half hours and we went through $42 in tolls.

A few weeks ago, we had to drive back up to the school for freshman orientation. This time, we decided to go to a AAA travel agent and asked them to find us a better route. They did their magic and gave us a different map. We followed the new route and it took two hours 45 minutes and only cost $13 in tolls.

That is the difference between having a coach or not. You can certainly get where you want to go all by yourself, but when you have a professional design a plan for you, you save time and energy (and money, in my case, ha). I don’t think being a beginner is much of a factor, because you’re going to learn along the way in either case.

I took a quick look at your training log. If you’re having any kind of recurring issues with your leg/knee, then it might be worthwhile to spend a bit of time working with someone, preferably live rather than online, experienced with post-rehab training.

[quote]LoRez wrote:
Additionally, a coach can do things like steer you toward or away from activities you may not be suited for. E.g., you might want to be a powerlifter, but the coach may highly suggest you’d make a better olympic lifter. There can be value to a coach outside of the things you’d normally think about.[/quote]
I agree with most of the rest of your post, but I totally disagree on this point, or maybe I’m just not following. If someone comes to me with a goal, it’s my job to get them to that goal (within reason), not to talk them into a new goal that I think they might “do better” at.

If a 5’10" guy says he wants to be the best basketball player in town, I’m not going to suggest he take up baseball. I’m going to learn about Mugsy Bogues and Spud Webb, and see how I can help the guy. If an overweight 50-year old woman says she wants to start lifting weights and compete in bodybuilding, I’m not going to suggest tennis or golf instead.

9

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:

[quote]LoRez wrote:
Additionally, a coach can do things like steer you toward or away from activities you may not be suited for. E.g., you might want to be a powerlifter, but the coach may highly suggest you’d make a better olympic lifter. There can be value to a coach outside of the things you’d normally think about.[/quote]
I agree with most of the rest of your post, but I totally disagree on this point, or maybe I’m just not following. If someone comes to me with a goal, it’s my job to get them to that goal (within reason), not to talk them into a new goal that I think they might “do better” at.

If a 5’10" guy says he wants to be the best basketball player in town, I’m not going to suggest he take up baseball. I’m going to learn about Mugsy Bogues and Spud Webb, and see how I can help the guy. If an overweight 50-year old woman says she wants to start lifting weights and compete in bodybuilding, I’m not going to suggest tennis or golf instead.[/quote]

Yeah, I did a poor job explaining that. It’s more like if you want to play baseball, and you just sort of “ended up” playing first base, but the coach indicates you’d make a better pitcher. Or, in my case, being redirected from hurdling to middle distance running. Not because I couldn’t be a good hurdler, but because I was better suited to the 800m. It was still up to me, and if I was deadset on hurdling, I’d have kept doing that. I would have received good coaching either way.

But I gave the middle distance stuff a chance, and the coach was right. Right off the bat I went from not even placing in any of the 110m hurdles heats to placing top-3 in 2nd heat of 800m in the first meet.

Some Krav Maga place I tried out a few years ago also trained boxers and kickboxers. I would expect that if someone who came in just wanting to learn Krav Maga showed potential to be a great boxer, they’d get a nudge that direction. Obviously it’s still up to them, but a coach can see potential where a trainee can’t.

I hope that makes more sense?

10

[quote]LoRez wrote:
I hope that makes more sense?[/quote]
Okay, yeah, that does make more sense. The powerlifting/Olympic lifting thing threw me because they’re different sports. No biggie anyhow.

11

I really wish I had worked with a qualified coach when I was younger.

This raises another question. How do you go about finding a qualified coach in your area? I live in DFW so there are probably dozens of qualified professionals around, I just don’t know of them because they don’t market themselves online in mass like Cressey or Boyle do.

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Whatever you do dont’ get a generic personal trainer from a UK gym. 90% are shit. The information here is way ahead of the standard thinking in English training.

If you choose to get help either find someone with stellar credentials and reputation or get an online guy like Chris here above, Josh Bryant also seems to be popular.

13

[quote]Chris Colucci wrote:
I took a quick look at your training log. If you’re having any kind of recurring issues with your leg/knee, then it might be worthwhile to spend a bit of time working with someone, preferably live rather than online, experienced with post-rehab training.
[/quote]

Chris, many thanks for your input. So far I have failed to find anyone close to where I live in the UK that has any knowledge or experience of rehabbing post-patellectomy; it’s going to be even more difficult now that I’m working in Kuwait. Everything I know so far about my leg and fixing it has come from either experienced guys in the gym, people and articles here at T-Nation and Google :frowning:
Would you expect an on-line coach to be able to take this kind of injury into account and work around it?

[quote]Bellmar wrote:
This raises another question. How do you go about finding a qualified coach in your area? I live in DFW so there are probably dozens of qualified professionals around, I just don’t know of them because they don’t market themselves online in mass like Cressey or Boyle do.[/quote]

I have no idea of where I can get a decent coach out here in Kuwait, it would have to be an on-line one. Even back in the UK, finding a worthwhile coach would be difficult.

[quote]RampantBadger wrote:
Whatever you do dont’ get a generic personal trainer from a UK gym. 90% are shit. The information here is way ahead of the standard thinking in English training.

If you choose to get help either find someone with stellar credentials and reputation or get an online guy like Chris here above, Josh Bryant also seems to be popular.[/quote]

Ha! No chance of that, I tried one of the ‘personal trainers’ first time I ever used a gym (it was a free session, part of the promotion). 3x10 on all the machines seems to be the standard programme!

14

[quote]Grumpig Hunt wrote:

Ha! No chance of that, I tried one of the ‘personal trainers’ first time I ever used a gym (it was a free session, part of the promotion). 3x10 on all the machines seems to be the standard programme!
[/quote]

Along with obligatory cries of ‘ONE MORE REP’ and "STAY STRONG’

15

[quote]ChrisWaddle wrote:

[quote]Grumpig Hunt wrote:

Ha! No chance of that, I tried one of the ‘personal trainers’ first time I ever used a gym (it was a free session, part of the promotion). 3x10 on all the machines seems to be the standard programme!
[/quote]

Along with obligatory cries of ‘ONE MORE REP’ and "STAY STRONG’[/quote]

Do you want it…

16

peep show is the best show ever!

on topic: I think hiring a coach is a great idea. A good coach’ll stop you making all the classic newb mistakes

17

[quote]Grumpig Hunt wrote:
Chris, many thanks for your input. So far I have failed to find anyone close to where I live in the UK that has any knowledge or experience of rehabbing post-patellectomy; it’s going to be even more difficult now that I’m working in Kuwait. Everything I know so far about my leg and fixing it has come from either experienced guys in the gym, people and articles here at T-Nation and Google :frowning:
Would you expect an on-line coach to be able to take this kind of injury into account and work around it?[/quote]
You might be able to address injury issues online, but the coach would have to know his stuff 110% backwards and forwards. That means they need a ton of practical experience working with similar cases online, which present some unique challenges compared to live training.

Guys like Mike Robertson or Ben Bruno (not sure if Ben does online coaching, but he did recently have knee surgery himself) would be at the top of the list. Or you could try to find a sports therapist/rehab specialist, someone that has experience working with athletes and understands that they’re not the same as an average sedentary person, and see if they have recommendations.

[quote]Bellmar wrote:
This raises another question. How do you go about finding a qualified coach in your area? I live in DFW so there are probably dozens of qualified professionals around, I just don’t know of them because they don’t market themselves online in mass like Cressey or Boyle do.[/quote]
The same way you’d find a great doctor. Ask around, especially talking to people who’ve been happy with their “treatments”/results, then have a consultation where you talk about your goals and their abilities, try one full appointment/session and see how it goes from there.

Facebook can actually be a useful tool in this regard. People always seem to talk about when they workout, and most trainers or gyms have a FB page. If they’ve got a shred of common sense (or business sense), they’ll have some client pictures on their page too.

18

Just a quick update on this one;

@Chris, your post really got me thinking about my leg issues and the truth is that I’ve really just been sweeping them under the carpet. Sure, I’ve been doing single leg work but I was always more worried about how my leg looked rather than the effect it’s been having on the rest of my body (mis-matched lats, erectors, hell even my glutes - never thought I’d have a lop-sided ass!).

So before I do myself any further damage I’ve decided to fix it as best as possible. Once I get back from holiday, I’ll be starting up on-line coaching with Mike Robertson to try and iron out my main imbalances. I’ve always dreaded leg days, but now I’m actually looking forward to this :slight_smile: